Atmospheres of Violence: Structuring Antagonism and the Trans/Queer Ungovernable

by Eric A. Stanley

Advances in LGBTQ rights in the recent past—marriage equality, the repeal of Don't Ask, Don't Tell, and the expansion of hate crimes legislation—have been accompanied by a rise in attacks against trans, queer and/or gender-nonconforming people of color. In Atmospheres of Violence , theorist and organizer Eric A. Stanley shows how this seeming contradiction reveals the central role of racialized and gendered violence in the United States. Rather than suggesting that such violence is evidence of individual phobias, Stanley shows how it is a structuring antagonism in our social world. Drawing on an archive of suicide notes, AIDS activist histories, surveillance tapes, and prison interviews, they offer a theory of anti-trans/queer violence in which inclusion and recognition are forms of harm rather than remedies to it. In calling for trans/queer organizing and worldmaking beyond these forms, Stanley points to abolitionist ways of life that might offer livable futures.

Genres: Queer, Nonfiction, Theory, Politics, Gender, LGBT, Transgender

200 pages, Paperback

First published September 1, 2021

About the author

Eric A. Stanley works at the intersections of radical trans/queer politics, theories of state violence, and visual culture. Eric is currently finishing a PhD in the History of Consciousness department at the University of California, Santa Cruz and continues to organize with Gay Shame. Along with Chris Vargas, Eric is also a co-director of Homotopia (2006) and Criminal Queers (2011).Eric's other writing can be found in the journal Social Text as well as many anthologies.

Reviews

[Luca Suede · Rating 3 out of 5]

CW: suicide, anti-trans violence, murder, rape and sexual assault, police violence, mass shootings, queer-bashing, anti-blackness.

This one is really tricky for me. I’ll start by saying I’d give it 3.5 stars if I could. 100% of the proceeds go to LGBT books behind bars.

Stanley does some absolutely brilliant theoretical scaffolding around anti-blackness and transphobia in this work. But this book is about violence against queer and trans people and often retells the stories of their deaths and assaults. While the concepts are incredibly sharp and much needed, this book would be impossible to read for so many people who it is about. Unnecessarily dense and academic. I understand not everything needs to be accessible, but when a book is written about a group of people, this specific group of people, I believe they should be able to easily read it.

Patricia Hill Collins encourages us as scholar-organizers to write and speak in “multiple registers.” This work is definitely only in the academic incredibly high-literacy register. I love Stanley’s work and think there is a much needed weaving together of political analysis in this book, I just wouldn’t dare recommend it to many people who have lived what this book theorizes around.

[Sarah Cavar · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is a brief, magnificent interrogation of violence advanced under the guise of –– or, more accurately, in explicit service of –– what is valorized as "democracy." Stanley's coverage of psychoanalytic, Afropessimist, Black trans feminist, Fanonian, and other theoretical areas is thorough and incredibly readable. The book's case studies, while brutal to indirectly witness, were well-chosen and respectfully and self-reflexively recrafted. This book is vital anarchist/abolitionist reading both for the ongoing histories it recounts and for the possibilities it writes into existence.

[apollo]

dnf for now....this is a super important book & I really want to read it at some point, but it is incredibly hard to read because of all of the very detailed descriptions of trans & queer people dying horrifically violent deaths. and as a trans person who is all too aware of that reality....it’s a lot

[Ellie · Rating 5 out of 5]

beautifully written and crucial to learn about!

[Alexandra · Rating 1 out of 5]

Is this the worst book I've ever read?

[Char Merrick · Rating 5 out of 5]

read w/ care ❤️‍🩹

[warren · Rating 5 out of 5]

4.5. one of this book's central arguments is that racialized anti-queer/trans violence is foundational to the modern order of things (settler-colonial US democracy), and not an aberration or some old thing. it also argues that systemic "inclusion" isn't a reduction of violence, but is (and has been historically) a continuation or heightening of violence. these points are very important to any queer/trans organizing today and are well argued.

along the way, Eric Stanley theorizes and reframes interpersonal anti-queer/trans violence, blood donations, the origin of AIDS, potential liberatory trans aesthetics, suicide, the legacies of Sylvia Rivera and Marsha P Johnson, solitary confinement, and much more. these individual subsections made vital interventions that were often easier for me to grasp on their own than the overarching theoretical arguments that i struggle with.

its true that this book spends a great deal of time sitting with devastating and detailed scenes of brutal anti-queer/trans violence. the text is very distressing to read at times due to that. but their engagement with these scenes didn't feel unthoughtful to me. in my opinion, the first chapter on overkill came to insightful conclusions that really could not have been reached without that engagement. in the fourth chapter, they intellectually engage with the thought work of queer/trans suicide notes and video logs smuggled out of prisons. this is heart-rending to read. but it is also such a deeply different, more dignified, intimate, and real mode of engagement with anti-queer/trans violence than anything else i've seen in our society.

