Multilogics and Poetics of Radical Transfeminism

Underlying radical transfeminism — as an urgent critique of fixed identities and binary logics — is the call for a new kind of thinking, one capable of making sense in between lives in transformation (i.e. all lives) and the relative truths they produce.

“In this workshop, we will trace the outlines of the interactions between poetics — a means of experimenting with linguistic structures to unearth meanings, knowledges and affects — with multilogics, an approach to variable truth formations and axiomatic orderings. Nat and Mijke will discuss these approaches from the perspective of radical transfeminism, with a particular focus on the ‘anti-static’ as a means to refuse the stable order of reproduction and the stasis of the class war, with its redistribution of resources from rich to poor. Radical transfeminism concerns itself with finding ways of negation, refusal and navigation between the logics, evaluations, and affects of dominant orders, opening relations between different logics that emerge from within forms of life. Transfeminist and queer bodies are at the centre of such actions and refusals, opened by poetics as a means to negation and affirmation between the fault lines of cohering orders.” – Nat Raha and Mijke van der Drift

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Mijke van der Drift works on Nonnnormative Ethics which engages with the question how forms of life outside of the dominant norm find ways of relation and evaluation. Together with Nat Raha and Chryssy Hunter, Mijke has been working internationally on Radical Transfeminism. Their current project The Logic of Loss in Bonding uses film and philosophy to formulate a counterpoint to managerial theories of accumulation. Their film A way of dying… (2017), co-directed with Alex Reuter, is touring. In addition, van der Drift is currently working on their book Nonnormative Ethics: The Dynamics of Trans Formation.

“Nat Raha has written some of the most exciting poetry of the last decade. Transfeminist, communist, revolutionary – with great quickness and nimble intensity, her syllables and survival codes dash through police-lines as high-level transmissions signalling absolute solidarity, insisting that other lives are still possible…They are poems that break open a space in which to think through what has happened, who we have been, and what has been done to us. These are fearsome times. Raha writes poetry that acknowledges that fear and refuses to flinch in the face of it, which is in itself an act of the fiercest solidarity.” – Sean Bonney

Nat participated in Episode 9: Other World’s Already Exist.

Study Session General Info

Study Sessions are informal, slightly more intimate spaces and a chance to geek out. Some might be presentations, some might be workshops; each will open out the ideas and themes in the Episode, led by people who’ve been considering them for ages. This one is about the interconnectedness of the poetics of trans experience and a transitory multi-ethics.

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