MA Defence: Nelson Graves, Philosophy

Queer Becomings: Deleuze and Guattari's Critique of Static Identity Categories

Nelson Graves

Supervisor: Emilia Angelova

ABSTRACT: In this paper I will argue that trans exclusionary action from cis lesbian, gay, and bisexual (LGB) political pundits is generated and sustained by a need for recognition by the capturing apparatus of the state, thereby conserving heterosexual familial structures and enforcing a need to identify deviant behavior. Anti-trans activists—including those who are often seen as part of the queer community—increasingly find efforts to affirm trans individuals to be a threat to static notions of gender and identity, which, as these anti-trans advocates claim, undermine efforts for integration of cis LGB individuals into the capitalist order. What I take to be at stake in the struggle for trans liberation is less a political issue than a metaphysical one, e.g., how making sexual identities visible to the state cuts off various possibilities of becoming. This MRP is not meant to prescribe solutions to the problem of the lack of allyship from cis gay men and cis lesbians, but rather direct to a problem that stems from static identity categories.