Reframing Justice from Queer and Transfeminist Activisms: Futures Beyond Enclosures in Colombia and Argentina

Hegemonic debates over justice are based on liberal, North-centric and Western-centric perspectives on what justice (and injustice) means, inscribed in individualistic perspectives and centred on punitive measures to counter injustices. From the global South counter-visions have emerged: grounded collective visions of justice beyond individualism, retribution and punishment and against the promises of liberal justice. Queer and trans social movements from the South have been imagining and experimenting other grammars and forms of justice in their struggles against atmospheres of violence - as in the Colombian armed conflict and in Argentinian prisons and on the streets. This paper asks how these Southern queer and transfeminist activisms envision justice for these communities and at the same time how reparative, transformative and abolitionist forms of justice are being conceived and enacted in their everyday practices. From a dialogue with transfeminist ancestral knowledge in Argentina - as in the works of Lohana Berkins, Diana Sacayán, Marlene Wayar - and the queer and transfeminist production in Colombia - for instance, from León Zuleta, Manuel Velandia, Daniela Maldonado -, the paper sheds light on queer, trans and travesti concepts of justice from Latin America. In order to apprehend the empirical grounding and development of reparative and abolitionist justices, the paper discusses transfeminist abolitionists practices from Yo No Fui, No Tan Distintes and Severas Flores, as collective elaborations of imagining and practising forms of justice in contemporary Colombia and Argentina. The Southern queer and transfeminist practices assembled and put here in dialogue allow the process of reframing justice to be rooted in the ancestral knowledge of those communities and in the daily practices against enclosed forms of justice towards the continuous invention of reparative and abolitionist worlds beyond oppression, coloniality and cis-heteronormativy.