The Fields of Trans* Necropolitics: Trans Women‟s Narratives On the Vulnerabilities of Trans Death, Bereavement, Posthumous Challenges and Activism in Turkey

Abstract

This study aims to bring forward the phenomenon of trans death, underscoring the challenges that trans women in İstanbul experience, endure and confront during the posthumous scenes of autopsy, funeral and burial. Departing from and developing the concept of trans necropolitics, I examine trans death in two explanatory layers. First, I endeavor to theorize the mortuary processes of death within the context of Turkey and construe the necropolitical structures that interrupt and demarcate the trans death in the margins of sociality. Second, I examine the ways trans community and trans/feminist activism react, build remembrances and protest against the hate murders and the administrative violence in respect to the afterlife of the Hande Kader and Werde. As the last discussion, I engage in diffractive analysis of the transgender image in terms of its temporal and spatial materiality in the postmortem activisms and performance art. Adhering to a multifaceted methodology, I share the narratives from the semi-structured indepth interviews that I conducted with seven research participants who identify trans women. My research questions travel between two premises throughout the research: 1) What kind of challenges, conflicts and contingencies occur in the event of trans death and the afterlife? 2.) In what circumstances and solidarities can or cannot trans women in İstanbul procure recognition for their funerals and establish remembrances for their loss? The posthumous trans activism in İstanbul not only engenders the juxtapositions of different feminist agencies in the protests as a necrospace but also various segments of the society converge in an effort to construct a proper remembrance. Expounding these vulnerabilities and juxtapositions within the limits of cultural analysis, I also take notice of the entangled nature of gender, labor, and class.