Contingent belonging: Chelsea Manning, transpatriotism, and iterations of empire

Abstract

Engaging with the story of whistleblower Chelsea Manning, this article reveals how the incorporation of transgender subjects into assimilationist politics, idealized by narratives of a ‘US sexual exceptionalism’ ( Puar, 2007 ), is characterized by a contingent belonging. By analyzing responses from transgender veterans to Manning’s revelations, the article argues that present formations and modalities of US empire are legitimated through the recent emergence of transpatriotism. Expanding Puar’s notion of homonationalism, I conceptualize transpatriotism as a form of jingoism characterized by an unwavering devotion to the state and an adherence to the gender binary. Engendered through exceptional forms of transnormativity, transpatriotism is grounded in an unmarked whiteness that incorporates certain previously stigmatized transgender bodies into the folds of US empire.