Trans Vitalities: Mapping Ethnographies of Trans Social and Political Coalitions

163 Pages·2021·20.452 MB·English

by  Elijah Adiv Edelman

Trans Vitalities

This book applies a framework of ‘trans vitalities’ through an ethnographically-
anchored exploration of trans coalitional labor and activism in Washington, DC.
Specifically, it considers how trans social justice work at the local level exem-
plifies why and how the notions of ‘trans community’ or ‘trans rights’ must be
reconfigured. Trans vitalities, as a framework developed in this volume, functions
in three particular ways: 1) to disrupt and rethink what valuable, viable, or
quantifiable quality of life looks like; 2) to shift our understandings of commu-
nity towards ‘coalition’; and 3) as a methodological, theoretical, and application-
based set of tools that integrates a radical trans politics and community-b ased
approach towards addressing trans lives. Trans Vitalities incorporates one- on- one
interviews, community map- making projects, and an analysis of the DC Trans
Needs Assessment, produced through trans coalitional labor.
An accessible case study for both how to research trans-s pecific topics and
how to apply a framework of trans vitalities, this book is valuable reading for
those who research or instruct on LGBTQ topics as well as activists, policy
makers, and law makers.
Elijah Adiv Edelman is an Associate Professor in the Department of
Anthropology at Rhode Island College, USA. Edelman’s work focuses around—
and is anchored in— models of trans coalitional justice across the United States
and the Global South.
Theorizing Ethnography

Series Editors: Elisabeth L. Engebretsen, E.J. Gonzalez- Polledo,
and Silvia Posocco
The ‘Theorizing Ethnography’ book series seeks to reorient ethnographic
engagements across disciplines, methods and ways of knowing. By focusing on
ethnography as a point of tension between abstract thinking and situated life-
worlds, the series promotes ethnographic method and writing as an analytical
form that is always partial, open- ended and epistemologically querying.
Against this background, ‘Theorizing Ethnography’ employs ‘concept’, ‘con-
text’ and ‘critique’ as devices to stimulate creative ethnographic thinking that
transects lines of analysis and location. It publishes work that reaches beyond
academic, political and life- world divisions, and as such the series seeks to foster
contributions from across socially and critically engaged fields of practice.
On the Emic Gesture
Difference and Ethnography in Roy Wagner
Iracema Dulley
Sensing the Everyday
Dialogues from Austerity Greece
C. Nadia Seremetakis
Queering Knowledge
Analytics, Devices and Investments after Marilyn Strathern
Edited by Paul Boyce, E.J. Gonzalez- Polledo, and Silvia Posocco
Being Janana
Language and Sexuality in Contemporary India
Ila Nagar
Contemporary Ethnographies
Moorings, Methods, and Keys for the Future
Francisco Ferrándiz
Trans Vitalities
Mapping Ethnographies of Trans Social and Political Coalitions
Elijah Adiv Edelman
www.routledge.com/ Theorizing- Ethnography/ book- series/ THEOETH
Trans Vitalities

Mapping Ethnographies of Trans Social
and Political Coalitions
Elijah Adiv Edelman
First published 2021
by Routledge
2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN
and by Routledge
52 Vanderbilt Avenue, New York, NY 10017
Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business
© 2021 Elijah Adiv Edelman
The right of Elijah Adiv Edelman to be identified as author of this work
has been asserted by them in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the
Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised
in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or
hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information
storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers.
Trademark notice: Product or corporate names may be trademarks or registered trademarks,
and are used only for identification and explanation without intent to infringe.
British Library Cataloguing- in- Publication Data
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
Library of Congress Cataloging- in- Publication Data
Names: Edelman, Elijah Adiv, author.
Title: Trans vitalities : mapping ethnographies of trans social
and political coalitions / Elijah Adiv Edelman.
Description: Abingdon, Oxon ; New York, NY : Routledge, 2020. |
Includes bibliographical references and index.
Identifiers: LCCN 2020013430 (print) | LCCN 2020013431 (ebook)
Subjects: LCSH: Transgender people–Washington (D.C.)–Social
conditions. | Transgender people–Political activity–Washington (D.C.) |
Transgender people–Civil rights–Washington (D.C.) |
Sexual minority community–Washington (D.C.)
Classification: LCC HQ77.95.U6 E45 2020 (print) |
LCC HQ77.95.U6 (ebook) | DDC 306.76/809753–dc23
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2020013430
LC ebook record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2020013431
ISBN: 978- 0- 8153- 5651- 6 (hbk)
ISBN: 978-0-3675-3958-0 (pbk)
ISBN: 978- 1- 351- 12802- 5 (ebk)
Typeset in Bembo
by Newgen Publishing UK
This book is dedicated to all the trans people who will never

read it, who will never benefit from it, or whose labor and
life is further erased by it. May this text incite readers to
action, to question the validity of academic expertise, and to
commit meaningful resources towards both.

