Click here to read this text


Essay Humanities Nonfiction

“Even a Freak Like You Would Be Safe in Tel Aviv”: Transgender Subjects, Wounded Attachments, and the Zionist Economy of Gratitude

By Saffo Papantonopoulou, 2014

“Even a Freak Like You Would Be Safe in Tel Aviv” discusses the presence of transgender narratives in Israeli pinkwashing campaigns and explores the positionality of transgender people in the colonial, neoliberal context of Israel. In the opening paragraphs, Papantonopolou explains that activist and academic responses to Israeli pinkwashing have focused on “the cynical deployment of cisgender queer subjectivities” (279). In response, Papantonopolou asks the question guiding the rest of the article: “where, in the age of neoliberalism and homonationalism, is the transgender subject relative to colonial economies of gratitude?” (279).

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *