Affinity By Sarah Waters. A Way into Genderlessness Powered by Ocular Centrism And Spirits

Affinity by Sarah Waters tells the story of sexless and genderless spirits (and of their human bodily forms, the spiritualists) slowly taking possession of one woman, Margaret Prior, who actually, unknowingly, shelters inner predispositions to spiritualism prior to the spirits’ intervention, giving thus credit to what her surname had proleptically heralded from the very start. It all occurs via ocular centrism, embodied by a powerful Gaze, slithering throughout the plot. It first mesmerises the spiritualists-to-be before catapulting them into a maelstrom of reversals and distortions. This twisting manoeuvre can be read as an attempt to outroot and erase previously assimilated societal constructs. The spirits’ genderlessness can then deploy unencumbered. A liberating emancipation is finally completed. This article first dwells on ocular centrism before dealing with all the reversals and tiltings progressively coming up to the surface, as well as with genderless metonymic substitutes acting on behalf of the spirits.