‘Our transness comes to us from the Real’: Xandra Metcalfe’s primordial transsexuality and Gregory of Nyssa’s imago dei

This paper offers a theological engagement with psychoanalytic communist Xandra Metcalfe’s concept of ‘primordial transsexuality’, in conversation with Gregory of Nyssa. It explores Metcalfe’s picture of an original non-binary state of all humans prior to the violence of heterosexuality and cisnormativity, a narrative she compares to the Fall. I compare this with Gregory’s belief in humanity’s primordial creation in a gender-transcendent divine image, prior to the ‘male and female’ divisions given in anticipation of the Fall. Within this, I consider on Metcalfe’s employment of the Lacanian Real—as that which resists symbolisation—alongside Gregory’s view of the Divine Essence as unnameable and unspeakable, suggesting that both Metcalfe’s primordial transsexuality and Gregory’s imago dei evade gendered subjectivity by their proximity to an extradiscursive origin. This paper thus also contributes to ongoing dialogue between theology and Lacanian thought, suggesting Gregory as a promising interlocuter for Lacan.