Crossings: Swarthmore Undergraduate Feminist Research Journal
Abstract
Jennifer Laude is a filipino trans woman who was murdered by a visiting member of the United States army in 2014. Her murder led to several protests in the Philippines and in the United States led by both queer and anti-imperialist movements that urged for the rejection of the 'Visiting Forces Agreement' in the Philippines. This essay explores how Laude's murder is located in a climate of 'trans necropolitics' that allocates death and disposability to unruly trans and brown bodies who fail to comply with cis-normative gender ideals. This essay understands her murder (and her afterlife) beyond her individual body, looking at the disciplinary effects it has on other trans bodies who are collectively subjected to a 'slow death' in a necropolitical regime. Likewise, this essay also explores how the protests that followed Laude's death have transformed the meaning of her transness, rendering her a body worth grieving. This transforms the possibilities for trans bodies in life, giving Laude's afterlife a utopian force in envisioning emergent trans and anti-imperial futurities.
Recommended Citation
López Toledano, Max D. (2023) "The Afterlife of Jennifer Laude: Trans Necropolitics and Trans Utopias," Crossings: Swarthmore Undergraduate Feminist Research Journal: 1 (1), 17-31. https://works.swarthmore.edu/crossings/vol1/iss1/2
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