Transmolecular Revolution: Trans*versality and the Mattering of Political Life

Abstract

My dissertation “Transmolecular Revolution: Trans*versality and the Mattering of Political Life,” develops the concepts of “transmolecular revolution” and “trans*versality,” drawn from the conceptual vocabulary of cultural theorist Félix Guattari as well as recent black and trans* theorizing to intervene in debates about the complexity of embodied subjectivity and scales of political mattering. Guattari crafts transversality as an ethical, political, social, and aesthetic tool, capable of maximizing communication between different topographies in a field and creating micropolitical linkages across scales, while still retaining the specificity of minoritarian life (defined by Guattari as any subjectivity that is not traditionally masculine, white, and straight, but for the purposes of this dissertation, black and trans*). Individual chapters explore Guattari’s ecosophy through his use of transversality and molecular revolution; an examination of student-worker protests of May 1968 and the uptake of Deleuzoguattarian frameworks in genealogies of trans* and black studies; and an analysis of the #blacklivesmatter and #blacktranslivematter movements that draws 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. While the dissertation certainly attends to questions of oppression and resistance that motivate deep political change, it also highlights possibilities for creativity and invention necessary for any successful revolutionary project.