Issue 34: Trans-
Ash Jayamohan (Editor-in-Chief) & Claudia Sterbini (Deputy Editor)
Trans- is powerful: attaching itself to concepts, it challenges supposedly settled knowledge about the world we live in. In FORUM’s 34th issue, this destabilisation becomes central. We draw attention to the importance the prefix ‘trans-’ has acquired in recent decades as an index of movement, crossing, and shifting – and we are interested in your approaches to all that trans- has to offer, as both description and method: transnationality, translation, transdisciplinary, transgender…
Trans- constructs new epistemic trajectories. Translation Studies troubles canons, transdisciplinary fields expand our classrooms, and transnational narratives become powerful tools in questioning naturalised national confines. In this new space of trans-, paradoxical themes coexist in moments of ‘magical realism’, in the words of Marisa De Andrade.
Our intellectual promiscuity catches up to the art we study: the ‘scholarly’ fables of Jorge Luis Borges’ Labyrinths (1962); the mixed materials of Wangechi Mutu’s artworks; the musical wanderings of musicians such as Rina Sawayama; the tumults of expatriation as ranging from the epic sprawl of the Odyssey to the hard-won joys of Erasmus in Gaza (2021).
Finally, of course, trans- is best known in its coupling with and troubling of gender. Trans criticism such as C. Riley Snorton’s Black on Both Sides (2017) has drawn attention to the complex, racialised logics of trans exclusion, while trans liberation’s social possibilities shimmer through the photography of Juliana Huxtable and Samuel R. Delaney’s Triton (1976).
We find that art and culture, in all their forms, expand and enhance our understanding of trans-.
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Many, many thanks to the following people for their excellent work in reviewing and editing this issue:
Elizabeth Blakemore, Chun Sui 'Christopher' Chan, Emma Dussouchaud-Esclamadon, Maxime Geervliet, Elisabeth Goemans, Sharon Hsieh, Alexandra Huang, Neelofer Korotana, Matthew Lear, Kai Lim, Alisha Palmer, Moss Pepe, Shivani Pillai, Isabel Schueler, Hannah Trifunovic, and Lara Virrey.
Thanks as well to the rest of our PGR colleagues and the LLC Postgraduate Research Office.
