A trans pedagogy of refusal: interrogating cisgenderism, the limits of antinormativity and trans necropolitics

Abstract

In this paper, we reflect on the ethico-political and epistemological implications of a critical trans pedagogy that takes as its focus the generative stance of refusal. Our purpose is to identify and explain the significance of key axiomatic principles at the heart of our conception of such a pedagogical endeavour, which entails an interrogative stance vis-à-vis cisgenderism, antinormativity and trans necropolitics. These principles define a governing logics and rationality for enacting a trans pedagogy of refusal in its potential to create curricular spaces of recognition and intelligibility in educational institutions that are committed to addressing the erasure of trans and non-binary people. They also illuminate a necessary pedagogical commitment to centring desubjugated and submerged knowledges of transness and the blackness of transness that defy the limits of antinormativity and necropolitics.