Hyper (In)visibility: Trans-ing the Politics of Visibility

This project responds to an ongoing demand by the LGBTQ+ activist community to center the “on-the-ground” work of queer artists and activists of color in academic theoretical and political work. More specifically, I respond to this call by considering how the work of Alok Vaid-Menon and Travis Alabanza, trans-femme of color activists and artists, interrogates and contests mainstream visibility-based political praxis alongside canonical works of Black feminist thought, postcolonial theory, queer theory and critical race theory. I compile and analyze three archives of data in taking on this project: academic work on the politics of visibility since the liberation movements of the 1960s, public documents - such as online web pages, social media posts, and press releases - reflecting the political thought and praxis of mainstream progressive organizations since 2009, then works of Black and brown trans-femme artists and activists Alok Vaid-Menon and Travis Alabanza. By examining the relationships between these archives, I articulate in a historically and theoretically rigorous way the challenge posed by trans-femmes of the dominant political paradigm of visibility-as-justice, finding additionally how this challenge stands in relation to the recent history of institutionalized academic work on visibility