Chapter 1 - Radical Transfeminism: Trans as Anti-static Ethics Escaping Neoliberal Encapsulation

Summary

Radical transfeminism emerges out of the negation of a future based in limited forms of social inclusion and legal rights, which operate as a mode of encapsulation. Developing Marquis Bey’s and Susan Stryker’s conception of trans, the chapter articulates trans as the anti-static, indeterminate, claim to change that refuses stability, opening the possibility of trans action as a platform for futurity. Radical transfeminism is a materialist ethics rooted in poor and precarious transfeminine bodies, going beyond the limits of trans liberalism and homonormativity and the ascendency of neo-fascist politics across parts of the globe. The logics of neoliberal capitalist social inclusion, visibility and exploitation demand a clear identity; the anti-static trans becomes a refusal of the promise of exploitative inclusion and of the forms of captivity manifest in the borders, prisons, and workplaces that feed capitalist domination. Radical transfeminist futurity embraces emergent relations which hold the potential for transforming material conditions through supporting different lives.