#1365: Learning Autotheoretical Trans Body: Transforming What Was to What Is and Must Be Through Recreational Bodybuilding

My work explores trans* body politics capturing its complexities and subjectivities, locating our bodies as sites of inquiry. I draw majorly on Lugones’s coloniality of gender to frame the colonial imposition upon our bodies, dictating how our bodies can(not) be, in which spaces we can(not) occupy. We’re often deemed deviant and pathological because we’re such a novelty in society when in fact we have existed for centuries, erased through the colonial imposition. I study my body through its praxis of recreational fitness and bodybuilding as a method of resistance and advocacy for the trans* body. My modes of inquiry are portraiture and autotheory, approaches that bridge arts, science, and reflexivity, offering potent analyses of intersectionality toward the work of social justice and change. Wherein, I delineate the nuances of the trans* body politics, positioning this sculpting and moving as a learning of the self and the other.