The Critical in Trans Pedagogy: (Re)Imagining Radical Creativity

• In Event: Gender-Expansive and Democratizing Teacher Education: Envisioning Teaching and Teacher Education for Intersectional Justice

Abstract

Objective
Teacher educators employing critical trans pedagogy often teach teachers to know their body scripts, to teach students to recognize theirs, and acknowledge possibility (Hermann-Wilmarth, 2020; Keenan, 2017). This is uncontroversial in trans studies in education while being enormously controversial in the current political climate. The objective of this paper is to expand the theoretical base in critical trans pedagogy to meet current challenges with radical creativity. I aim to map one way critical trans pedagogy can become “freer than we want to be” (Bey, 2022, pp. 227) and expand its intersectional praxis.

Perspective(s) or theoretical framework
I introduce critical trans pedagogy to the concept of bodymind, developed by Disability and (Black) Mad studies scholars, to describe how inseparable the body and mind are (Claire, 1999; Schalk, 2018). The usage of bodymind reconsiders traditional Western onto-epistemological assumptions that lead us to binarism rather than plurality. Bodymind remains a central consideration for imagining new possibilities to tell stories about ourselves (Schalk, 2018) especially trans selves.

(Black) Mad studies scholars have also argued through examinations of Black radical creativity that madness is a method for understanding abjection (Bruce, 2021) which has potential for critical trans pedagogy. Yet madness in Mad studies often refuses definition and exists in relationship with, and opposition to rationality (Foucault, 1988) especially in art and poetry (Smith, 2017; Author, in press). Madness’ in-betweenness rejects common impositions of identity as marked by some sense of our weakness or difference and opens possibilities for young trans people through its wide-ranging interpretation.

Modes of Inquiry
This theoretical paper synthesizes and borrows from Black trans feminism and (Black) Mad studies, the research in critical trans pedagogy, my experience as a genderqueer Mad person, and contemporary art and poetry by trans people. I employed a writhing mad practice (Smith, 2018) to do this through writing, rumination, art creation, and critique.

Point of View
Critical trans pedagogy by applying the concept of bodymind can step into recognizing how pedagogies of “care,” “support,” and “inclusion” can delimit the possibilities of young trans people through pathologizing mental illness and forcing bodyminds into pre-existing stories. Practitioners of critical trans pedagogy can also use madness as (post)method to examine examples of poetry and art that rejects the focus on trans pain and trauma only (i.e. Zanele Muholi, Candrilli, 2020, Gabriel and Abi-Karam, 2017, smith, 2020). By examining art and poetry through madness, practitioners of critical trans pedagogy present new possibilities: rage, fugitivity, abolition, liberation, pleasure and joy.

Significance
The training of teacher educators in critical trans pedagogy must involve more theory and new radical, creative, and less apologetic models. When critical trans pedagogy learns from Black trans feminism and (Black) Mad Studies, the field (re)imagines possibilities for gendered selves and teaches others. So, I implore us to be free enough to become what we do not yet know we can be, without prescriptive models to guide us.

Author

• Aubry D. Threlkeld, Threlkeld Educational Consulting
  Presenting Author