Sergio Mora Moreno

My dissertation examines how contemporary Colombian trans narratives challenge the epistemological and ontological frameworks that define the concept of the human, which has underpinned the colonial and Enlightenment projects of Western domination over subjects and the land of those categorized as subhuman or inhuman. By analyzing life writing, cinema, video performance, and speculative fiction, this project theorizes a trans epistemology, a form of knowledge grounded in embodied experience and aesthetic innovation, that envisions new social and political relationships to imagine different material conditions—not only for trans and queer populations but also for those deemed inhuman. Drawing on trans studies, critical race theory, queer theory, and continental philosophy, my dissertation demonstrates how these works reveal the epistemological and biopolitical mechanisms that diminish trans lives as less-than-human while exploring alternative ways of being that transcend modern regimes of personhood. By treating trans literary and cultural production as a form of theoretical inquiry, the dissertation proposes an original framework for rethinking the relationships between the human and the inhuman, and the political potential of the latter to reimagine different kinds of kinship.