Contents

List of figures viii

Preface ix

Acknowledgments xi

List of abbreviations xiii

Introduction: Tracing entangled trans desire lines— vitalities
and geometries of motion 1

1 Trans studies and anthropologists studying ‘trans people’ 18

2 Washington, DC: depicting trans spatialities 30

3 Mapping as method: articulations of bodies in place 57

4 Mapping ideology and embodied practices: approaches
to documenting and discussing lived experience 86

5 Measuring vitalities 101

6 Towards a generative politics of life: trans vitalities through
spatialities of social justice 133

Index 142
Figures
2.1 Map of Washington, DC 31
2.2 Trans DC maps: relative theme frequency 34
2.3 Trans DC maps: theme and type frequency 35
2.4 Derek’s map 36
2.5 Joan’s map 37
2.6 Naomi’s map 38
2.7 J’s map 41
2.8 Alison’s map 42
2.9 Derek’s Map: A closer look 44
2.10 Joan’s map 45
2.11 Drake’s map 46
2.12 Ana’s map 47
2.13 Andrea’s map 49
2.14 M’s map 51
2.15 Trey’s map 52
2.16 Louise’s map 54
3.1 Naomi’s map 64
3.2 Sam’s escape 67
3.3 Dennis’ map 69
3.4 Leandra’s map 70
3.5 Jacob’s map 74
3.6 Frederick’s map 78
4.1 Sam’s map 87
4.2 Sam’s map (reverse) 88
5.1 Latoya’s map 115
5.2 Eva’s map 118
5.3 Translation of Nicola’s question list 122
Preface

In their work ‘Bound,’ DC artist and trans activist JD suspends a small bundle of
sticks, held together by tightly stretched twine. The sticks are rendered immo-
bile through the tension provided by nails affixed at the top and bottom of the
canvas. Pea-s ized and irregularly shaped fragments of sea glass—r olled smooth
from the longshore drift process—d ot the twine, punctuating its grip with
glimmers of bright blues and greens. Much like each stick of birch, which
once was a part of something different and likely substantially larger, the sticks
become something whole in this moment— something new. The meaning-
making of this now fixed whole is only made possible through the tension
provided by the twine that binds them. However, if one were to remove even
one element of the bundled whole, the twine would lose the very tension that
sustains its grip. The pea-s ized forms of sea glass— like the bundled sticks— were
also once a part of a larger whole. Sea glass is transformed not just by the ocean
but by a complex process known as longshore drift. Prevailing winds force the
glass- carrying waves to hit the beach at a particular angle. Backwash—t he water
moving back out to sea—c arries these materials back down over the beach.
As a result, sea glass is transformed and remade by this process of wind, sand,
and water clashing. Each fragment becomes something new, specific to the
conditions through which it formed (Corcoran 2010).

As I prepared this manuscript, and as I considered why ‘Bound’ seemed to
so potently depict what I was struggling to describe with any clarity, I thought
more about my own interpretation. I thought about my interpretation of the
piece and of how strongly I felt it depicted the significance of coalitional work
and activism in supporting us and each other. As I thought about the work
more, I found myself growing increasingly anxious, if not mortified, at reading
support into a piece that could just as easily depict crushing control. I felt
ashamed that I had derived so much enjoyment from a piece that could have
been about suffering. When I sat down with JD to discuss their work I learned
that, perhaps like most conclusions I make about my understanding of the
world, my ‘reading’ of the piece wasn’t wrong; however, it wasn’t the intended
meaning. And so, while Bound could be ‘read’ as a wholesale celebration of
diversity and support, it could just as easily be understood to represent the
entanglement of autonomy and self against the totalizing power of single ideas.