University of Macau / Faculty of Social Sciences. / Department of Communication

This research investigated the issue of identity within a historical reenactment group called the Society for Creative Anachronism, the SCA. This international organization numbering in the tens of thousands of participants offered an unusual setting with which to investigate the issue of identities due to identities' fluid nature among SCA members. Whether or not a member was satisfied with their modern world identity, members were free to create a medieval persona, an identity based on a medieval time and culture. Identity Theory provided the conceptual framework to analyze and understand the nature of transient identities that become more permanent through continued participation within the organization. Research hypotheses examined the relationships between subjects' perceived feelings of belonging and their participation in the organization, perceived sense of emotional closeness with subjects' biological family and their participation as well as the relationship between subjects' occupational prestige ranking and their degree of involvement in the SCA. It was found that subjects' participation within the SCA was significantly impacted by perceived sense of belonging within the group as well as by occupational prestige ranking.

This research investigated the issue of identity within a historical reenactment group called the Society for Creative Anachronism, the SCA. This international organization numbering in the tens of thousands of participants offered an unusual setting with which to investigate the issue of identities due to identities' fluid nature among SCA members. Whether or not a member was satisfied with their modern world identity, members were free to create a medieval persona, an identity based on a medieval time and culture. Identity Theory provided the conceptual framework to analyze and understand the nature of transient identities that become more permanent through continued participation within the organization. Research hypotheses examined the relationships between subjects' perceived feelings of belonging and their participation in the organization, perceived sense of emotional closeness with subjects' biological family and their participation as well as the relationship between subjects' occupational prestige ranking and their degree of involvement in the SCA. It was found that subjects' participation within the SCA was significantly impacted by perceived sense of belonging within the group as well as by occupational prestige ranking.

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This thesis explores how transgender identities are constructed and discursively produced in the socio-historical context of the early twenty-first century. In so doing, it addresses the relationship between experience and discourse. I examine the ways in which identities are embodied and articulated through an analysis of interviews with self-identified transgendered people. Chapter one outlines the key aims of this thesis, including situating myself as a researcher and how I came to be doing this. Chapter two explores the historical and cultural conditions within which sexed and gendered identities are constructed. Theoretical debates have mainly taken place on the essentialist/constructionist continuum which can usefully be understood as connoting a space between fixed identities and fluid social processes. Much has been written on what sex and gender are, and are not, and most of this work underplays the importance of the heterosexual matrix as the source of sex and gender categorisation. Chapter three describes how the phenomenological approach meets the challenges of engaging with the complexities of sexed and gendered identities in that it focuses on the lived experiences and voices of the eleven participants recruited for the study. I use a narrative approach which illustrates how stories are embedded in social and cultural discourses through which sexed and gendered identities are constructed. Chapter four outlines the personal dissonance experienced by transgendered people when their sexed and gendered identities are not congruent with the binary categories of the western heterosexual matrix. The participants’ stories illustrate that gender is something that is an internal phenomenological “felt” experience in their lives and incongruent with the external identity that society has assigned them. Chapter five illustrates how stories are grounded in cultural and historical discourses. In particular, the participants demonstrate how self esteem and mental health are central to their developing identities and how important it is for them to be in contact with a larger collective identity category. Chapter six and seven explore the two mutually reinforcing processes involved in transitioning — passing and self-identification. Chapter six explores the processes of emotional and physical changes entailed by the various choices transgendered people make about their self-identity and the ensuing action required. Chapter seven examines the process of self-identification, illustrating the hegemonic power of heteronormativity and its understanding of identity and desire. Chapter eight discusses the research findings in relation to heteronormativity. It shows how peoples’ understandings of their sexed and gendered identities challenge hegemonic binaries and their fixed assumptions about sexed, gendered and sexual identities. The participants’ stories show the tension between the limitations of categories that have been available for transgendered people and the lived experience of transgendered subjectivity within which the historical legacy of particular hegemonic categories remain potent. I argue that it is not enough to research into sexed and gendered identities without critically questioning the dominant influence of hegemonic heterosexuality in producing normative accounts of sex, gender and sexuality. The chapter concludes by pointing to how the category of “transgender” has the potential to expose and begin to move beyond the limited conceptual space of heterosexual discourse which depends on binary sexed and gender categories for exploring and understanding erotic relationships. The conclusions drawn from this research propose a commitment to engaging with queer theory as a way of blurring and expanding the definitions of sexed and gendered identities that are regulated by the heterosexual matrix.

The thesis places Wales within a postcolonial framework, and uses postcolonial theory to analyse the emergence of Welsh identities. Positioning ‘Wales’ and the ‘Welsh’ as subjects of study in relation to the British Empire suggests how discursive processes of power in Wales take place parallel to those in other areas of the Empire. In analysing these processes, the thesis illustrates the different effects of power in different local contexts. Welsh identities are shown as emerging and being produced by these discursive processes, and are found to be often resistant and complicit with dominant discourses in the same movement. In the central chapters of the thesis, the emergence of Welsh identities is analysed with reference to particular discourses and events: education, ritual, literary criticism and popular culture. These are, in Chapter 1, the Blue Books controversy; in Chapter 2, the investiture of the Prince of Wales in 1911 and again in 1969; and, finally, in Chapter 3,the construction of different theories of literary criticism and the role of play and authenticity in Welsh popular culture. Using the work of Michel Foucault, the thesis rejects the notion of an original and essential Welsh identity and takes power to be fluid and productive of subjects. Various articulations of Welsh identity appear as dynamic, hybrid and linked to particular discourses, allowing us to understand the emergence of such identities without reference to a pre-given Welsh identity.