© Alessia Meyer
© Alessia Meyer
© Alessia Meyer
The third issue of the student theory journal ‘Schwarm’ was published at the start of the winter semester 2024/25. Entitled ‘transxyz’, the texts collected here are dedicated to the expansion and transgression of borders, identities and norms, as well as the numerous processes of translation and transfer that characterise global societies.
The prefix trans- implies a process of moving from one place to another, of changing, of being-in-between, of evolving, of crossing borders, of becoming. Discourses employing trans-notions and their present popularization express the need to switch between contrasting societal poles or to overcome binaries altogether. However, this aspiration cannot avoid facing its own opposites. In the case of trans-ideas those might be limitations, restrictions, frontiers. Whenever these are encountered, desires to transgress them emerge. Thus trans-words typically describe emancipatory projects of overstepping confines imposed by societal formations, like gender, race or class. Nevertheless, some trans-concepts, such as translation or transculturalism, have to a certain extent become leitmotifs of globalised societies. In these instances they promote neoliberal economic policies and impose expectations of unlimited flexibility, creativity and hybridity on societies and their members—thus installing more constraints. Since borders and their transgressions condition each other, trans-ideas keep oscillating between restricting and liberating effects.
With contributions by: Ida Svensson Blomdahl, Sára Vera Bodor, Guillermo Collado Wilkins, Lisa Eigmüller, Edona Ibrahimi, Paul Lu Kellert, Chelsea Kim, Ilayda Kohl, Moritz Konrad, Denise Shahar Krivosh, Darius Kühner, Jannik Lang, Hyeonju Lee, Alessia Meyer, Yuliana Mosheeva, Lea Celine Nohr, Elisabeth Potemkin, Julia Stelzer, Sayuki Yoneda, Maximilian Zschiesche
Editorial team: Soo Youn Bae, Sára Vera Bodor, Christian Egerer, Yannick Fritz, Lorena Karn, Moritz Konrad, Darius Philipp Kühner, Alessia Meyer, Anna Molnár, Yuliana Mosheeva, Lea Celine Nohr, Christian Platz, Elisabeth Potemkin, Yanina Sharipova, Victoria Schwab, Julia Stelzer
Design: Francesco Perale, Niklas Weisenbach
ISSN: 2942-2531