SSN Book Launch: The Made-Up State by Benjamin Hegarty
SSN Book Launch: The Made-Up State by Benjamin Hegarty
Event Date & Times:
Thursday, 1 June 2023 2:00 pm - 4:30 pmThe Made-Up State Technology, Trans Femininity, and Citizenship in Indonesia By Benjamin Hegarty
The SSN is delighted to launch Benjamin Hegarty’s new book, published by Cornell University Press. Join us for an introductory talk by Ben, who will be in discussion with Associate Professor Daniel Marshall. The discussion will include reflections from Christoph Hanssmann (Assistant Professor of Gender, Sexuality, & Women’s Studies, University of California, Davis) , Carla Jones, (Associate Professor in Anthropology, University of Colorado, Boulder) and Alegra Wolter (Transgender Activist and Medical Doctor, Suara Kita, Indonesia ).
Whilst we encourage attendance at Deakin Downtown, the event will also be livestreamed for our regional and global audience.
About the book
In The Made-Up State, Benjamin Hegarty contends that warias, who compose one of Indonesia’s trans feminine populations, have cultivated a distinctive way of captivating the affective, material, and spatial experiences of belonging to a modern public sphere. Combining historical and ethnographic research, Hegarty traces the participation of warias in visual and bodily technologies, ranging from psychiatry and medical transsexuality to photography and feminine beauty.
The concept of development deployed by the modern Indonesian state relies on naturalizing the binary of “male” and “female.” As historical brokers between gender as a technological system of classifying human difference and state citizenship, warias shaped the contours of modern selfhood even while being positioned as nonconforming within it. The Made-Up State illuminates warias as part of the social and technological format of state rule, which has given rise to new possibilities for seeing and being seen as a citizen in postcolonial Indonesia.
About the author
Benjamin Hegarty is a medical anthropologist working at the intersection of queer and transgender studies, science and technology studies, and global health. His research is based on research with transgender communities in Indonesia. Before joining the Global Health Program at the the Kirby Institute at UNSW, Benjamin was a McKenzie Fellow in Anthropology at the University of Melbourne (2019-2022). His ethnographic and historical research appears in Visual Anthropology Review, Ethos, Journal of the History of Sexuality, and the Journal of Asian Studies. Benjamin is a member of the Editorial Board of American Ethnologist.
You can learn more about Ben, and download his free e-book, on his website.
About the discussant
Daniel Marshall (he/they) is an Associate Professor in Writing, Literature & Culture in the School of Communication and Creative Arts at Deakin University, and has prior appointments as a Research Fellow at The Australian Research Centre in Sex, Health & Society (La Trobe University) and as an invited Visiting Scholar at the Center for LGBTQ Studies (City University of New York) and at the Weeks Centre for Social and Policy Research (London South Bank University). Daniel has also previously served as President of the Australian Queer Archives.
Book sales
A limited number of books will be for sale on the day at $20 each; all proceeds will go to the Waria Crisis Centre in Yogyakarta for projects related to trans health and housing.
Livestream link and hashtag
Click on the link here to join the livestream. Please join in the conversation on Twitter using #MadeUpState #SSNbooklaunch
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