Timely Revelations: Trans Temporality, Crip Time, and Mexican Historical Testimony

This presentation explores the ways that testimonio–a genre of Latin American witness-bearing texts–offers a space to explore the contradictions of trans* and disabled historical accounts. Using the testimonio of the transgender and disability rights activist Irina Layevska Echeverría Gaitán, it interrogates how gender affirmation and the advancement of chronic debility structure the temporalities of testimonials: the moment when details are shared, intersectional experiences of time, and how chronologies are altered after pivotal life events.
 
Robert Franco is an Assistant Professor of History at Kenyon College. His current manuscript, Revolution in the Sheets: Sexuality and Tolerance in the Mexican Left, explores the history of homophobia, heterosexism, and hostility towards sexual politics in Mexico’s leftist parties and organizations. His work has been featured in Journal of the History of Sexuality, Radical History Review, and elsewhere.