Author-Meets-Critic: Atmospheres of Violence: Structuring Antagonism and the Trans/Queer Ungovernable (Eric Stanley)

Session Submission Type: Experimental Session

Abstract

This author session responds to Eric Stanley's new book, Atmospheres of Violence, which argues that structures of anti-trans/queer violence are central, and not exceptional to, liberal democracy and state power.

Book description:

Advances in LGBTQ rights in the recent past—marriage equality, the repeal of Don't Ask, Don't Tell, and the expansion of hate crimes legislation—have been accompanied by a rise in attacks against trans, queer and/or gender-nonconforming people of color. In Atmospheres of Violence, theorist and organizer Eric A. Stanley shows how this seeming contradiction reveals the central role of racialized and gendered violence in the United States. Rather than suggesting that such violence is evidence of individual phobias, Stanley shows how it is a structuring antagonism in our social world. Drawing on an archive of suicide notes, AIDS activist histories, surveillance tapes, and prison interviews, they offer a theory of anti-trans/queer violence in which inclusion and recognition are forms of harm rather than remedies to it. In calling for trans/queer organizing and worldmaking beyond these forms, Stanley points to abolitionist ways of life that might offer livable futures.

Panelists include:
Jemma DeCristo, Respondent, Assistant Professor, UC Davis
Ren-yo Hwang, Respondent, Assistant Professor, Mount Holyoke College
Tavia Nyong’o, Respondent, Professor, Yale
Christopher J. Lee, Chair/Moderator, Visiting Assistant Professor, Brown University
Eric Stanley, Author, Associate Professor, UC Berkeley

Sub Unit

• Annual Meeting of the American Studies Association

Chair

• Christopher J Lee

Panelists

• Tavia Nyong'o, Yale University

• Eric Stanley, University of California-Berkeley

• Ren-yo Hwang, Mount Holyoke College

• Jemma DeCristo, University of California-Davis