Trans: Gender and Race in an Age of Unsettled Identities

Description

How the transgender experience opens up new possibilities for thinking about gender and race In the summer of 2015, shortly after Caitlyn Jenner came out as transgender, the NAACP official and political activist Rachel Dolezal was "outed" by her parents as white, touching off a heated debate in the media about the fluidity of gender and race. If

Rogers Brubaker is professor of sociology and UCLA Foundation Chair at the University of California, Los Angeles.

"Pacy and stimulating."---Marina Benjamin, New Statesman "The value in [Trans] is not in readjudicating old internet battles, but in laying out current conflicts of identity in a public, accessible way."---Emma Green, The Atlantic "Lucid, sophisticated, and judicious,Transis an important and timely exploration of the increasingly uncertain and unsettled boundaries of identity."---Glenn Altschuler, Florida Courier "While the first part of Trans compares Dolezal and Jenner, the second leverages the concept of transgender to examine transracial differences. Ultimately, Brubaker would like us to recognize transracial identities in the same way we accept transgender ones. In his analysis, transracial identities generate uneasy resonances with not only the dark histories of racial passing, but also the contemporary realities of racial oppression. Still, he prods us to reflect on the new kinds of racial identities being created through interracial relations, multiracial movements and generational change. While the mainstream recognizes transgender, it remains wary of transracial. The controversy over trans identities is far from settled." * Macleans * "Brubaker maintains that we are living in 'an age of unsettled identities.' Of that, he convinces me. This book is necessary reading for anyone interested in the categories of identity and how they are being invoked or subverted."---Leonard Curry, Christian Century "This short book packs a wallop. . . . [Brubaker] offers up a much-needed, fresh perspective."---Arlene Stein, Public Books "[A] clear-eyed, eye-opening book to see ways in which transracialism may and may not be considered as legitimate as transgenderism in the modern push for fluidity of identity categories."---A. Loudermilk, PopMatters ""Brubaker . . . one of our finest analysts of the politics of difference, provides a clear and concise guide for the perplexed. He carefully lays out a taxonomy of both older and emerging classifications of 'trans,' ordering both the many meanings of transgender and the less well known and more contested ideas about transracial. . . . What is clear from this excellent book is that the cultural logic of autonomy/choice that is working itself out in our age of unsettled identities is not of itself self-limiting. Wherever it takes us as a society, it seems, we will be forced to go.""---Joseph E. Davis, Society "Important reading for any psychologist interested in how people construe and label their own and others' identities, especially those having to do with gender and race."---Marianne LaFrance, PsycCritiques "Provocative. . . . [This book] offers a (new) theory of race likely to generate serious, heated discussions."---Ivan Szelelnyi, Contexts "A rousing intellectual incitement and a splendid piece to think with."---Joss Greene, British Journal of Sociology