The TransAlien Manifesto: Future Love(s), Sex Tech, and My Efforts to Re-member Your Embrace
Feminist Studies grad student Zia Puig's essay was published in the November 2019 issue of Transgender Studies Quarterly, co-edited by UCSC assistant professor micha cardenas.
Abstract
This is not an article. If anything, these are “trans futurist spiritual science visions”: radically vulnerable interventions that aim to disrupt naturalized forms of publishable knowledge while centering the needs, fantasies, and longings of disabled queer/trans folks in practices of future-making. These lines transcend the limits of academic knowledge. They are an act of resistance against the logics of subjectivity, relationality, fulfillment, and temporality that permeate current and envisioned notions of love(s). Here, a game for us to play: a theoretical-performative experiment to envision future notions of relationality—while shifting the hypernormative and cis hetero-romantic logics behind contemporary understandings of what sex robots should do and/or be. This is an exploration of the challenges/potentialities of relationships “AmongWithToThrough” humans and nonhuman organic, virtual, and/or synthetic beings. For you—disjointed knowledge: I am jamming on the paper, and there is a soundtrack for each section. I spin the page, and invite you to read with(in) the music. Endnotes are important: engage with them. I do not offer settled conclusions. Above all, this is una ofrenda a corazón abierto written in pain (chronic pain) or maybe an invitation for you to hold my hand. Honor your bodymindspirit: read in any order and think whatever you want when you finish. Thank you very much for your time. All the love and light . . .
Read Zia's full piece here.