Fragments from the Philosophy of May(hem)

Through the life and death of May Peleg, this article traces a trans-critical, antisovereign philosophy that exposes liberal legality's structural complicity with authoritarian violence. Critiquing liberal paradigms of gender self-determination, it demonstrates how state-recognized identity categories produce vulnerability readily activated by contemporary authoritarian regimes. Drawing from Walter Benjamin's concept of historiographic rupture, Dina Georgis's queer refusal, and Susan Stryker and Nikki Sullivan's trans mayhem, the article moves beyond the search for stable recognition. It theorizes from the “unspeakable present” connecting May's archival debris to the “anti-trans siege” and the catastrophe unfolding across historical Palestine. Tracing the fragmented remains of May's thought and praxis, it advocates for a relational, antisovereign trans philosophy grounded in refusal, relationality, and interdependence—offering a necessary rupture from the recursive trap of law's false promises and the genocidal logics underpinning contemporary state (of) violence.