Fish Trade Futures: Counter-Archives and Sex Worker Worlds at the Margins of St. John's Harbour

Abstract

Abstract: This article imagines the sociohistorical lives of trans women (and) sex workers in Ktaqmkuk (Newfoundland) as deeply entangled with ecological relations of so-called Canada's Atlantic coast—particularly the cultural and economic politics of fish trade at St. John's Harbour. Feeling fishy, a trace of transfeminine sex worker expressive culture and vernacular performance, comes to signify an evocative autoethnographic approach to trans sex worker research-creation at the water's edge. Poetic, illustrative, and sculptural play as both counter-archival worldmaking and critical address here emphasize power in creative approaches to trans and sex worker history and folkloristics. Building on art and scholarship immersed in transness and Newfoundland folklore, with mermaids and oceanic beings as guides, I explore trans and sex worker embodiments, desires, and subjectivities in marginal geographic zones. With/holding becomes a way to question the legitimacy of White settler colonial gestures toward extraction, curation, and preservation practices.