Abstract

ABSTRACT Dominant narratives of gender transition are often couched in ameliorative, futural frameworks that understand it as a linear process of becoming. However, trans writers and scholars have problematized this narrative, writing about the temporality of transition in terms of the complicated affective milieu of waiting. This article draws on this literature to theorize that waiting operates not just temporally, but also as an affective structure with multiple, changing modalities. This article maps experiences of waiting as they crystallize as anticipation or hope, suspension in time, and dread. Drawing on trans phenomenology to explore waiting as key theme in trans temporalities, this article argues that trans portrayals of waiting and anticipation in the context of interpersonal and institutional discrimination can be understood as a form of chronic temporal harm that backgrounds trans subjects’ lives. This article builds on this analysis to trouble dominant narratives of linear and futural trans temporalities, and concludes by exploring the political potential of trans futurity.