Review of Atmospheres of Violence: Structuring Antagonism and the Trans/Queer Ungovernable by Eric A. Stanley (Duke University Press)

Abstract

Eric A. Stanley's 'Atmospheres of Violence: Structuring Antagonism and the Trans/Queer Ungovernable' delves into the spectacle and disappearance that racialized anti-trans/queer violence produces. Stanley's method is archival. By putting surveillance tapes, letters, films, and direct actions side by side, they trace structuring logics of modernity while emphasizing trans/queer practices that have and do escape such violent worlds. While this book underscores violence, hurt, and loss, it is more accurate to classify it as a text that tenaciously holds onto the possibility of livable worlds otherwise.