Messing up (in) the field: Finding queer-trans ecologies in geographical fieldwork

This chapter identifies and articulates the significance of a queer-trans ecological framework for critical geographies, asking how queer-trans readings of bodily plasticity, indeterminacy, and change can help to reconceptualize the social as an extended field that refuses entrenched divisions of nature from culture. Through an exchange of letters between two queer-trans geographers at different stages of their careers, the epistolary draws on two evolving geographical practices that have made a niche for critical, creative, and collaborative work at the sometimes-uneasy meeting point of environmental and social sciences. Doing fieldwork while queer and trans can be difficult, vulnerable, and uncertain work. Together, we consider the processes through which we came to understand queer-transness as integral to the critical geographical projects we were developing. Placing fieldwork alongside examples of visual and performative practice, the chapter reflects on the significance and future direction of queer-trans ecologies in critical geographical enquiry.