Jack Halberstam on Anarchitecture and Transness in Forthcoming Book

Jack Halberstam, a pioneering gender and queer theorist, is set to release a new book titled "Anarchitecture After Everything: A Trans Manifesto" with MIT Press in 2026. The book explores the concept of anarchitecture, a term coined by artist Gordon Matta-Clark to describe the dismantling of structures, and its relationship to transness. Halberstam shifts focus to the built environment, examining radical architectural and bodily interventions by visual artists like Matta-Clark and Cassils. He argues that by unmaking the world, we can imagine making a better one. The book stems from Halberstam's earlier work, including his 1998 book "Female Masculinity" and an article titled "Unbuilding Gender" published in Places Journal, which resulted from the ARCAS prize he received to write about sexuality in the built environment. Halberstam first encountered Matta-Clark's work at a retrospective at the Bronx Museum about 10 years ago, which inspired him to develop a new language around anarchitecture and transness. The interview, edited for length and clarity, delves into how Halberstam connects Matta-Clark's counterintuitive actions against houses to a form of sex reassignment surgery, challenging conventional notions of architecture and gender.