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This special issue of WSQ, Nonbinary, reflects upon the work that the concept nonbinary does in terms of unsettling the codes of gender, sexuality, race, and other categories of being and knowing. For this issue, we understand nonbinary to serve as a direct challenge to the tenacity of binary logics, ethics, and orientations. We also acknowledge that we have made a choice in using the word nonbinary that is only a gesture at the breaking of binaries that utilize other words and languages. Nonbinary is a moving thing, and the word may become outdated in the near future, as queer language is wont to do. Not only located, but perhaps most recognizably found, in discussions of gender and sexuality, nonbinary must be thought in relation to deep conceptions of identity and belonging across the spectrum of power and diflerence. Feminist theory has long focused upon the problematic aspects of binary thinking in relation to the dyads of nature/ culture, sex/gender, biology/culture, human/nonhuman, or the individual/ collective. Currently, in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic, we see the consequences of nonbinary thinking as it relates to fact/fiction and schisms in public discourse and everyday life. Nonbinary directs attention to the power and the precarious ways of being, knowing, and doing that fall outside such normatively derived epistemological, structuring pairs.
In 2008, WSQ_published Trans-, its first issue devoted to the subject of transing (Stryker, Currah, and Moore 2008), from gender to the human/ nonhuman divide, region, power, and racialized identities. During the following twelve years, the popular media landscape has hosted a veritable explosion of images and narratives of nonbinary ways of being. From performer Billy Porter to writer, artist, and activist Alok Vaid-Menon, Queer Eyes Jonathan Van Ness, and Billions actor Asia Kate Dillon, nonbinariness has circulated through popular culture and podcasts with surprising speed. However, in feminist, critical race, postcolonial, and queer theory, nonbinary continues to receive, in the best cases, merely an inclusive nod in discussions of trans- or, in the worst cases, disregard. This is not to say that in all trans- work, nonbinary must be parsed. It is, rather, to acknowledge that nonbinary needs to be considered for its rela?ionality to trans- as well as for its differences from, and challenges to,...