UC Santa Barbara

This research projects asks what are the consequences of chemical compounds (ARVs for HIV, hormones for trans people, and abortion-inducing pills) interacting with people’s sexuality? Through global flows of control, contestation, circulation and obstruction, they translate those interactions into chemical debates of economies, bioconstitutional governance and ontopolitics around sexuality, giving an added value to what I call chemical sexualities. The chemical economies that result from these interactions allow for us to debate 1) if these chemical compounds were, and can be, marketed for contestatory embodiments of sexuality; and 2) if there are horizontal and grass-root based markets that can contest the black markets exploiting these compounds for profit. The chemical bioconstitutional governance debates about these interactions center on individuals and multiple stakeholders claiming sovereignty over reproductive and sexual bodies. They debate: 1) the possibilities to radicalize the human rights discourse of sexual rights; and 2) the extent to which securitized states will continue claiming control, debilitating sexualized individuals, and reifying new moral panic over non-conforming chemical sexualities. Finally, the chemical ontopolitics that surge out of these interactions allow to have new debates beyond individual sexual identity formations and into chemicals embedded in sexual subject formations. They do so in Egypt and Mexico as sites that contest tropes from big Pharma being located and controlled within the United States or Europe, and rather turn the gaze towards global flows of power, social mobilization and sexualities.