it's also true that the register of this book is in some ways very "academic." there were many times i felt like i couldn't quite grasp the ideas presented because i havent read any Foucault or Freud, or enough Fanon. thats unfortunate. but idk how much i can blame the book for that.

and there are many times when i am grateful
for Stanley's tongue-twisting and poetic writing. the way anti-queer/trans violence is rendered in mainstream discourse — 'tragedy,' 'hate crime,' an 'epidemic' of murdered trans women of color, a 'senseless' killing or mass shooting, etc. — is just numbing. and it does nothing close to representing the reality of our society and its violence. Stanley's writing is confusing/difficult at times. but it is also often deeply moving, radicalizing, thoughtful, and just real.

[Jane · Rating 4 out of 5]

Atmospheres was very hard to follow and extremely sad. The times that I could truly follow led to very insightful and challenging points, especially the chapter 4 that covered suicide.

[Thom]

Eric A. Stanley's Atmospheres of Violence argues that racialized anti-trans/queer violence is foundational to the democratic state. Calling attention to the institutionalized violence they're subjected to in their marginalization, Stanley utilizes a variety of abolitionist, anti-colonial, and anarchistic lenses. Challenging the limits of liberal inclusion politics, they ask us to pay attention to the harm that is occurring on the most marginalized communities and posits that the only way out of this is not by placing our faith in these institutions, but rather finding ways to work towards a new world. It is impossible to reform a system that is founded upon violence, and the attempts to reform have managed to instead bring more power to these systems, further perpetuating this racialized harm. Atmospheres of Violence provides us with a framework to understand this violence and how it proliferates through these systems to enact harm on marginalized communities.

[Alex · Rating 4 out of 5]

Eric Stanley highlights the terrifying ways in which trans / queer people are marginalized and calls attention to the direct systemic violence perpetrated onto them. Utilizing grim archival information, Stanley calls attention to the grim realities many trans / queer folks navigate while also highlighting queer/trans strength and inviting more opportunities of being ungovernable; sharing: “radicalized anti-trans/queer violence is not antagonistic to the democratic state; it is among its foundations.”

Calling upon upon French post-colonialist Frantz Fanon, and many others, I’d say I, personally, understood about 70% of the text. Stanley did a great job of rewording and rephrasing some of his denser passages into digestible bits, which was much appreciated.

[Kathleen O'Neal · Rating 2 out of 5]

This book was assigned by Dr. Samuel Huneke for my Global History of Gender and Sexuality course in the fall of 2023. Basically the class discussion quickly devolved into everyone in the room snarking on the book and at the end of the class the professor admitted he wasn't a huge fan either, but he thought it was worth us engaging with and making up our own minds about. Because the author makes it clear towards the end of the book that he's a youth liberationist, it pain me to say less than great things about this book, but because he spends so little time meaningfully engaging with youth liberationist or other worthwhile ideas, I don't feel like he deserves a total pass. Some of my classmates thought that the author at times relied on stories about oppression and violence against LGBTQ+ youth in ways that were inappropriate and verged on trauma porn. I don't disagree. The author also constantly made assertions of the sort that one should carefully argue for, but instead just threw them out there without much in the way of analysis. I feel like there was some real potential for this book to be good, but quite frankly it wasn't.

[Samuel · Rating 4 out of 5]

oof. a work that destroys as it builds. gave it a 4 because at times it borders on unintelligible, not in a liberatory "against intelligibility" sense, rather, if an idea needs rewritten preceded by "In other words..." perhaps it could have been said just once with more clarity. but there is probably something important in the twice-delivery of these ideas, and i'm probably just not well-read enough (or patient enough?) to access those lessons (yet). i'll have to return to this after some time away spent with Derrida, Fanon, Freud, Spillers, Wilderson, Wynter, etc. or perhaps after i've learned how to read.

[Emory · Rating 4 out of 5]

While this book is IMMENSELY insightful for scholars of trans* studies, queer theory, or gender and sexuality studies, it is not for the faint of heart. IF YOU ARE TRANS: read this book with EXTREME caution. Take frequent breaks. Talk about what you are reading with friends, your therapist, colleagues. As a trans woman, I'm deadly serious about going into this book aware that it WILL be triggering and traumatizing. While I'm glad I read it, and I think the author did an exceptional job treating his material with respect and consideration, this book is my Schindler's List: I am a better person for having read it, and I pray to whatever gods there are that I NEVER have to read it again.

[S · Rating 3 out of 5]

Difficult read, both with content and with word choice, sentence structure, etc. Like another reviewer alluded to, I find Stanley’s prose relatively inaccessible and think many other folks would as well. There are some key takeaways though that I find valuable to sit with

[crow · Rating 5 out of 5]

eric a stanley i owe you my life

[Teddy · Rating 4 out of 5]

read for research