Feminist Philosophical Engagements with Trans Studies

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Talia Mae Bettcher
Keyword(s):  
Final Section ◽  
Feminist Philosophy ◽  
Transgender Studies ◽  
Analytic Work ◽  
Trans Studies

In this chapter Bettcher examines feminist philosophical engagements with transgender studies. In the first section, she discusses the emergence of trans studies as well as the recent development of trans philosophy within the discipline. The latter makes the question of feminist philosophical engagement more complex. To what extent does the feminist philosophy engage with trans philosophy? To what extent does it merely philosophize about trans phenomena? In the second section, Bettcher considers an approach that adds trans to a longer list of excluded identities, focusing specifically on analytic work designed to answer the question “What is a woman?” Drawing on Crenshaw’s notion of intersectionality, Bettcher raises worries about this sort of approach in both its traditional and ameliorative variations. In the final section, Bettcher considers intersectional approaches to trans oppression/resistance as well as impediments to their pursuit including oppositional starting points, unhelpful models of trans oppression/resistance, and, finally, complexities that arise when considering the intersections of trans and sexist oppressions.

The Oxford Handbook of Feminist Philosophy

2021 ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Critical Race Theory ◽  
Queer Theory ◽  
Postcolonial Theory ◽  
The Body ◽  
Feminist Philosophy ◽  
Comprehensive Overview ◽  
Rich Diversity ◽  
Trans Studies ◽  
Feminist Perspectives ◽  
The Rich

This exciting new Handbook offers a comprehensive overview of the contemporary state of the field. The editors’ introduction and forty-five essays cover feminist critical engagements with philosophy and adjacent scholarly fields, as well as feminist approaches to current debates and crises across the world. Authors cover topics ranging from the ways in which feminist philosophy attends to other systems of oppression, and the gendered, racialized, and classed assumptions embedded in philosophical concepts, to feminist perspectives on prominent subfields of philosophy. The first section contains chapters that explore feminist philosophical engagement with mainstream and marginalized histories and traditions, while the second section parses feminist philosophy’s contributions to with numerous philosophical subfields, for example metaphysics and bioethics. A third section explores what feminist philosophy can illuminate about crucial moral and political issues of identity, gender, the body, autonomy, prisons, among numerous others. The Handbook concludes with the field’s engagement with other theories and movements, including trans studies, queer theory, critical race, theory, postcolonial theory, and decolonial theory. The volume provides a rigorous but accessible resource for students and scholars who are interested in feminist philosophy, and how feminist philosophers situate their work in relation to the philosophical mainstream and other disciplines. Above all it aims to showcase the rich diversity of subject matter, approach, and method among feminist philosophers.

Institutionalizing Trans* Studies at the University of Arizona

2020 ◽  
Vol 7 (3) ◽  
pp. 354-366
Author(s):  
Susan Stryker
Keyword(s):  
Future Prospects ◽  
Transgender Studies ◽  
University Of Arizona ◽  
Trans Studies ◽  
In Trans ◽  
The University ◽  
Successes And Challenges

Abstract This article reports on the successes and challenges of institutionalizing trans* studies at the University of Arizona. It describes the Transgender Studies Faculty Cluster Hire Initiative of 2013–18, efforts to establish a curricular program of some sort in trans studies, barriers to achieving some of the the initiative's early goals, and future prospects for the field's institutionalization at the University of Arizona and elsewhere.

Feminism and Disability Theory

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Licia Carlson
Keyword(s):  
Final Section ◽  
Feminist Philosophy ◽  
Philosophical Inquiry ◽  
Disability Theory ◽  
Philosophy Of Disability

This chapter maps out connections between feminist and disability theories to bring into relief the multiple ways that feminist philosophers are partaking in these conversations. It begins with a discussion of what is distinctive about feminist approaches to disability, while recognizing that there is not a single, univocal “feminist philosophy of disability.” It then turns to specific areas of philosophical inquiry in which feminist philosophers address disability, including ontological, epistemological, political, ethical, and bioethical considerations. The final section highlights a number of themes central to work in feminist philosophy and disability: embodiment, identity, intersectionality, and the generative and positive dimensions of disability. The chapter concludes by pointing to more recent directions in feminist philosophy of disability. These include disability aesthetics, explorations of disability in the context of technoscience and ecofeminism, and the problem of ableism in philosophy and the academy more broadly.

scholarly journals Researching gender: the challenge of global diversity today

Afrika Focus ◽  
2010 ◽  
Vol 23 (2) ◽  
pp. 25-37
Author(s):  
Chia Longman
Keyword(s):  
Gender Studies ◽  
Cultural Anthropology ◽  
Cultural Relativism ◽  
Feminist Philosophy ◽  
Transgender Studies ◽  
Gender Research ◽  
Socially Constructed ◽  
Binary Model ◽  
Field Versus ◽  
And Gender

