The Archival Turn | Chanathip (Esther) Suwannanon

The Archival Turn: Thailand’s Rise as the Neo-Global Capital for ‘Sex-Change’ Surgery in the Post-Cold War Era

About the talk...

Though researchers on the development of gender reassignment surgery (GRS) in Thailand come from a diverse variety of fields, they share the same curiosity on Thailand’s contemporary status as the surgical center for trans medical operations, and they largely focus on the same period of the 1970s to 2010s. Scholars traditionally mark the 1970s as a landmark decade in Thai medical history as Thai doctors began performing vaginoplasty in the country. Due to the many medical papers published by the pioneering Thai GRS surgeon Dr. Preecha Tiewtranon (2001; 2004; 2014; 2015) and his many interviews with scholars and the popular press (Sinhaneti and Pullawan, 2008; Aizura, 2011; Farber, 2019) in which he denotes 1975 as the beginning of Thai doctors’ engagement with trans medicine, scholars have adopted his chronology. Yet, this starting point contradicts archival sources as it obscures the period that Thai doctors began to medically study kathoey [trans feminine] people, and it obfuscates the experimental stage of related-genital surgery in Thailand.

Esther's presentation will re-narrate the history of “sex-change” surgery in Thailand through exploration of Thai archival records from 1951-1975. In doing so, she will make three historiographic interventions: (1) re-narrativize the 1970s decade as a starting period for sex-change surgery in Thailand, (2) emphasize how kathoey were studied from a Western medical perspective, and how Thai medical scientists attempted to embed this paradigm in Thai society, (3) demonstrate how post-war American soft power influenced the evolution of trans surgery in Thailand from earlier intersex-related surgical practices. She will close with some preliminary historical conclusions on the formation of trans medicine in Thailand based off of cross-continental connections between Thai and American doctors.

About the speaker...

Chanathip (Esther) Suwannanon is a Thai kathoey trans woman scholar. At present, she is a PhD student in Interdisciplinary Studies (INTD) at the University of Victoria. Her dissertation blends oral histories with older Thai kathoeys with medical archives to trace the history of trans medicine in Thailand. Her project focuses on kathoey history, trans medical technology, and Thai history from the1950s to 1990s.

Host or Publisher Northrop Frye Centre