Hostname: page-component-586b7cd67f-dlnhk Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-30T15:10:36.664Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Tough Breaks: Trans Rage and the Cultivation of Resilience

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 January 2020

Hilary Malatino
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

Countering hegemonic understandings of rage as a deleterious emotion, this article examines rage across specific sites of trans cultural production—the prison letters of CeCe McDonald and the durational performance art of Cassils—in order to argue that it is integral to trans survival and flourishing. Theorizing rage as a justified response to unlivable circumstances, a response that plays a key role in enabling trans subjects to detach from toxic relational dynamics in order to transition toward other forms of gendered subjectivity and intimate communality, I develop an account of what I call an “infrapolitical ethics of care” that indexes a web of communal practices that empathetically witness and amplify rage, as well as support subjects during and after moments of grappling with overwhelming negative affect. I draw on the work of trans, queer, and feminist theorists who have theorized the productivities of so‐called “negative” affects, particularly Sara Ahmed's work on willfulness and killing joy (2014), María Lugones's writing on anger (2003), Judith Butler's Spinozan reassessment of the vexed relations between self‐preservation and self‐destruction (2015), and the rich account of trans rage provided by Susan Stryker (1994).

Type
Found Cluster on Trans Feminist Philosophy
Information
Hypatia , Volume 34 , Issue 1 , Winter 2019 , pp. 121 - 140
Copyright
Copyright © 2019 by Hypatia, Inc.

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Ahmed, Sara. 2006. Queer phenomenology. Durham, N.C.: Duke University Press.Google Scholar
Ahmed, Sara. 2010. The promise of happiness. Durham, N.C.: Duke University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Ahmed, Sara. 2014. Willfull subjects. Durham, N.C.: Duke University Press.Google Scholar
Ahmed, Sara. 2017. Living a feminist life. Durham, N.C.: Duke University Press.Google Scholar
Anzaldúa, Gloria. 2012. Borderlands/la frontera. San Francisco: Aunt Lute Books.Google Scholar
Asakura, Kenta. 2016. Paving pathways through the pain: A grounded theory of resilience among lesbian, gay, bisexual, trans, and queer youth. Journal of Research on Adolescence 27 (3): 521–36.Google ScholarPubMed
Berry, Bonnie. 1999. Social rage. New York: Routledge.Google Scholar
Brennan, Teresa. 2004. The transmission of affect. Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press.Google Scholar
Butler, Judith. 2004. Undoing gender. New York: Routledge.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Butler, Judith. 2015. Senses of the subject. New York: Fordham University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Card, Claudia. 1995. Lesbian choices. New York: Columbia University Press.Google Scholar
Cassils. Becoming an image. YouTube video, 2:03, posted by Cassils, February 13, 2013. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TzM8GTL2WGoGoogle Scholar
Check It. Directed by Dana Flor and Toby Oppenheimer. Macro Pictures, 2017.Google Scholar
Coffey, Kevin. November 7, 2016. “Omaha is lucky to have him”—After homelessness and prison, R&B singer became an advocate for others. Omaha World‐Herald. http://www.omaha.com/living/omaha-is-lucky-to-have-him-after-homelessness-and-prison/article_d34851bf-e416-57c5-babf-0e438d50698b.html.Google Scholar
Deleuze, Gilles. 1990. Expressionism in philosophy: Spinoza. New York: Zone Books.Google Scholar
Eifert, George, and Forsyth, John. 2011. The application of acceptance and commitment therapy to problem anger. Cognitive and Behavioral Therapy 18 (2): 241–50.Google Scholar
Emmenhiser‐Harris, Karen. 2017. A 1,900‐pound sculpture pushed through the streets of Omaha, in tribute to its LGBTQ history. Hyperallergic, May 5. https://hyperallergic.com/377494/a-1900-pound-sculpture-pushed-through-the-streets-of-omaha-in-tribute-to-its-lgbtq-history.Google Scholar
Human Rights Campaign and the Trans People of Color Coalition. 2017. A time to act: Fatal violence against transgender people in America.Google Scholar
Lorde, Audre. 1984. Sister outsider. Trumansburg, N.Y.: Crossing Press.Google Scholar
Lugones, María. 2003. Pilgramages/peregrinajes. Lanham, Md.: Rowman and Littlefield.Google Scholar
McDonald, Cece. 2017. Go beyond our natural selves: Letters from the Minnesota Correctional Facility—St. Cloud. TSQ: Transgender Studies Quarterly 4 (2): 243–65.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
McNeil, Jay, Ellis, Sonya J., and Eccles, Fiona J. R. 2017. Suicide in trans populations: A systemic review of prevalence and correlates. Psychology of Sexual Orientation and Gender Diversity 4 (3): 341–53.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Moody, Chérie, and Smith, Nathan Grant. 2013. Suicide protective factors among trans adults. Archives of Sexual Behavior 42 (5): 739–52.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Noddings, Nel. 2002. Starting at home. Berkeley: University of California Press.Google Scholar
Oliver, Kelly. 2010. Witnessing and testimony. Parallax 10 (1): 78–87.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Pascual‐Leone, Antonio, Gilles, Phoenix, Singh, Terence, and Andreescu, Cristina. 2013. Problem anger in psychotherapy: An emotion‐focused perspective on hate, rage, and rejecting anger. Journal of Contemporary Psychotherapy 43 (2): 83–92.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Protevi, John. 2009. Political affect. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.Google Scholar
Richie, Beth. 2012. Arrested justice. New York: New York University Press.Google Scholar
Robinson, Fiona. 1999. Globalizing care. Boulder, Colo.: Westview Press.Google Scholar
Schulman, Sarah. 2016. Conflict is not abuse. Vancouver, Calif.: Arsenal Pulp Press.Google Scholar
Scott, James C. 1990. Domination and the arts of resistance. New Haven: Yale University Press.Google Scholar
Sedgwick, Eve Kosofsky. 1990. Epistemology of the closet. Berkeley: University of California Press.Google Scholar
Stryker, Susan. 1994. My words to Victor Frankenstein above the village of Chamounix. GLQ 1 (1): 237–54.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Weaver, Harlan. 2013. Monster trans: Diffracting affect, reading rage. Somatechnics 3 (2): 287–306.CrossRefGoogle Scholar