Imagining a Trans* Epistemology: What Liberation Thinks Like in Postsecondary Education

• In Event: 14.045 - Roundtable Session 2
  In Roundtable Session: 14.045-23 - Queering Positionality

Abstract

Currently, the social imaginary has been flooded with stories of the lives and livelihoods of trans* peoples and communities.  Trans* people have existed previous to this recent spat of visibility and recognition, and will continue to exist when the spotlight moves away from us.  However, what has become clear is that how trans* people are understood socially, and the way we have been focused on throughout public discourse, has been from a cisgender perspective.  The near constant social panic around trans* people’s use of public restrooms, the ongoing tensions regarding trans*-inclusive housing on college and university campuses, the (lack of) access to trans*-inclusive health care, and how trans* people become socially visible—a experience most notably present in high profile trans* people like Laverne Cox, Carmen Carrera, Chelsea Manning, Janet Mock, and Caitlyn Jenner—are all instances in which the cisgender public largely controls (and oftentimes distorts) who we are as trans* people, how trans*ness becomes problematically affixed to our bodies in ways that regulate who is “trans* enough” (Catalano, 2015), and, as a result, how trans*ness is understood as a sociocultural phenomenon.  Because of the way the cisgender public continues to dominate the shaping of the discourse on trans* people, there has been a lack of conversation about a truly transgender epistemology that is for us and by us.  Whilst Spade (2015) developed Critical Trans Politics, this is more focused on understanding trans* people at the nexus of systemic racism, classism, genderism, and sexism that continues to diminish our life chances.  What Spade’s work does is necessary, but it does not address how trans* people come to know, and how our unique approach to creating truth and knowledge is itself a reflection of the very historical, political, and social legacies Spade traced.  In other words, Spade’s work sets the stage for, but does not address fully, the extent to which we can arrive at a trans* epistemology.  
Postsecondary education, similar to broader society, is steeped in and furthers trans* oppression.  Additionally, the knowledge produced at postsecondary educational institutions is inflected with trans* oppression, furthering the notion that trans* lives and experiences are abject, abnormal, and unintelligible.  This parallels Patton’s (2016) notion of “epistemological racism” in that the way universities function, and the knowledge produced in the academy, are oriented by the omnipresence of gender binary discourse (Nicolazzo, 2016, in press) that deems trans* people—and therefore knowledges—impossible.  In this manuscript, I build from the work of Patton (2016), Brayboy (2005), Bernal (2002), and Spade (2015) to propose a trans* epistemology.  In doing so, I discuss how this new epistemological stance helps educators unlearn the gender binary illogic in which they collude, thereby (re)shaping education as liberatory.  Moreover, because one’s epistemology shapes the research one does, and therefore, the findings, implications, and policies that are derived from such research, the current exploration of a trans* epistemology--one that emanates from trans* positionalities, subjectivities, and experiences--fits within this proposed symposium.

Author

• Z Nicolazzo, Northern Illinois University