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Description
In this thesis, I bring Afropessimist/Black studies theories of Blackness and social death into conversation with Black feminist, decolonial, and trans studies scholars to think about the experiences of racialized gender violence (anti-Black violence) for Black trans women. To do so, I draw on the popular television series Pose as an example and I analyze the show’s messages and the cast accounts of the show in order to examine humanization as a strategy to resist oppression for Black trans women. I explore the racialized and gendered underpinning of the human through legacies of slavery/colonization, politics of trans visibility, and key narratives in Pose in order to analyze how Pose is working to humanize Black trans women as well as the radical and transformative possibilities than can emerge when thinking about Blackness and transness together while centering Black social life. I provide an urgent critique of Kate Manne’s Down Girl: The Logic of Misogyny, situating her framework of misogyny within an essential history of racialized gender and colonialism. I argue that Manne’s work cannot adequately capture the experiences of racialized gender violence, specifically for Black trans women and/or transfeminine folks because her critiques of humanism rely on her framework of misogyny that describes the experiences of white women, so her account of misogyny is missing key pieces that consider how misogyny might look different for Black trans women. I argue that Manne’s account of misogyny with numerous thinkers in Black and trans studies together provides a nuanced way of understanding of the use of humanization the Pose actors suggest. However, through refusal of normativity and oppressive logics that harm trans people, I see life-making happening in the show through the messages of love, kinship, joy, etc. and I argue that by focusing on life and living, rather than humanization, that new ways to be and pathways to liberation can immerge.
