Mick Hartley

From the University of Chicago Press – Theses on the Future History of Trans People: On Trans Messianism.

In this article, drawing on Walter Benjamin’s “Theses on the Philosophy of History,” in particular the set of theses Benjamin discarded as he edited, I argue that trans embodiment constitutes a form of living in a messianic moment of simultaneous past, present, and future. What we trans people have been, are, and will be opens a horizon of potentiality for embodiment against emerging forms of anti-trans animosity.

Well….we knew that trans people were special, but “living in a messianic moment of simultaneous past, present, and future”? Wow. That special? Each and every one of them a magic cult figure. And we thought they were just sad men with a porn fetish.

It’s been going for a while. it seems, this trans messianic stuff. A quick Google search revealed this, from 2018:

This essay examines how two trans public figures, Lou Sullivan and Jennifer Finney Boylan, try to realize the need for transgender legibility through messianic rhetoric. Messianism is a site of contention in queer theory, between advocates for either antirelational queer theory or queer utopianism. This essay sees messianic rhetoric as a strategy found in the public speech and writing of Sullivan and Boylan, each of whom instrumentalize it to achieve legibility. Such rhetoric works to the political end of broader transgender acceptance. However, it also relies upon a flattening of trans life into a monolith. Messianic rhetoric legitimates a singular narrative of “how to be trans” through excluding other possibilities. Public speech that rejects this universalizing messianic impulse is possible. The zine “Fucking Trans Women” represents such a possibility, focusing attention on experience and pleasure over narrative linearity, thus providing one path forward for trans public speech.

The author:

Siobhan Kelly is a doctoral candidate in Religion, Gender, and Culture at Harvard University. Their work draws from queer theory, transgender studies, and critical theory to study religious rhetoric in identity construction and embodiment. Siobhan received a B.A. in Religion from Tufts University and an M.T.S. from Harvard Divinity School.

There’s a whole other world out there, in campuses across the US.