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Queer Utopías: Rethinking law from disobedient epistemologies

Florencia Bellone

This research explores the possibility of reimagining legal systems through trans-feminist epistemologies that challenge hegemonic knowledge production. The central question is: How can legal systems be reimagined through critical and feminist epistemologies to function as spaces of political transformation, rather than as neutral mechanisms that reinforce existing power structures? Grounded in interdisciplinary and feminist methodologies, this project argues that transforming the world also requires transforming how we symbolize it. Law, as a powerful regime of meaning-making, has historically been shaped by the figure of the white, Western, cisgender, heterosexual man. As such, its emancipatory potential has been limited and often paradoxical. While feminist and human rights movements have exposed structural inequalities, legal recognition alone is frequently insufficient. In many cases, the law reproduces the very hierarchies it purports to dismantle, sustaining the status quo beneath a veneer of progress. Situated at the intersection of critical legal studies and feminist theory, this research examines how disobedient epistemologies (those that contest normative, androcentric, and colonial assumptions) can provide alternative frameworks for justice. It focuses on Argentina’s Gender Identity Law (2012), which allows individuals to self-identify their gender without medical or psychiatric intervention. This legislation marks a key epistemological shift: not only in its recognition of gender self-determination but in establishing a legal interpretative framework grounded in travesti-trans activism. It challenges binary, pathologizing, and colonial legal logics, enabling broader recognition of rights. Far from being merely symbolic, this law contributes to the cultural and epistemic transformations necessary for deeper structural change in law and society. Methodologically, the project combines critical legal analysis with qualitative research, including interviews with activists and the examination of video-recorded testimonies. Their lived experiences and political practices play a central role in rethinking the law through an emancipatory lens. In a global context where anti-gender movements gain ground and right-wing agendas reshape discourse and the “common sense”, rethinking legal norms becomes urgent. This project asks how queer utopias (imagined futures defying normativity) can inspire more inclusive and transformative legal paradigms.