Trans*Forming STS: Complicating the Head/Heart Division Through Ethnographic Travels

• In Event: Latin American Science, Technology and Society: Women, Gender, and Sexuality Issues 2

Abstract

With a renewed attention to geographic situatedness and colonizing and diffusionist tendencies within the field, STS scholars are struggling with diversifying their own knowledge production without reproducing 'inclusionist' discourse. In these struggles, 'regional' variation seems to dominate understandings of difference. One example is the proposal by Law and Lin (2017) to 'provincialize STS'. They argue that STS scholars trained in Euro-American theory and knowledge but with bodies inhabiting other geographic locations often feel 'beheaded' and argue for "reversing the STS terms of analytical trade" by moving notions 'from elsewhere' to European empirics. This paper explores another possible route: that of moving our bodies into empirics where we have to let go of our Euro-STS heads.

We study the health for trans* persons that followed the radical Argentinian Ley de Identidad de Género and share our travels to four sites: a health guide development meeting at the Ministry of Health in Buenos Aires, a Consultorio Amigable y inclusive in Chivilcoy, a general practitioner's office in Rosario, and an international trans* health conference in Amsterdam. Whereas the Argentinian gender identity law has shaken up legal arrangements in countries like Denmark, the Netherlands and Malta, the Argentinian practices stand in stark contrast due to their profound commitment to challenging binary understandings of sexuality. But sustaining those efforts after neoliberal reform benefits from the United Nations Development Program. Could such productive intertwinements of Latin American and 'International' activities give inspiration to diversifying STS without exoticizing 'other' concepts but opening one's heart to resonating alternatives?

Authors

• Sonja Jerak-Zuiderent, Amsterdam Medical Center / University of Amsterdam

• Teun Zuiderent-Jerak, Department of Thematic Studies - Technology and Social Change, Linköping University