As part of a joint research project, our aim is to examine the “formulation from below” of the Argentine Law on Gender Identity. This vanguardist legislation written by travesti and trans activists establishes the free access to gender affirmation practices financed by public and private healthcare funds and the obligation of the state to recognize the citizen’s self-perceived gender. Before this legislation, Argentina was one of the few countries globally banning any medical treatment affecting reproductive organs since 1967. This policy contributed to trans citizens’ exclusion, reducing their life expectancy to 35 years. The passing of this law in 2012 resulted from the action of a large travesti, transsexual and transgender social movement and activism in post-dictatorial Argentina. This law was the starting point of an unprecedented legislation package that included a law promoting trans people’s employment and recognizing non-binary ID documents (2021).

The project aims to study how the formulation of a trans rights agenda re-shaped the sexed dimension of citizenship in Argentina and how this resonated globally. We will analyse public story telling in media and literary works as a practice with which trans people challenge the cisgender limits of democracy in post-dictatorial Argentina. This collaborative approach will allow us to explore the broader repertoires with which travesti and trans people struggle to redefine the limits of citizenship from below. We are particularly interested in the broad cultural interventions that travesti and trans have made in Argentina, from massive cultural artifacts such as newspapers and TV shows to the publication of autobiographies and novels.

Using interdisciplinary methodology, we combine literary studies, history and cultural studies to trace how trans people struggle to redefine the popular understanding of the sexed limits of citizenship through time. This allows us to raise questions on how queer methodologies could contribute to putting literary texts in dialogue with other documentary sources such as popular magazine articles. We are interested in developing a transdisciplinary analytical framework, grounded in queer studies, to analyse the role of multiple cultural fields as a battleground for the definition of the limits of power and the making of rights from below. We will pursue questions such as: Who publishes what and when? Who is allowed to write? Who gets printed? Who is read? Is a political interest involved? How can subaltern voices impact transforming social rights frameworks? How can we study their voices in polyphonic texts? How can history and literary theory build a common framework to trace their agency in polyphonic cultural texts?

Moreover, studying the Argentine case is central for decolonizing the field of queer and trans studies. Argentine trans people define themselves using multiple identities that challenge the universalization of the transgendered subject and in particular, challenge the role of whiteness in producing a homogenous global understanding of trans people’s reality. The country is home to deeply rooted activist thinking, usually referred to as Latin American Travesti Theory, which integrates multiple activists’ discourses. Our methodology dialogues with the categories produced by this community to discover alternative readings of documentary and literary sources. The results of the research will be of particular relevance to the current debate in Germany. In the current legislative period, the Bundestag will debate the abolition of the so-called Transsexuellengesetz as well as the introduction of a self-determination law (Selbstbestimmungsgesetz). A comparison with Argentina can provide illuminating insights into the process of formulating a law from below and the difficulties and opportunities it entails.