The text of this paper is based on a lecture given at the symposium of the Ghent African Platform “Researching Gender in/on Africa” at Ghent University in December 2009. It addresses some general challenges faced by 'gender studies' as an autonomous field versus ‘gender research’ as an integrated topic within mainstream disciplines in academia. Gender studies have sometimes superseded ‘women’s studies’ and expanded to cover the terrain of study of various forms of diversity including men’s and transgender studies. We will show that the ‘mainstreaming’ of gender in public policy at local, national and transnational levels is a development which may potentially lead to the loss of a – feminist – political edge. Secondly, while gender studies with their emphasis on socially constructed gender as opposed to biological essentialist understandings of ‘sex’ appear to face the challenge of a popular ‘new biological determinism’, it is shown that the binary model of sex/gender in fact has been criticised for some time now from within feminist theory and gender research. This is (selectively) illustrated with research from four disciplines, including the work of African gender studies scholars, i.e. feminist philosophy, social sciences (in particular socio-cultural anthropology), history and biology itself. This then shows how the accusation that gender studies would be ‘socially deterministic’ without attending to bodily matters or materiality is unfounded. Finally, it is argued that there is still a need for gender studies to become more culturally diverse, more global and transnational in its outlook, by becoming more deeply attuned to the way gender intersects with other forms of difference and taking into account postcolonial critiques of western feminist paternalism, without falling into the trap of cultural relativism.

What Happened to the Insurrection?

2021 ◽  
Vol 8 (3) ◽  
pp. 298-309
Author(s):  
Meridith Kruse
Keyword(s):  
Close Reading ◽  
Transgender Studies ◽  
Trans Studies ◽  
Original Presentation

Abstract This article revisits Susan Stryker's 2006 introduction to The Transgender Studies Reader to show how her overview of Foucault's “insurrection of subjugated knowledges” in this field-inaugurating text mutes the radical potential of Foucault's genealogical approach to history. Through a close reading of Foucault's original presentation of this concept in his 1976 lecture, the fuller sense of his “antiscience” genealogy becomes clear. The article concludes by proposing a way scholars might redeploy Foucault's insurrectionary method within the field of trans* studies today.

scholarly journals Theory in the Interstices

2020 ◽  
Vol 56 (1) ◽  
pp. 119-146
Author(s):  
Melissa M. Wilcox
Keyword(s):  
Queer Theory ◽  
Queer Studies ◽  
Theoretical Work ◽  
Religious Studies ◽  
Gender Theory ◽  
Transgender Studies ◽  
Benign Neglect ◽  
Trans Studies ◽  
Lesbian Studies ◽  
And Gender

Religious studies, queer studies, and transgender studies have long kept their distance from each other for reasons ranging from benign neglect and ignorance to active hostility. Yet scholars working in the interstices between these fields have spent decades developing gay and lesbian studies in religion and queer studies in religion. Strassfeld (2018) has argued for transing the study of religion, and transgender studies in religion is experiencing marked growth partly in response to his call. Nevertheless, although queer and transgender studies in religion are gaining increasing acceptance in religious studies, scholars outside of these subfields still generally consider them inessential to the field as a whole, and many continue either to ignore queer and trans topics and perspectives or to address them solely in the most limited of terms. Queer and trans studies, for their part, largely still ignore or actively dismiss religion, addressing the topic only in simplistic ways that would make any religionist cringe. How, then, are those of us who live in these interstitial spaces, cringing at the infelicities of all three fields, to demonstrate the richness of the intellectual soil in this space not just for ourselves but for the larger fields? This work argues for the critical necessity of developing theory from the interstices between religious studies, queer studies, and trans studies – a task already begun by such scholars as Janet Jakobsen, Ann Pellegrini, Jasbir Puar, Ashon Crawley, Max Strassfeld, Omise’eke Natasha Tinsley, and Yannik Thiem – and suggests specific areas in which such theoretical work has particular potential to alter queer theory, trans and gender theory, and religious studies theory as a whole.

scholarly journals Dear Trans Studies, Can You Do Love?

