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chris-brighton.bsky.social
christopher griffin
@chris-brighton.bsky.social
240 followers 390 following 69 posts
early career researcher working in trans studies, decolonial studies, feminist epistemologies, radical politics, and neurodiversity studies. big fan of Wynter and Derrida. they/them.
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chris-brighton.bsky.social
In the first paragraph of their Translators' Preface, W&B say that in Clang 'a wholesale queering and transing of virile (homo)sexuality takes place, to the extent that we would struggle to know, in spite of the familiar, even stereotypical practices, what constitutes (a) sex and (a) sexuality'.
Screenshot of the first paragraph of the Translator's Preface to Clang, including the sentence quoted in my post.
November 17, 2025 at 1:42 AM
chris-brighton.bsky.social
To give an example of just one connection between Trans Studies and deconstruction, here are some thoughts about 🔔Clang🔔, the recent translation of Derrida's Glas by David Wills and Geoffrey Bennington (W&B). Why retranslate Glas today? What makes this a relevant text? Or a relevant #translation? 🧵
Photo of a very large Hello Kitty toy holding a paperback copy of Clang by Derrida. Hello Kitty has purple fur and is wearing flamingo sunglasses.
November 17, 2025 at 1:42 AM
chris-brighton.bsky.social
Panelists are invited to explore any aspect of the relationship between Trans Studies and deconstruction/Derrida Studies. Please send me an abstract of 350 words max by Friday 28 November, or email me before then to discuss. Suggested themes and topics (plus my email address) in this image:
This panel will explore the relationship between Trans Studies (broadly defined) and deconstruction/Derrida Studies. The aim is to allow scholars of any discipline to assess the salience of Derrida’s work for Trans Studies today; investigate the influence of Derrida in Trans Studies (and related fields) past and present; offer trans responses to Derridean deconstructions of sex-gender; share “transdeconstructive” readings and interpretations; and so on. Possible topics might include (but are by no means limited to): Trans embodiment: technicity, plasticity, drugs, etc. Trans-of-colour deconstructions of race and gender Hospitality, hostility, and the territorialisation of “woman” Deconstruction and poststructuralism in transfeminist theory Transing the boundary of the human: animals, beasts, monsters, etc. Decolonial and postcolonial deconstructions of sex-gender Drag and genderqueerness in Glas/Clang and beyond Transnational approaches to borders, sovereignty, etc. Phallogocentrism and cisnormativity in psychoanalysis Derrida’s gendered figures (hymen, khōra, etc.) Geschlecht: sexual difference(s) in Derrida’s reading of Heidegger The autoimmunity of anti-trans movements Please send an abstract of no more than 350 words to me, Christopher Griffin (chrisgriffinbrighton@gmail.com), by Friday 28 November. If you have any questions, or wish to discuss ideas in advance, please email me.
November 12, 2025 at 7:46 PM
chris-brighton.bsky.social
Call for panelists! Join me for a panel on ✨Trans Studies and Deconstruction✨ at the Derrida Today Conference (July 2026, Paris). More info in 🧵

#Derrida #TransStudies #AcademicSky #AcademicResearch #PhilSky #gendersky #signalboost #FeministSky #cfp #lit #socialtheory 🌈🎓 @derridatoday.bsky.social
Graphic calling for panelists for a Trans Studies panel at the 9th Derrida Today Conference, to be held at the École Normale Supérieure (Paris)​ on 13–17 July 2026. Includes a photo of Derrida wearing a pink and blue shirt-tie combo that uncannily foreshadows the colours of the Trans Pride flag.
November 12, 2025 at 7:46 PM
chris-brighton.bsky.social
Le Guin really lives up to her "anthropological" reputation here, providing extraordinary detail about the Kesh, a group of humans living in the distant future in the place we call Northern California.

