CGF Seminar - Trans bodies, affects and vulnerability (Double seminar)

Luca Tainio, University of Tampere and Wibke Straube, Center for Gender Studies, Karlstad 

University 

Luca Tainio, Gender Studies, University of Tampere 

Pink-black block activism, vulnerability and trans politics 

Abstract: My paper addresses notions of radical vulnerability, emotions and experiences within pink-black blocks as well as wider grassroot activism. I am asking what does activism feel like, what inspires action and how can we use notions such as love, rage and vulnerability in our work as activists but also as scholars. I am approaching my material within the theoretical frame of trans studies, and discussing my questions through and with interviewees from different anarchofeminist projects and collectives. The seminar will be based on a circulated text. Please contact me if you wish to attend and receive the text: tainio.luca.m@student.uta.fi 

Bio: Luca Tainio (M.Soc.Sci) is a PhD student from the University of Tampere. His master´s thesis focused on the discourses on transgender in Finnish medical journals, and currently he is working on his PhD on trans-anarchism and activism. Locating himself on the field of transgender studies, Luca is interested in questions of emotions, bodies, resistance and solidarity, and combining activism and academic work. 

Wibke Straube, Senior Lecturer, Centre for Gender Studies, Karlstad University 

Toxic matter. Anthropocentric affects and trans bodies in art and film 

Abstract: Following Malin Ah-King and Eva Hayward’s problematisation of the “politics of purity” I will investigate in this talk discourses on toxicity, the history of transgender bodies as ‘impure’ and the linkages between ecological affects and ethics of response-ability (Haraway) in the Anthropocene. By wondering how trans bodies in particular will be and are affected by the environmental crisis and climate change I trace how the intersection of ecology and trans bodies is interrogated in art and film. 

Bio: Wibke Straube, PhD, works as Senior Lecturer at the Centre for Gender Studies (CGF), Karlstad University. They completed their dissertation in 2014 entitled Trans Cinema and its Exit Scapes. A Transfeminist Reading of Utopian Sensibility and Gender Dissidence in Contemporary Film (2014). Wibke’s work is located the areas of transgender studies and feminist cultural studies with a focus on new feminist materialism, ecocriticism and affect theory.