For so long we have proposed considering the politics of this or the politics of that – the politics of transgender, the politics of sex, the politics of performance, the politics of resistance – what if politics itself, as a concept and a framework is not the solution but the problem. In other words, what if this need to legitimate everything via the political as we currently understand politics (activities associated with governance) is part of the problem in that it leads to certain kinds of projects and it disallows others – the propulsive projects that engage making, doing, being, building, becoming, knowing, declaring, proposing, dealing, moving and so on.
... is Professor of Gender Studies and English at Columbia University. Halberstam is the author of six books including: ‘Skin Shows: Gothic Horror and the Technology of Monsters’ (Duke UP, 1995), ’Female Masculinity’ (Duke UP, 1998), ’In A Queer Time and Place’ (NYU Press, 2005), ’The Queer Art of Failure’ (Duke UP, 2011) and ’Gaga Feminism: Sex, Gender, and the End of Normal’ (Beacon Press, 2012) and, most recently, a short book titled ’Trans*: A Quick and Quirky Account of Gender Variance’ (University of California Press). Places Journal awarded Halberstam its Arcus/Places Prize in 2018, for innovative public scholarship on the relationship between gender, sexuality and the built environment. Halberstam is currently working on several projects including a book titled ’Wild Thing: Queer Theory After Nature’ on queer anarchy, performance and protest culture, the intersections between animality, the human and the environment.