#BookSky #UrsulaLeGuin #speclit #ScienceFiction #FantasyBookSky #illustration 🪐📚 🏺
Photo of a page of the book that includes an intricate drawing of a non-human animal skull. On this page, Le Guin provides the alphabet of the language spoken by the Kesh. One of Le Guin's famous maps. Photo of the back cover of Always Coming Home, with more of the painting and a short blurb.
November 3, 2025 at 5:36 PM
chris-brighton.bsky.social
Captivated by this 1988 edition of Ursula Le Guin's Always Coming Home. The artwork by Mike van Houten is beautiful, and the text features numerous illustrations, charts, maps, poems, and even music notation ⤵️

#BookSky #UrsulaLeGuin #speclit #ScienceFiction #FantasyBookSky #illustration 🪐📚 🏺
Photo of the cover of the 1988 edition of Ursula Le Guin's Always Coming Home. The artwork, a painting by Mike van Houten, shows a person standing outside a wood cabin and gazing upon a landscape of mountains and forests, with a small settlement nearby.
November 3, 2025 at 5:36 PM
chris-brighton.bsky.social
Looking forward to this! 🏳️‍⚧️📚

Thank you, @uminnpress.bsky.social, for publishing #TransPhilosophy ❤️‍🔥

🌈📚 🌈🎓 #AcademicSky #BookSky #PhilosophySky #TransStudies
A photograph of a book on an anime-print cushion. It's a copy of Beyond Personhood: An Essay in Trans Philosophy, by Talia Mae Bettcher, published by University of Minnesota Press in 2025. The book cover features large lettering in orange and white on a blue-purple background.
October 31, 2025 at 4:08 PM
chris-brighton.bsky.social
This is a great article by Alex Adamson for Philosophy and Global Affairs that bridges trans studies, intersex studies, and decolonial feminism.

#AcademicSky #AcademicResearch #TransStudies #IntersexStudies #DecolonialStudies #PhilSky #GenderSky #Wynter #Lugones #TransSky

