Messy trans and queer storytelling

In my dissertation, “Messy Trans and Queer Storytelling: (Un)Doing Indian Exceptionalism,” I show how specific Indian trans and queer narratives and performances across different platforms reflect messy affiliations with liberal and anti-caste ideologies. I attend to messiness as an optic that explains alliances between disparate groups as well as incongruencies in identity formations. I also approach messiness as a practice that can complicate the “subjectless critique” in queer studies and trans studies and recognize how subjects take up or resist identity markers. I propose that these allied fields must attend to the understanding of region as a messy coming together of desire and politics. The word, “mess” implies dirt that can be associated with the logic of purity and pollution upheld by the caste system. The theory of messiness enables collaborative practices even as it shows how liberal upper caste storytellers become flagbearers of an exceptionally inclusive India. Paying attention to messiness as a practice of storytelling can help counter stories that center majoritarianism in LGBT activism. Simultaneously, since messiness depends on identity affiliations, it can help scholars in queer theory and trans theory be more open to embracing identity politics that check the brutalization of religious, ethnic and gender minorities.