TRANS*VERSAL ANIMACIES AND THE MATTERING OF BLACK TRANS* POLITICAL LIFE

Abstract

This article explores trans*versal connections between transness, blackness, and the animal. Drawn from the conceptual vocabulary of cultural theorist Felix Guattari, this article argues that the central purpose of transversality is to create linkages between previously unexplored singularities in a field, and then to create connections in other conceptual topographies at different levels of discursivity. The article advances an extension of Guattari's transversal into a more capacious concept of the trans*versal, to analyze the #blacklivesmatter and #blacktranslivematter movements that draw on critical animal studies to reveal ways that species hierarchies are always present in processes of racialization that allow some lives to matter more, or less, than others.