Beyond Life and Death: Trans Politics on the Age of Annihilation 117 views

Transgender inclusion has emerged in recent historical memory onto the world-historical stage balanced on the narrow precipice of liberalism's conception of human rights. While some strides have been made to soften the crushing gears of informal administrative violence, formal mechanisms of erasure have begun to mobilize to remove the very thinkability of transness itself from public life: the politics of annihilation. This dissertation therefore argues that we are witnessing a partial, uneven, and hotly contested change in how bodies are taken into account by the state. Rather than an indirect neoliberal mode of biopolitical management, the anti-trans legislation, activism, and executive orders of the American right represent an attempted accession of the state into the realm of gendered subjectification that has largely been the domain of medical science. In so doing, the American right seeks to 'annihilate' the symbolic resources necessary to realize a trans identity and embodiment in the world while simultaneously consolidating state power of bodies. Such efforts herald an increasingly defensive orientation towards alterity and a turn towards authoritarianism in the United States.

PHD (Doctor of Philosophy)

Annihilation; Other; Alterity; Monster; Transgender; Trans; Transness; Anti-trans legislation

English

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2026-05-22