Trans Necropolitics – Gender Identity Law In Argentina

DE MAURO MARTIN ADRÍAN

Rio de Janeiro

Congreso; Queering Paradigms 4; 2012

UNIVERSIDADE FEDERAL DO RIO DE JANEIRO

Last May 9, 2012, the Argentinian Senate turned into a law what was a long colective process driven by trans activism, the so called Gender Identity Acknowledgemente Law. The law, sanctioned a few days after the parliamentary sessions and debates, and enacted the 4th of July, signified a great social advance in the broadening of the Trans community’s (Tranvestite, Transexual, Transgender) civil rights. In addition to the enthusiasm from a variety of local sectors, the Gender Identity Law, number 26.743 (henceforth referred to as GIL), meant a large step forward at an international level in the sexual and civil rights field, and specifically in the Trans politics subject. From this standpoint, the great achievements of the GIL are referred both to the bodies and subjectivities of Trans diversity as well as to a transformation within the Argentinian State. As Emiliano Litardo properly points out, the sanctioned law also implies “a transformation for the State in its relation with a way of administrating, from now on, the political-legal acknowledgement of masculine and feminine Trans identities and corporalities” (2012:1). The aforementioned approval of the GIL meant, for a countless number of Trans people, a highly rewarding fact in terms of personal victory. The recognition of self-perceived identity and of the different modalities of gender expression, as well as the acces to the integral medical system, are, undoubtedly, a unique historical opportunity worth of celebration . Nontheless, what was concerned in the approval of the GIL implied not only an advance at a personal and global level in legal terms, but also a set of representations, desires and social pledges over Trans population and life. Theoretically, if we adjust to the scope of the GIL’S achievements and its respective social and parliamentary debates, we can state that a concrete life, a Trans life, does not qualify as a living life. And this happens exactly because the density of life and death of that which constitutes what it is Trans seems to depreciate at a constant rhythm, either as unwanted lives or anonymous and tragic deaths, medical cases, martyrs for the cause or forced sexual work. Why are some lives highly protected and guarded and others, paradoxically, abandoned, rejected and violenced?. Life and death as matters of political administration are enrolled in relations of power, antangonisms and domination, which, consecuently, stablish hierarchical and differential distributions over those lives which are protected and those which are disdained. The driving agents of the GIL themselves are inscribed within this economy of power, since they would “throw the trans corpses over the table” during social and parliamentary debates in order to close arguments, hence presenting Trans people’s lives and deaths as hierachically depreciated as victims, martyrs or ultra-vulnerated lives. The following lines are centered in a critical consideration over the specific ways of presenting and understanding a Trans life, both in the variety of parliamentary debates regarding the GIL as in the social disputes withing Trans activism itself. From a biopolitical approach over gender identity, we plan to rethink the social conditions that sustain life, and consecuently, the interpretative frames of death. To this end, we will consider two central aspects and agents: the juridical-legal frame (Recent Past: “Juridical Life”) and Trans activisms (Necropower or On the Regulation of Affections). Throught this we will be able to conclude some hints that can be glimpsed in the biopolitical threshold that is contemporary to the GIL’s approval.