Perry Zurn is Visiting Associate Professor of Feminist, Gender, and Sexuality Studies at Cornell University, Provost Associate Professor of Philosophy at American University, author of
The fundamental question of trans worlding in the Five College archive of trans life is this: Who gets taken to constitute trans worlds, and whose webs of relation, kinship, and belonging define the stories we tell and the futures we turn toward? Here, I take up three stories in those archives that best dramatize the stakes of this question: stories of #TransWomenBelongAtSmith, #AmherstUprising, and Indigenous life. I want to track how the generativity of worlding gets constricted or expanded depending on who is chosen to direct it. Ultimately, I want to grapple with the very real, very everyday problem of dreaming trans futures from specific locations—and to explore how location itself might allow us to honor that specificity without limiting the species of hopes (and hope-ers) we engage.
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