doi.org/10.5840%2Fpg...
"Beyond the Coloniality of Gender: María Lugones, Sylvia Wynter, Decolonial Feminism, and Trans and Intersex Liberation," by Alex Adamson. Abstract: This article explores Sylvia Wynter’s analysis of gender as a category differentially applied across the global color line and María Lugones’ account of the coloniality of gender. While Wynter’s and Lugones’s work offer consequential insights for queer, trans, and intersex studies and activism, they have deliberately engaged these particular discourses and histories of struggle in limited ways. Wyn- ter analyzes the contradictions of Western feminists’ organizing against female genital cutting in Africa, but she does not link her conclusions to their ramifica- tions for activism against genital cutting on children deemed intersex. Lugones uses the existence of intersex people as a turning point in her critique of Aníbal Quijano when developing her concept of the coloniality of gender, but she does not go further to connect global intersex activism and decolonial feminist struggles. This article explores the work of Wynter and Lugones for their compatibility with trans and intersex studies and activism, and the places where their work can be furthered through insights from trans and intersex studies. It concludes that to move beyond the coloniality of gender requires trans and intersex liberation and that trans and intersex liberation must be understood in a broader decolonial feminist framework. Keywords: decolonial feminism, Sylvia Wynter, María Lugones, trans studies, intersex studies
October 29, 2025 at 10:28 PM
chris-brighton.bsky.social
Panelists are invited to explore any aspect of the relationship between Trans Studies and deconstruction/Derrida Studies. Please send me an abstract of 350 words max by Friday 14 November, or email me before then to discuss. Suggested themes and topics in this image:
This panel will explore the relationship between Trans Studies (broadly defined) and deconstruction/Derrida Studies. The aim is to allow scholars of any discipline to assess the salience of Derrida’s work for Trans Studies today; investigate the influence of Derrida in Trans Studies (and related fields) past and present; offer trans responses to Derridean deconstructions of sex-gender; share “transdeconstructive” readings and interpretations; and so on. Possible topics might include (but are by no means limited to): Trans embodiment: technicity, plasticity, drugs, etc. Trans-of-colour deconstructions of race and gender Hospitality, hostility, and the territorialisation of “woman” Deconstruction and poststructuralism in transfeminist theory Transing the boundary of the human: animals, beasts, monsters, etc. Decolonial and postcolonial deconstructions of sex-gender Drag and genderqueerness in Glas/Clang and beyond Transnational approaches to borders, sovereignty, etc. Phallogocentrism and cisnormativity in psychoanalysis Derrida’s gendered figures (hymen, khōra, etc.) Geschlecht: sexual difference(s) in Derrida’s reading of Heidegger The autoimmunity of anti-trans movements Please send an abstract of no more than 350 words to me, Christopher Griffin (chrisgriffinbrighton@gmail.com), by Friday 14 November. If you have any questions, or wish to discuss ideas in advance, please email me.
October 8, 2025 at 6:52 PM
chris-brighton.bsky.social
📢Call for panelists!📢 I'm organising a Trans Studies panel for the @derridatoday.bsky.social Conference in Paris next year. Details in this thread 🧵 Please disseminate to colleagues, students, or frenemies who might be interested!
Graphic calling for panelists for a Trans Studies panel at the 9th Derrida Today Conference, to be held at the École Normale Supérieure (Paris)​ on 13–17 July 2026. Includes a photo of Derrida wearing a pink and blue shirt-tie combo that uncannily foreshadows the colours of the Trans Pride flag.
October 8, 2025 at 6:52 PM
chris-brighton.bsky.social
Join us next week for a free online two-day conference on global 'anti-gender' politics, hosted by the University of Brighton, featuring keynote @reproutopia.bsky.social! ❤️‍🔥 Starts at 09:30 GMT on Thursday 11 September. Further info ⤵️
Page 1 of the schedule for an online conference called Global 'Anti-Gender' Politics: Nationalist, Populist and Feminist Convergences. Starts on Thursday 11 September, 2025. Page 2 of the schedule. The conference continues on Friday 12 September, 2025.
September 7, 2025 at 11:53 AM
chris-brighton.bsky.social
CfP coming soon for the 9th Derrida Today Conference, which will be at the École Normale Supérieure, Paris, during 13-17 July 2026! Keynotes: Isabelle Alfandary, Marc Crépon, David Farrell Krell, @elissa-marder.bsky.social
Screenshot of an X post by Derrida Today announcing the 9th Derrida Today Conference.
August 23, 2025 at 10:59 AM
chris-brighton.bsky.social
It's interesting that a follow-up post, that tags Elon Musk in order to complain about the "hateful conduct" flag, got a lot more views
August 21, 2025 at 5:54 PM
chris-brighton.bsky.social
The transphobes on X who are calling me "intellectually lazy" admit that they haven't even read my article... 🧐
Screenshot of a post on X which criticises me for exploring the connections between anti-trans discourse and coloniality.
August 21, 2025 at 5:47 PM
chris-brighton.bsky.social
For a long time, SF was a white supremacist fantasy, as well as a male fantasy. The trope of enslaved robots and aliens allowed white readers to avoid their complicity and imagine a post-racial future in which their domination is untarnished by guilt. De Witt Douglas Kilgore:
Quotation from De Witt Douglas Kilgore's book Astrofuturism: Science, Race, and Visions of Utopia in Space. "Despite the dissenting work of a handful of black writers, science fiction often assumes that the problem of racism will be solved in the future by the disappearance of race. While intended to improve on the contemporary politics of race, this assumption disregards the historical and cultural specificity of people of color. That specificity, coded as "difference," represents the trouble and danger from which racism is thought to emerge. Eliminate difference and the problem of racism evaporates. Within this logic, the problem of racism can be erased if its victims forgive its perpetrators and if we all forget the history of racialization and the richness of cultural variation. The problem with this solution is that it enshrines white masculinity, unmarked or troubled by culture, race, and gender, as the norm to which all "difference" must assimilate. In this vision, anyone who goes up to space in ships is, to echo Donna Haraway in another context, "necessarily a white boy in moral state, no matter what accidents of biology or social gender and race might have pertained prior" to the great adventure."
January 9, 2025 at 11:12 PM
chris-brighton.bsky.social
CfP: Thinking with Wendy Brown, Uni of Brighton, March-April 2025. With keynotes Wendy Brown, Paul Gilroy, Robyn Marasco, Debaditya Bhattacharya, and Eva von Redecker. Deadline for abstracts: 15 December!
Details of a conference on the work of Wendy Brown, to be held at the University of Brighton in March-April 2025. Submissions of abstracts (300 words) are invited; the deadline is 15 December 2024.
December 12, 2024 at 1:16 PM