Neda Genova in Conversation with Mijke van der Drift: A Conversation on Transfeminism as Anti-Colonial Politics

Abstract

For this piece we were provoked by an anti-trans moment that took place during the School of Politics and Critique in September 2020. Instead of engaging in a mere “rebuttal” of anti-trans discourse and its reductive, exclusionary claims, with this text we aim to open up a space of exchange and learning that takes the form of a feminist conversation. We discuss the historical and political entrenchment of colonial, capitalist and anti-trans projects to emphasise why a solid trans politics will always hold an anti-colonial agenda to the fore. Critically appraising some unfortunate intellectual and political impasses—as the capturing of feminist politics in schemata of biological determinism or the complicity of white bourgeois feminism in anti-Blackness and colonial exploitation—we shed light on the emancipatory potential of radical transfeminism. The conversation draws on lessons from the writings and practice of many engaged in formulating the stakes of black feminist, anti-colonial and trans politics of solidarity, thus actualizing the insight that we never think or act in isolation from one another. 

Author(s): Neda Genova and Mijke van der Drift

Title (English): Neda Genova in Conversation with Mijke van der Drift: A Conversation on Transfeminism as Anti-Colonial Politics

Journal Reference: Identities: Journal for Politics, Gender and Culture, Vol. 17, No. 2-3 (Winter 2020)

Publisher: Institute of Social Sciences and Humanities - Skopje

Page Range: 102-108

Page Count: 7

Citation (English): Neda Genova and Mijke van der Drift, “Neda Genova in Conversation with Mijke van der Drift: A Conversation on Transfeminism as Anti-Colonial Politics,” Identities: Journal for Politics, Gender and Culture, Vol. 17, No. 2-3 (Winter 2020): 102-108.

Author Biographies

Mijke van der Drift, Royal College of Art/University of Cambridge 

Philosopher and educator Mijke van der Drift works on ethics as a focal point in a multi-disciplinary research about social transformation. Van der Drift is tutor at the Royal College of Art, London and the Royal Academy of Art, the Hague. They are a Research Associate at the University of Cambridge in 2020-21, as part of the Revolutionary Papers project, in collaboration with the London School of Economics and the University of the Western Cape. In addition, van der Drift is currently working on their book Non normative Ethics: The Dynamics of Trans Formation. They obtained a Ph.D. from Goldsmiths, University of London. Their current project focuses on multilogical ethics and generosity, and is provisionally titled The Logic of Loss in Bonding. The book chapter “Radical Transfeminism: Trans as Anti-Static Ethics Escaping Neoliberal Encapsulation” co-written with Nat Raha is recently published in New Feminist Studies: Twenty-first-century Critical Interventions, ed. Jennifer Cooke, with Cambridge University Press.

Neda Genova, London Bank University/Goldsmiths

Neda Genova teaches at Goldsmiths University of London and London South Bank University and holds a Ph.D. in Cultural Studies from Goldsmiths. Her research is situated at the intersection of post-communist studies and media and cultural theory. She is interested in feminist and postcolonial theory, the politics of humour and laughter and post-communist digital culture. She is a member of the editorial collective of the Bulgarian-language activist-academic magazine dVERSIA (dВЕРСИЯ)