Uses of Exploits

Jian Neo Chen's Trans Exploits: Trans of Color Cultures and Technologies in Movement audaciously covers an array of archives, sites, and bodies to explore the ways trans of color (broadly defined) artists, scholars, and activists challenge US empire. Rather than assume what any one of these terms might mean—trans, of color, empire, or even notions of the state—Chen locates each example within rich descriptions of historical, cultural, and political economic context. Stating from the outset that trans of color is not a stable category through which to identify racialized and gendered subjects, but rather a “set of counterimaginaries and analytics” that might be used as a site of solidarity and kinship, Chen aims to provide “revised lexicons for perceiving and understanding trans of color and trans bodies and experiences” (5). Indeed, in a moment where the category trans and trans of color bodies in particular...