Over at BOMB, A.L. Stein sits down with Maggie Nelson, author of The Argonauts, to chat about metaphysics, attachments, and her relationship with the normative:
“The normative/transgressive dichotomy is so deep. I remember a student I had a while ago, a trans person deeply invested in anti-assimilation, who was saying to me quite plaintively one day, “I just don’t see how to keep resisting the normative!” So I asked him, “Can you name what it is, exactly, that you feel like you have to resist?” And he said, “Well, I don’t want to get married or have a baby.” After he left my office I just kept thinking, Well, that’s weird, ‘cuz I’m married, and I have a baby.”
