Quand Bradley Manning devint Chelsea. De la NBC à Wikipédia, l’espace public comme scène d’une transition de genre

Abstract

As the scene within which Chelsea Manning acquired an existence, the public sphere is also her birthplace. Indeed, on the 22nd of August 2013, Bradley Manning, a former US Army intelligence analyst incarcerated in an American military prison for having delivered confidential cables to WikiLeaks, let the public know through a statement sent to NBC that he had always been a woman. He asked as well to be named henceforth as Chelsea. That gender self-declaration is actually uttered by a Today Show journalist interviewing Manning’s lawyer. Once the request is transmitted, both journalist and lawyer refer to Manning using the feminine pronoun. Thus, the set of a TV program turned into a setting for gender transition. But Manning’s announcement had enduring effects beyond this local scene. Indeed, within the global scene that is the online encyclopedia Wikipedia, contributors debated, sometimes fiercely, about renaming the page of the article entitled “Bradley Manning” to consecrate her new femininity. Based on an enunciative analysis, our article shows how the Today Show converted Manning’s declaration into a performative. Returning to the felicity versus unfelicity trajectory of that performative, it also attempts an ethnography of the “discussion pages” displayed in the English and French speaking platforms of Wikipedia.

Keywords

• performance
• trans-identities
• public sphere
• discourse analysis.
• Wikipedia