A figure in the throes of a furious struggle is illuminated against the darkness by the intermittent flash of a photographer's bulb, the sounds of extreme human exertion and the slap of fists and feet against hard, damp surfaces testifying to an otherwise invisible contest between the human body and inanimate matter. In Becoming an Image (2012-) the performance artist Cassils applies the prowess and agility of a body disciplined by intensive training to the task of transforming a monumental block of clay. Capturing the artist in postures which are both frozen and fleeting, photographic documentation does more than simply record: it frames the audience's experience of the performance, imprinting images which are both arbitrary and forceful. One still image in particular uncannily evokes the traditions of classical statuary, depicting a human figure seemingly seated atop a battered pedestal in a posture of Promethean ambiguity: is this a body emerging out of the clay, moulded by a hidden hand? Or is this the figure of the artist, fixed to the rock in eternal punishment for the crime of creative presumption? Originating as a commission by the ONE Archives in Los Angeles, home to a longstanding LGBTQ archive, Becoming an Image draws attention to what is neither seen nor recorded: it is a testament to the struggle to make an impression in the field of representation, to gain visibility in conditions of unseeing and to find a foothold in the institutions of cultural memory. Cassils's work speaks powerfully to the themes of this book, which examines questions of visibility, recognition and representation in relation to literary narrative. A key concern for this study is the way in which transgender lives - whether historical or fictional - have been ‘authored by others’: named, defined and appropriated in ways which obscure, displace or erase transgender experiences, identities and histories. By revisiting twentieth-century narratives and their afterlives this book aims to examine the legacies of this representational history, exploring the extent to which transgender potential can be recovered and realised.