On “Deadnaming” the “Vanishing Indian”

Abstract

Abstract Recently, deadnaming has been the predominant terminology invoked to describe the act of referring to a trans* person by a former, but no longer used, name. While it is perceived as a formidable language to condemn this type of anti-transgender harm and violence, the necropolitical implications of referring to this act as “deadnaming” necessitates a trans* Indigenous critique of the manifestation of settler coloniality within transnormativity and its rhetoric. By analyzing the polarizing tension between birth name and deadname, this article turns to US legal documents, specifically the language within states’ legal birth certificates, for the better-for-now language of the “given name,” which might provide the destabilization needed to disrupt the temporal specificity implied within the “birth name” and “deadname” binary to imagine and embody an otherwise of the trans* imaginary. In thinking with Billy-Ray Belcourt's (Driftpile Cree) feral queer Indigeneity, this article concludes by surveying the possibilities of anti-colonial trans* experiences beyond the US settler nation-state's socio-legal surveillance, with its insistence on (trans*-/settler-) normative legibility (for “citizenship” within its biopolitical sphere).