“For the first time in my life, I wish I was not a Kentuckian
” Trans liminal performance as worldmaking in rural U.S. places
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 20408230 |
|---|---|
| Authors | Courtney D Fallon (0009-0005-0911-608X, University of Wisconsin–Whitewater, corresponding author) |
| Year | 2026 |
| Pages | 1-21 |
| Publication date | 2026-06-18 |
| Peer Reviewed | Yes |
| Open Access | Yes |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | Text and Performance Quarterly (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 1046-2937 • E-ISSN: 1479-5760 |
| Publisher | Informa UK Limited (PUBLISHER • GB) |
| DOI | 10.1080/10462937.2026.2686822 |
| OpenAlex | W7165169561 |
| Language | EN |
| References cited | 41 |
As of this writing, over 500 bills in the U.S. target LGBTQ+ rights (ACLU). This substantial increase in legislative threats and the anti-trans rhetoric that characterizes Donald Trump’s Presidency indicate an exigency to forge new paths of queer resistance. In this essay, I examine the liminal performances of trans rhetors in rural/conservative U.S. state legislatures. I argue that liminal performance as a worldmaking tactic disrupts repressive social hierarchies by calling forth a rhetorical collectivity to witness the farce of rigid identity binaries and to imagine worlds otherwise. Liminal performance opens tangible opportunities for subversive and generative queer praxis
Generative grammar · Identity (music) · Liminality · Queer · Rhetoric · Rhetorical question · State (computer science) · Wish · Witness · African Sexualities and LGBTQ+ Issues · LGBTQ Health, Identity, and Policy · Rhetoric and Communication Studies
Of Fighters and Frames
Black Trans Feminism
Place in Research
Undoing Gender
Queer expectations
Queer and trans* geographies of liminality
Resisting the Mark
Notes on Trans Relationality
Transgender Worldmaking in Cyberspace
Bridging Performances of Auto/ethnography and Queer Bodies of Color to Advocacy and Civic Engagement
Worldmaking and Everyday Interventions
The Critical-Norm
Live, virtual, and spectral
Performing/Rhetorical Studies
Queer of color worldmaking
What One Voice Can Do”
The Impossible Trans Body
Spatializing Gender Performativity
Peculiar Places
Creating discursive space through a rhetoric of difference
Queer geographies and the rhetoric of orientation
Frame, flow and reflection
Queer Imag(in)ing
The unbecoming subject of sex
Sisterhood
Queer Criticism and Sexual Normativity
Transgender Studies
The Violence of Heteronormativity in Communication Studies
Get Thee to a Big City
Queering the Desire to Die
Performative Acts and Gender Constitution
Challenging the Cisgender/Transgender Binary
Sex in Public
| Citation velocity | historical |
|---|---|
| Highly cited | No |