Personal Demons

Grace Lavery is Professor of English at the University of California, Berkeley. She has authored multiple books, including Closures: Heterosexuality and the American Sitcom, published by Duke University Press, and Pleasure and Efficacy: Of Pen Names, Cover Versions, and Other Trans Techniques.

• Introduction. What of Ziz? Liberalism and Demonology 1Part One. On Demonology 431. A Little Dualism 452. The Ghost in the Sheet 653. The Paedophile’s Complaint 85.Interlude. Fragments on Waking 111Part Two. What Lives Us? 1374. Dianetics of Enlightenment 1395. Leland Palmer Retracts His Confession 1616. Vicissitudes of the Asshole: Tickling, Bottoming, Prolapsing 183Epilogue. Encore un effort, psychotiques, si vous voulez Être « Death Eaters »! 207Notes 221Bibliography 239Index 243

“A thrilling and utterly original book. Propulsively readable; Lavery’s luminous prose carries us through a captivating archive to reveal the surprising centrality of the trope of transsexual demonic possession to contemporary debates over embodiment, consciousness, agency, and the possibility of shared reality. When liberal rights claims have so spectacularly failed to defend trans kids (or trans adults), we need this book and Grace Lavery’s singular voice.”—Ann Pellegrini, coauthor of Gender Without Identity“Grace Lavery is a daring, daunting, and dazzling writer. In Personal Demons she offers an utterly mesmerizing account of how transsexual subjectivity challenges neoliberal reason. Lavery writes a captivating and archly critical voice, and reads with uncanny sensitivity to both generic genealogy and textual detail. This is essential, urgent reading for anyone inhabiting the death throes of liberalism.”—Bill Brown, Karla Scherer Distinguished Service Professor in American Culture, University of Chicago