Transing the Episteme of Man: For an Anticolonial Postdisciplinarity

This presentation responds to the call for a postdisciplinary trans studies by considering the implications of Sylvia Wynter's work on the coloniality of academic disciplines. Wynter argues that the disciplinary structures of the University sustain coloniality by separating the natural sciences from the humanities and social sciences. This upholds the "biocentrism" of the current order: the belief that the truth of human nature is founded on biological empirical facts. Transphobic claims that sex is binary and immutable are also biocentric. Against biocentrism, Wynter argues that the sociocultural dimension of human existence is just as fundamental as the biological, because we invent ourselves by telling stories that produce truth systems. Trans studies can challenge biocentrism by working across disciplines to study these narratives and their production of "truth." But this will only succeed in unsettling coloniality and transphobia if trans studies can escape the trap of positing a new universal truth.