awful description was of a US soldier ... larly posing with a severed hand which has been
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posed with the middle finger up.
THIS EMPHASIS (IN YOUR WORK) ON THE MATERIALITY OF THE EVENT OF VIOLENCE, SEEMS KEY BOTH IN TERMS OF LOCATING A VIOLENT ACT IN A SPECIFIC TIME AND PLACE (FOR EXAMPLE AS OPPOSED TO THE MORE GENERALIZED FORMS OF LOOKING AT VIOLENCE THROUGH LARGER SOCIAL TRENDS OR FRAMEWORKS AND STATISTICAL ANALYSIS) BUT ALSO BY EMPHASIZING THE VARIOUS KINDS OF VIOLENCE AT WORK. IN DOING THIS, IT SEEMS YOU ARE BOTH NARROWING THE FRAME OF REFERENCE TO “SIT WITH” INDIVIDUAL CASES AND ALSO POINTING ELSEWHERE, TOWARD OTHER SITES WHERE VIOLENCE HAD BEGUN TO CONGEAL AROUND SOMEONE’S LIFE BEFORE THE ACT ITSELF. Yes, my work focuses on trans women of color, low-income people, prisoners, and HIV+ folks because their de-materialization points toward the structures of white supremacy, settler colonialism, able-ism and capitalism that is the United States. I am not saying that violence only happens to these people, however, I am always attempting to stitch together what is called “personal” violence to that of systemic violence. To this end, any work in trans or queer theory that does not have at its center an analysis of race, class, ability, and gender recapitulates the very normativity it assumes to resist. I am also aware that the cases I write about are also only representations of a deferred violence that can never be undone. So while I do attempt to be as specific as I can in my research, I know that there will always be something missing, and in ways, that which is missing, which I call “remains” is what I am always trying to push toward. This also seems crucial in that it brings forward certain institutionalized forms of violence or oppression that queer and gender non-conforming people may face, forms of violence which mainstream media and progressive LGBT narrative often seem to avoid making visible in the name of branding ours as a progressive “it gets better” moment. While I often point toward spectacular scenes of violence (like brutal murders) I am also trying to think about what others and I call administrative violence. Administrative violence is truly modern form of violence that is primarily enacted via slow and cold calculation more often than not, far removed from the blood of the actual harm. When I talk or
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think about this I am often pulled into both Foucault’s articulation of biopower at the end of History of Sexuality Vol. 1 and of Hannah Arendt’s banality of evil from Eichmann in Jerusalem. And while this form of power may have been perfected in the Holocaust it was forged in the colonies of 18th and 19th century Empire. Today however, I think it takes perhaps a different form. I think administrative violence is the haunting of “progress”. In this I am interested in how at the very moment of announced progress, we see the twinning of new regulatory practices. For example, we can now have trans people on MTV’s The Real World, but the TSA just mandated gender binary boxes on all flights in the US. Or we can have Dan Savage’s “It Gets Better” project in the same year when numerous trans and homophobic laws are proposed and passed in numerous states. Both the inclusion of trans people in mainstream media and the It Gets Better Project must be subject to critique, however here I am interested in the relative ease with which they are welcome into an otherwise hostile culture. This of course is in part because of the kind of middle-class whiteness they reproduce, but I think it is more than that as well. I think this double move might best illustrate our current moment of administrative violence.
WHAT ARE YOU CURRENTLY WORKING ON; IN MAY OF 2012? I’m working on turning my dissertation into a book, hopefully that will be out in the next few years. I’m also thinking about editing a special issue of a journal on current Fanon studies and starting a new documentary project. But mostly I am trying to find a job or some other scam to pay my rent. Given the dismantling of higher education in the last 5 years in the US, teaching jobs have of course become almost non-existent. And those that do remain are geared toward the most traditional, disciplinary, and palatable academics, in other words: not me.
RIGHT, WHEN DID FANON BECOME SUCH AN IMPORTANT FIGURE FOR YOU? HIS WORK SEEMS TO HAVE AN IMPORTANT PLACE IN YOUR WRITING
I first read Fanon long ago, long before I went to college because of his place in radical politics and anti-colonial struggle. Then, I returned to him as an undergrad and continue to struggle with his work. I’m both pulled into it and pushed from it in endless ways.