Women,Gender,Sexuality Studies 395S - S-Trans Phenomenology & Poli

What is a politics of the trans ordinary, of everyday life for the singularity of trans life? This course will develop a method to explore different answers to this question. That answer, trans phenomenology, will be defined as a style of reasoning that examines the variety of ways that transness cannot be reduced to `crossing? gender or sex. Course materials will include theoretical accounts from mostly contemporary (1990-present) phenomenologies and literature (fiction and non-fiction). Thinkers/authors include (but not limited to): Andrea Long Chu, Gayle Salamon, Tourmaline, Jay Prosser, Marquis Bey, Cameron Awkward-Rich, and Emma Heaney. The course will endeavor to understand transness in terms of embodied and material practices that take place in a lifeworld. Trans phenomenology would therefore involve a serious philosophical reconsideration of how the worlds we inhabit manifests themselves. This course does not endorse a theory of essences among trans identities. As relational, transness is situated in contexts of living as racialized populations and communities. Rather, being trans involves living acts that construct worlds; improvisational acts as part of everyday modes of carrying on, of living, and of bearing conditions thought to unbearable; and affective relationships that structure our emotional ties to communities and other attachments that generate optimism and belonging.