2020 ◽  
Vol 7 (3) ◽  
pp. 421-426
Author(s):  
Ian Khara Ellasante
Keyword(s):  
Knowledge Production ◽  
Transgender Studies ◽  
Trans Studies

Abstract This essay considers the origins, intentions, and potential of transgender studies. As the field becomes increasingly institutionalized, is transgender studies capable of honoring the embodied knowledges from which it originates and, if so, how? The author suggests orientations that foreground the relevance, reciprocity, and accessibility of transgender studies for the very people whose lives and experiences the field transmutes into scholarship. The author draws from Dora Silva Santana's papo-de-mano and escrevivência and Kai M. Green and Treva Ellison's “tranifesting”—approaches that demonstrate that, in fact, transgender studies can do redress, tenderness, and love in the service of both knowledge production and resistance.

Natality or Birth? Arendt and Cavarero on the Human Condition of Being Born

Hypatia ◽  
2018 ◽  
Vol 33 (2) ◽  
pp. 273-288 ◽  
Author(s):  
Fanny Söderbäck
Keyword(s):  
Critical Analysis ◽  
Final Section ◽  
Human Condition ◽  
Feminist Philosophy ◽  
Conceptual Distinction ◽  
The Human Condition

This essay offers a critical analysis of Hannah Arendt's notion of natality through the lens of Adriana Cavarero's feminist philosophy of birth. First, I argue that the strength of Arendtian natality is its rootedness in an ontology of uniqueness, and a commitment to human plurality and relationality. Next, I trace with Cavarero three critical concerns regarding Arendtian natality, namely that it is curiously abstract; problematically disembodied and sexually neutral; and dependent on a model of vulnerability that assumes equality rather than asymmetry. This last issue is further developed in the final section of the essay, where I examine the idea that birth, for Cavarero, becomes the very concept by which we can distinguish and normatively differentiate acts of care and love from acts of wounding and violence. Upholding the normative distinction here depends on a conceptual distinction between vulnerability and helplessness. To maintain the ethical potential of the scene of birth, I argue that we have to insist on the very characteristics Cavarero attributes to it—ones, as this essay aims to show, that are ultimately missing in the Arendtian account thereof.

Trans/Coalitional Love-Politics

2019 ◽  
Vol 6 (4) ◽  
pp. 521-538
Author(s):  
V Varun Chaudhry
Keyword(s):  
Black Women ◽  
Large Scale ◽  
Black Feminism ◽  
Service Organization ◽  
Political Practice ◽  
Transgender Studies ◽  
Trans Studies ◽  
In Trans ◽  
Ethnographic Data

Abstract This essay works at the intersection of black feminism and trans studies to reflect on the radical possibilities for the futures of transgender studies and politics. Drawing on ethnographic data with a large-scale LGBTQ service organization, and focusing specifically on an example of the backlash that a black cisgender- and queer-identified woman received for coordinating a transgender-focused event, the article interrogates the ways in which the cisgender/transgender binary, pervasive in trans studies and trans organizing, counterintuitively reinforces the racialized gendered subjugation of black women. To circumvent the subjugation of black feminine bodies and thus harness the radical potential of trans studies and organizing, the author proposes a conception of trans coalitional love-politics. This is a reading and political practice that explodes the cis/trans binary and thus imagines more robust possibilities for racialized gendered justice.

scholarly journals From Marginality to Possibility: Doing Transgender Studies in Japanese Studies

2021 ◽  
Vol 13 ◽  
pp. 1-18
Author(s):  
Shu Min Yuen ◽  
Keyword(s):  
21St Century ◽  
Social Conditions ◽  
Transgender Studies ◽  
Area Studies ◽  
Context Sensitive ◽  
Contemporary World ◽  
Trans Studies ◽  
Japanese Studies ◽  
Universal Applicability ◽  
Sensitive Knowledge

Area studies has been described as having lost its significance and legitimacy in the 21st century globalised world. However, research has shown that the strengths of area studies—empirical research and context-sensitive knowledge—remain relevant not only in helping us to understand our contemporary world, but also in challenging the hegemony of theories and concepts developed in Euro-American contexts that have come to dominate both academic and general writing. In this paper, I draw on my research on the transgender community in Japan—an area of study that is relegated to the margins of both Japanese studies and trans studies—to show how the tools of area studies play an important role in expanding the conceptual boundaries of trans studies, and how the lens of transgender can expand or complicate existing knowledge on the culture and society of Japan. I highlight how Japanese transgender identities and cultures are shaped not only by global processes, but also legal, medical, cultural and social conditions specific to Japan. I argue against the assumed universal applicability of Eurocentric conceptualisations of gender/sexual non-conformity, and in doing so I call attention to the ways in which the fields of transgender studies and Japanese studies can enrich each other. More than ever in these precarious times, we need to emphasise the strengths and overcome the weaknesses of our field(s), so that we may be better equipped to turn marginality into possibility.

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