Modulating rage; or, the trans joy fetish

Building off the recent work of Hil Malatino and Cameron Awkward-Rich that has theorised the necessity of bad feelings and maladjustment for trans liveability, this article approaches the intensifying emphasis on ‘trans joy’ with apprehension. I argue that while trans rage can be an animating force of civic unrest, it is one that is often mediated by a fetishising discourse of jubilance. This discourse insists on affirmative affect as an inherent good that will transform and transcend stigma and antagonism even as trans people continue to see increasing rates of violence and legislative assault on their quality of life. I ask whether this turn to trans joy, though an arguably useful bulwark in times of crises, may indeed be a ruse that shields what enrages from view, suspicious that this effort to stimulate happiness may only simulate it. In querying a meshwork of scholarly and nonprofit invocations, journalistic coverage and public art, this article demonstrates that the repetition of joy as rage's attendant affective form suspends dissent while also imagining a dangerously undemanding transition of gender dysphoria to euphoria. To this end, it critically engages how we conceptualise and enact trans subjectivity through a discursive preoccupation with joy that fetishises a trifecta of affirmative resistance, humanistic individualism, and trans resilience which are indicative of desires that shape inclusion's libidinal economy and governmentality – often reinforcing neoliberal good feeling – while reorientating us towards liberal democratic models of political mobilisation, alienating negativity, and blunting trans rage.