An IASH Work-in-Progress seminar, delivered by Dr Evelyn Whorrall-Campbell (Postdoctoral Fellow, 2024-25)
Radical Deviance’s commitment to the bit
Radical Deviance, subtitle A Journal of Transgendered Politics, was first published in 1996, running for only four years until collapsing just before the decade’s close. Produced by the Gender & Sexuality Alliance (G&SA), originally based out of Middlesborough, Radical Deviance sought to model a new TS/TG politics to meet the start of the coming century, generating political theories of transition within and against those already defined under Feminism, Lesbian & Gay Studies, Postmodernism and Queer Theory.
This work-in-progress seminar will share research into Radical Deviance, situating it as a central, although now neglected, publication within British and international trans theorising in the 1990s. Beyond historicising Radical Deviance, however, this seminar will also engage with its theoretical propositions, to argue for its utility for trans political thought. In demonstrating that Radical Deviance negotiates various commitments to change––material, metaphysical, identarian, collective, legal, economic, political––I argue that the publication formalises commitment as a process of ‘committing to the bit.’ Instead of normative narratives of gender transition that present the transitioning subject’s motivation as ‘beyond all doubt,’ ‘commitment to the bit’ stages a theory of change effected through the joke’s ironic distance despite one’s lack of total faith.
Please join in-person, or click the link below to join the webinar:
https://ed-ac-uk.zoom.us/j/83015772676
Passcode: b1QpaAD7