Dimensions of Transnationalism

Abstract

This article identifies and analyses links between conceptualisations of trans-gender and trans-national and aims for a critical redefinition of political agency. Through an examination of theories on transing, passing and performativity in queer-, trans-, and transnational feminist knowledge production and illustrated by discursive examples from transgender communities and Romanian migrant communities, I call for a conceptualisation of entangled power relations that does not rely on fixed, pre-established categories but defines subjectivity through risk in political struggle. I suggest that 'transing' the nation and 'transing' gender could be thought as critical moves for a radical deconstruction of gendered and national belonging. Rather than provide a static definition of the term 'transnationalism', the article explores potentials and limits of going beyond 'the national' and 'gender' and intervenes in forms of minority nationalism that reproduce racism, sexism, heteronormativity and gender binary as the norm of Western national belonging. In particular, building on Jasbir Puar's conceptualisation of homonationalism, the article shows how forms of nationalism in Western transgender and migrant communities rely on a combination of heteronormative binary gendering and the exertion of racism. While a conventionalised approach to transnationalism defines the term as a political strategy based on transnational politics, I play with suggesting different dimensions of transnationalism: it could mean 'transgender nationalism'; the 'assimilation of transgendered persons to the Western nation'; or 'cross-border-nationalism', a form of nationalism often established in migrant communities that constructs the diaspora as a nationalist extension of the homeland. My focus, therefore, is on analysing privilegings, contradictions and ambivalences in gendering, racialising and nationalising ascriptions of (non)belonging.Overall, and as an alternative to romanticized knowledge productions of crossing national and gendered borders, I suggest a power-sensitive epistemological and methodological shift in thinking

Swedish surnames, British accents: passing among post-Soviet migrants in Helsinki

“…Passing is a powerful tool for thinking about people's efforts to disidentify and distance themselves from the subject positions they occupy. The concept has been invoked to address racialized and gendered positionings (Butler 1990;Stone 1991;Larsen 1994;Ahmed 1999;Harvey 2017;Tudor 2017). Passing has been typically theorized as "passing to privilege", that is, crossing the colour line to access white privilege and escape racialized violence (Stone 1991).…”

Im/possibilities of refusing and choosing gender

“…the uninhabitable ''geographies of ambiguity ''' (2012: 170). Coming from a migrant perspective, I do not shy away from metaphors of migration and displacement in conceptualising gender (Tudor, 2017b). How to make sense of, and politically acknowledge, then, the uninhabitability of gendernonbinary -of not being able to be read and make oneself readable in terms that are either male or female, masculine or feminine, migrant or 'at-home'?…”

“…In order to question simplistic ideas of femininity and masculinity that reduce gender to appearance and seem to be sure how 'seeing' and 'reading' gender works (Tudor, 2017b), we need to dissect dimensions of not/womanhood and their connection to power relations like racism, migratism, 10 classism, ableism, queer/trans and dykephobia and misogyny. In 'Whose Feminism Is It Anyway?…”

“…ORCID iD Alyosxa Tudor https://orcid.org/0000-0002-1103-9643 Notes 1. 'Transing gender' in the conceptualisation I am relying on here means going beyond gender as a pre-given category, questioning binary gendering, deconstructing gender as a knowable and certain entity (Stryker et al, 2008;Noble, 2012;Tudor, 2017b). 2.…”

“Reflexivity of reflexivity” with Roma-related Nordic educational research

“…However, passing is not equivalent with becoming. This raises questions about appropriation, solidarity, and "abjectification" of/with an 'other' (Ahmed, 1999;Tudor, 2017b).…”