Atmospheres of violence : structuring antagonism and the trans/queer ungovernable
(Book)

Includes bibliographical references (pages 125-175) and index.

"Atmospheres of Violence is a study of the forms of violence levied against trans/queer and gender nonconforming people in the United States. While the recent past, roughly from the Stonewall uprisings of 1969 to the present, is usually narrated as a time of LGBT equality, with the repeal of Don't Ask Don't Tell, the expansion of hate crimes legislation, and marriage equality, during this same period there has been an escalation in murders of trans women, particularly those who are Black and Brown. It is within this contradiction, which Eric A. Stanley argues is a structuring antagonism, that Atmospheres of Violence dwells. Rather than suggesting that such violence is evidence of individual phobias, Stanley asserts that the consistency of such harms points to a much larger structure of our social world. Atmospheres of Violence offers a theory of anti-trans/queer violence that works to unsettle the individual actor and offers an analysis, built through a motley archive of suicide notes, AIDS activist histories, surveillance tapes, prison interviews, and other ephemera of attack, that situates these forms of violence as central to, and not an aberration from, liberal democracy"--,Provided by publisher.