Eric Stanley in conversation with FMST/CRES Prof. Nick Mitchell & FMST Grad Student Kaiya Gordon.

Presented by the Feminist Studies Department.

Recent advances in LGBTQ rights have been accompanied by a rise in attacks against trans, queer and/or gender-nonconforming people of color. In Atmospheres of Violence, theorist and organizer Eric A. Stanley shows how this seeming contradiction reveals the central role of racialized and gendered violence in the US — a structuring antagonism in our social world. Drawing on archives of suicide notes, AIDS histories, surveillance tapes, and prison interviews, Stanley offers a theory of anti-trans/queer violence in which inclusion and recognition are forms of harm rather than remedies. Calling for trans/queer organizing and world-making beyond these forms, they point to abolitionist ways of life that might offer livable futures.

Join via zoom link here.

Eric A. Stanley is the Haas Distinguished Chair in LGBT Equity and an associate professor in the Department of Gender and Women’s Studies at UC Berkeley, where they are also affiliated with the Program in Critical Theory.