As has been argued by many, the gender binary (man/woman) is both a product of and a motor for colonialism. Heterosexuality as the standard is pictured similarly. While for some reclaiming pre-colonial gender systems and/or sexualities is an important tool for decolonization, for others, not returning to a mythic past but toward a necessary present is their aim. With this in mind, western cinema has long been a pedagogical tool that not only teaches gender normativity but also colonial common sense (both in the “west” but around the world). How then to trans/queer people figure into the worlds of colonialism and nationalism is our central question in this unit.

Reading/ Watching/ Engagement

Jaha Film Festival: Film Spotlight: Son (Iran) (TIMECODE: 1:17 - 1:52)
“The Image of Common Sense” from Kara Keeling’s The Witch’s Flight: The Cinematic, The Black Femme, and the Image of Common Sense (2007)
Dora Silvana Santana, Mais Viva!: Reassembling Transness, Blackness, and Feminism
“Always in Translation: Trans Cinema Across Languages” (2016) by Helen Hok-Sze Leung in TSQ vol. 3, nos. 3-4

Discussion

After watching Saman Hosseinpuor’s film “Son” what themes circled through the film?

This film is a lot about looking. How is the gaze used to build tension in the film?
Son also is a situational film. Landscape and architecture are vital to the film’s narrative. How does “place” function in the film? How does the concept of Mais Viva offer a professional space of self-fashioning for Black trans women in Brazil?

What is “common sense” and how is it produced and maintained in visual culture?

The destruction of indigenous languages continues to be a powerful tool in the project of colonial enclosure. How then might a trans reading of language help get us beyond the binary of colonial/ postcolonial speech, which still retains an anti-colonial ethos?

What is lost and what might be gained in the practice of translation?

2. Sexuality, Gender, and the Colonial Encounter

Reading/ Watching/ Engagement

Discussion