"Forward Slash" is a project curated for ANTH 305: Anthropology of the Body, Autumn 2014. This project centers on what lies between popular binaries that permeate the United States. Binaries facilitate easy classification of individuals into distinct categories, which allows society to understand people and, ultimately, have power over them.
I examine the middle of these binaries, the "forward slash" as stylized in most written and visual texts, as sites of conflict and opportunities for closer examination of hegemonic ideals that require people to be exactly one thing-- "either/or, neither/both" (Fausto-Sterling, Sexing the Body: Gender Politics and the Construction of Sexuality, 45).
I examine the middle of these binaries, the "forward slash" as stylized in most written and visual texts, as sites of conflict and opportunities for closer examination of hegemonic ideals that require people to be exactly one thing-- "either/or, neither/both" (Fausto-Sterling, Sexing the Body: Gender Politics and the Construction of Sexuality, 45).
By Natalie Hillerson