these are just some ultra-scattered notes as i work to further a critical theory of trans literature

what does the emergence of secular stagnation, or what robert brenner calls “the long downturn”, have to do with the trans literary renaissance of the late 20th and early 21st century? can this period of troubling and even breaking with trans memoir be called a renaissance?

what is the relation between capitalist markets, statecraft, and the emergence of he trans memoir as a form?

i want to know more about how and why trans people and the trans feminized were made into surplus populations and what this implies for their resulting literary output. questions arise about the material conditions necessary for writing and publishing, the form and content of that work, etc

gill-peterson’s (controversial) work on “transfeminization”, for example, sheds new light on the way trans people, and those viewed as trans by the state, are eliminated from eligibility for employment in the legal workforce, thus engendering the long relationship between trans people and sex work

important new directions in work by christopher chitty (sexual hegemony) and gill-peterson (transmisogyny) bring the question of surplus populations and postmodern sexual politics to bear on contemporary trans life, and, therefore, to the theorization of recent developments in “trans literature”

the most important concept of the endnotes piece, and central to their enterprise, is that of the development of “surplus populations” or proletarianized people who, due to contradictions in the production process, increasingly lack access to the vaporization of their labor (ie jobs/the wage)

the group is focused on what new readings of marx might contribute to the renewal of the marxist literary project. for the first meeting we read endnotes article “crisis in the class relations”, raymond williams on form, and an intro to a recent anthology of 21st century marxist literature theory

i personally consider english sexologist havelock ellis’s book, ‘eonism’, as essentially having been cowritten by trans people, esp trans femmes, because so much of it involves case studies featuring firsthand accounts