Attunements to Trans Resistance

In what follows, I search within political theories of resistance and the Five College archive of trans life for attunements that, far from leaving us waylaid by institutional policies, important personages, and incisive protests, pull the poetics of resistance into the frame. First, I cull three attunements from political theory: attunements to webs, to tactics, and to hangouts. I then thread these through Five College stories, where the network and tactical structures of trans resistance get insistently localized in spaces tertiary to the university. Those stories also emphasize that resistant formations are never simple or isolable; there are always multiple webs and competing hangouts. In order to understand what resistance work trans is doing (and not doing) in any given moment, “trans” cannot be studied in isolation. It must be situated in what is more and other than trans.