Advances in LGBTQ rights in the recent past—marriage equality, the
repeal of Don't Ask, Don't Tell, and the expansion of hate crimes
legislation—have been accompanied by a rise in attacks against
trans, queer and/or gender-nonconforming people of color. In
Atmospheres of Violence, theorist and organizer Eric A.
Stanley shows how this seeming contradiction reveals the central role
of racialized and gendered violence in the United States. Rather than
suggesting that such violence is evidence of individual phobias,
Stanley shows how it is a structuring antagonism in our social world.
Drawing on an archive of suicide notes, AIDS activist histories,
surveillance tapes, and prison interviews, they offer a theory of
anti-trans/queer violence in which inclusion and recognition are
forms of harm rather than remedies to it. In calling for trans/queer
organizing and worldmaking beyond these forms, Stanley points to
abolitionist ways of life that might offer livable futures.
