Project

Discipline

Affect Theory; Gender and Queer Studies; Sociology of social movements; Political mobilisation and activism; Politics of affect; Transgender Studies

Lead
Affektiver Aktivismus - Gefühle als grundlegende Kraft in politischen Gemeinschaften am Beispiel von Transgender
Lay summary
Das vorliegende Projekt untersucht politische Initiativen von und für Transgender/Trans*, d.h. Personen mit nicht den herrschenden Normen entsprechenden geschlechtlichen Lebensweisen. Insbesondere im vergangenen Jahrzehnt haben transgender Aktivist*innen vermehrt auf weitverbreitete und vielfältige Formen der Diskriminierung von Trans* aufmerksam gemacht. In der Folge wurden vielerorts innovative rechtliche Regelungen für die Anerkennung des selbstbestimmten Geschlechts eingeführt. Das Projekt untersucht Transgender Aktivismus als soziale Bewegung mit dem Ziel, neuartige Formen politischer De/Mobilisation und alternativer Arten und Weisen der Bildung von Gemeinschaften von Aktivist*innen zu erörtern. Der Fokus auf darin beinhaltete Affekte und Emotionen bildet der Ausgangspunkt, um bisherige Auffassungen, was soziale Bewegungen, Gemeinschaften und politische Intervention sind, neu auszuloten.

Direct link to Lay Summary

Last update: 28.10.2016

Active participation

Self-organised

Active participation

Communication	Title	Media	Place	Year

Title	Year

Number	Title	Start	Funding scheme

This project examines the recent extensive political activism of transgender people-those expressing gender varying from conforming norms-in a transnational context. Particularly in the last decade, the political activism of transgender people has raised awareness of the widespread discrimination that gender-variant people face. As a result, innovative legislation on gender recognition has widely been adopted. From a Social Science perspective, this turn in regulating non-conforming gender representations and identities is remarkable. This project will analyse how this social movement grew large and strong so rapidly, how the assembling of activists is to be understood, and how existing Social Science understandings of ‘political mobilisation’ and ‘political action’ need to be reconsidered.Using an ethnographical methodology, this project analyses the narratives and practices of activists in transnational transgender organisations. This study suggests, firstly, that shared feelings of a bodily and social stigmatisation provide the basis for emotionally felt atmospheres in transgender activism. It asks how they forge a sense of belonging of transgender activists to their communities. Secondly, this project scrutinises how these affective communities are constituted on the notion of ‘transgender’-a term intertwined with the legal, medical and political regulation of gender-variant expressions that secures citizenship for some transgender people at the expense of others, while reifying forms of racism, xenophobia, and class privilege. Thirdly, this project examines the fissures in the sense of belonging to these communities forged by such exclusions. Subsequently, the project argues that the complex feelings of belonging to transgender communities require a renewal of the sociological notions of community and the political as such.In sum, the project explores the newly established edge of affects and political activism in the recent realm of transgender lives. Thereby, it challenges existing conceptions of political community and social movement and asks how political de/mobilisation and activism are to be encompassed by Social Science today.