This thesis investigates trans-embodiment by outlining diverse forms of understanding of what it means to become trans- through various theoretical frameworks, drawing from queer and transtheory, medical discourse, the philosophical preconditions of their emergence and their interrelation. As such it explores and discusses different discursive positions- often contradictory and conflicting - that I as a transgendering subject have found myself "in between" at various spaces and times, in order to sketch a plethora of perspectives. It offers an alternative to the current deadlock between essentialist theories of the subject and queer appropriations oftransgender experience, by showing both their limitations and their strengths in addressing transgender embodiment. This is accomplished by my writing alongside specific events and their consequences in my understanding and positionality of self. Furthermore, I juxtapose and intertwine this life -writing with an analytics of power that investigates the particularities which usually go unacknowledged, as a response to the homologous positions in which the trans-subject has been traditionally positioned. Using an authoethnographic methodology that is situated within the narrative turn in the social sciences, this project aims to address socio-political issues in relation to embodiment, as these are understood through a range of poststructuralist authors. In effect, it documents and problematises the process of transitioning between genders, by arguing that the 'I' that seems in authority in an investigation of its subject position is instead contingent on the availability of social narratives and spaces that a body transverses. In order to explore such contingency, the thesis employs diverse conceptualizations in a genealogical journey through the various discourses that together form a practice that reflects a rhizomatic sensibility of the parallel movement of entanglement between theory and embodiment. Consequently, by elevating the importance of located knowledges within a terrain monopolised by dominant abstractions, the study concludes in an open-ended manner, whilst remaining firmly situated in the value of local and specific, reflexive and performative accounts.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:bl.uk/oai:ethos.bl.uk:689657 |
| Date | January 2015 |
| Creators | Pyrsou, Bubukee Chloe Aggelos |
| Publisher | University of Bristol |
| Source Sets | Ethos UK |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Electronic Thesis or Dissertation |
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