Eric Stanley
Eric A. Stanley is an associate professor in the Department of Gender and Women's Studies at the University of California, Berkeley.
In collaboration with Chris Vargas, they directed the films Homotopia (2006) and Criminal Queers (2019). Eric is also an editor, along with Tourmaline and Johanna Burton, of Trap Door: Trans Cultural Production and the Politics of Visibility (MIT Press 2017) and with Nat Smith, Captive Genders: Trans Embodiment and the Prison
Supervisors: Donna Haraway, Angela Y. Davis, and José Muñoz
In collaboration with Chris Vargas, they directed the films Homotopia (2006) and Criminal Queers (2019). Eric is also an editor, along with Tourmaline and Johanna Burton, of Trap Door: Trans Cultural Production and the Politics of Visibility (MIT Press 2017) and with Nat Smith, Captive Genders: Trans Embodiment and the Prison
Supervisors: Donna Haraway, Angela Y. Davis, and José Muñoz
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One of the most notable accomplishments of queer studies has been in showing how various regimes of normativity are interconnected and mutually constitutive—how reproductive futurity and heteronormativity are articulated in relation to racialization, (dis)ability, and other socially structuring and institutionally enforced axes of difference—in such a way that much work done under the rubric of queer studies today takes for granted that queerness can be defined as against (and as other to) normativity writ large. Perhaps as a consequence of such success, the relationship between queerness and antinormativity can become vaguely tautological—what is queer is antinormative; what is antinormative is queer—and so elastic that useful distinctions between how different normativities get enforced in practice can begin to fade. Conversely, what is now being called critical prison studies, as a field, has had relatively little to say about trans/queer people, or how queer theory and/or politics might differently mitigate its optics. Here then, we have gathered to think about the uses and limits of both queer theory and abolitionist analysis in our work toward collective liberation.
One of the most notable accomplishments of queer studies has been in showing how various regimes of normativity are interconnected and mutually constitutive—how reproductive futurity and heteronormativity are articulated in relation to racialization, (dis)ability, and other socially structuring and institutionally enforced axes of difference—in such a way that much work done under the rubric of queer studies today takes for granted that queerness can be defined as against (and as other to) normativity writ large. Perhaps as a consequence of such success, the relationship between queerness and antinormativity can become vaguely tautological—what is queer is antinormative; what is antinormative is queer—and so elastic that useful distinctions between how different normativities get enforced in practice can begin to fade. Conversely, what is now being called critical prison studies, as a field, has had relatively little to say about trans/queer people, or how queer theory and/or politics might differently mitigate its optics. Here then, we have gathered to think about the uses and limits of both queer theory and abolitionist analysis in our work toward collective liberation.