Queer Lit

You’ve read Maggie Nelson’s The Argonauts but have you heard of the scholar who puts the auto in theories? Meet Alex Brostoff, my new favourite autotheorist. Alex is here to clear up common misconceptions about autotheories and tell us more about biomythography, teoría de la noche, and reading beside. I was also intrigued to learn about intertextual kinship and hear Alex’s (beautifully phrased) thoughts on co-writing and co-translating.

References:

Alex Brostoff and Lauren Fournier (eds) Autotheory (special issue of ASAP/Journal, 2021)
Alex Brostoff and Vilashini Cooppan (eds) Autotheories (MIT Press, 2025)
Alex Brostoff’s Unruly Relations: A Critical Reframing of Autotheory (Columbia University Press, forthcoming)
Alex Brostoff and rl Goldberg (eds) Trans Literature (special issue of College Literature, 2025)
Alex Brostoff and rl Goldberg (eds) Reassignments: Trans and Sex from the Clinical to the Critical (Fordham University Press, forthcoming)
Stryker, Susan. "Transgender studies: Queer theory's evil twin." GLQ: A journal of lesbian and gay studies 10.2 (2004): 212-215.
Intertextual kinship in Brostoff’s “An Autotheory of Intertextual Kinship: Ambivalent Bodies in the Work of Maggie Nelson and Paul Preciado.” Special issue, “Dissident Self-Narratives: Radical and Queer Life Writing,” ed. Aude Haffen. Synthesis: An Anglophone Journal of Comparative Literary Studies 14 (2021): 91-115.
Kai Minosh Pyle trans*temporal kinship
Maggie Nelson’s The Argonauts
Roland Barthes
Paul Preciado’s Testo Junkie
On the Eve of This Death
Freccero, Carla. "The ‘Auto’ of Theory." in Autotheories (MIT Press, 2025)
Foucault
Derrida
Gloria Anzaldúa
This Bridge Called My Back Borderlands/La Frontera
Theory in the flesh
Autohistoria-teoría
Audre Lorde’s Zami
Biomythography
María Moreno’s teoría de la noche (theory of the night)
Sedgwick’s reading beside
Lauren Berlant and Kathleen Steward’s The Hundreds
Heather Love
John Money
Richard Green
Judith Butler’s Who’s Afraid of Gender
Cameron Awkward-Rich
Stephanie Burt
Liz Rose
Nat Rivkin
Jordy Rosenberg
Trish Salah
torrin a. greathouse
Cole Rizki
TSQ
@alextakesfotos (on Instagram)
@AlexBrostoff (on X)
@alexbrostoff.bsky.social (on Bluesky)
TravestiAmara Moira, “Loose Tongues,” a selection from Neca (2021), translated by Jesse Rothbard and edited by Cole Rizki, TSQ: Transgender Studies Quarterly (forthcoming, 2025).

Questions you should be able to respond to after listening:

1. What is autotheory and why might Alex prefer the plural autotheories?
2. What are some related concepts or theories?
3. Which thinkers do we commonly associate with autotheories?
4. Name at least two texts that Alex posits as central to autotheories.
5. Alex speaks a lot about co-writing. Have you ever experienced “being deep in the trenches of someone else’s sentences”? How do you co-write?