ABSTRACT
In the shadow of social advances in queer transnational lives, there are those who are continuously subjected to structural violence. These are mainly non-heteronormative bodies and subjectivities that remain vulnerable to the steady states of poverty and perpetuated forms of violent marginalization. This chapter, by drawing on ethnographic research with transpuan or transgender woman in Northern Aceh, Indonesia, discusses the political potential of endurance in queer worldmaking. Endurance, here, is understood as enactments of (having to) stay with, withstand, live through, and suffer within hegemonic normative structures that are tenaciously in place. This chapter draws attention to how queer modes of endurance are not merely embodying some abstract promise of “happy finality” or a manifestation of inner-strength or human flourishing that is often characterised as “resilience” in Southeast Asian contexts. Filled with failures and moments of exhaustion, endurance signals a slow, long-drawn, and less heroic outlook of queer worldmaking which remains faithful to its claims towards an open-ended becoming.
