Intellectual traditions emerging from populations that have always been the constitutive other in the development of the properly free citizen - indigenous people, populations labeled physically or mentally unfit, black people, migrants, women, prisoners - have always produced robust critiques of the what Dylan Rodriguez calls "white bourgeois freedom."
Dean SpadeI argue that legal equality has failed resistance movements aimed at transforming material conditions of violence, and that trans activists should take a decidedly different approach.
Dean SpadeInstead of focusing on what the law says about trans people, which is really what the law is saying about itself as a protector of trans people, we should be focused on what systems of law and administration do to trans people and our interventions should aim to dismantle harmful, violent systems such as criminal punishment and immigration enforcement.
Dean SpadeTrans rights formation that mimics the models and strategies of the lesbian and gay rights framework is growing, and there are many significant strategy disagreements between those building that work and those doing racial and economic justice centered trans work.
Dean Spade"Oppression" or "systems of oppression" operate as a shorthand terms in much writing and speaking so that we do not have to list all these systems of meaning and control each time (i.e. racism, ableism, xenophobia, etc.). I needed a term like that, but "oppression" implies a kind of top-down understanding of power that is at odds with the Foucaultian model I rely on in my work.
Dean SpadeI am interested in recent scholarly work examining the emergence of women's studies and ethnic studies departments and the development of the neoliberal university.
Dean SpadeI am thoughtful about introducing terms that tend to be in circulation primarily in academic circles. "Homonormativity" and "homonationalism" are by no means solely academic terms, and in fact circulate in important ways in many activist circles, but in general I find them to be terms that most people I meet are not familiar with.
Dean Spade