Identities, Subjectivities, Selves

The concepts of identity, self, and the subject (sometimes used interchangeably) are central to the work of the current study. The Enlightenment understanding of the individual was as: a coherent, stable, consciousness; possessing agency, autonomy and rationality; producing language and meaning. More recently, poststructuralist theory revealed subjectivity and the self to be: fluid, fleeting, fragmented; socially constructed in an ongoing process of formation; produced by language and discourses and systems of meaning; determined by and dependent on historical, economic, and cultural contexts.

The concept of subjectivity in poststructuralist theory focuses on the construction of the subject and how individuals situate themselves in relation to power in general - not just gendered power. Identity is understood to be the transitory product of multiple and competing discourses, emphasising the unstable, mutable, and fragmented nature of the contemporary self (Hall, 1996). Scholarship on subjectivities based on the work of Foucault, highlights how subject positions are constructed through discourse, and that subordination does not necessarily signify compliance but may exert its own resistance, thus supporting the possibility of agency and providing a challenge to inequities of gender and sexuality (Halperin, 1995; Butler 1997).

Following Foucault (1978), Butler (1997) analyses how individual agency is subjected to, but also develops out of, the structural societal forces of laws, material constraints, and social conventions. In the Psychic Life of Power Butler examines how the subject is constituted, dominated and reliant upon the practices of power: ‘Subjection consists precisely in this fundamental dependency on a discourse we never chose but that, paradoxically initiates and sustains our agency (Butler,1997:2). Gender is an external imposition that subjectifies the individual within a repressive framework. All forms of identity and identification (including gender) are produced by subjection naming and categorisation is a form of symbolic domination and violence, the main function of which is the maintenance of subjectivity which is the process of subjection (Butler, 1997).

Constructing identities, reclaiming subjectivities, reconstructing selves: an interpretative study of transgender practices Scotland

79 Discourses that create gendered subjectivities are produced by social institutions through practices, usually with active compliance on the part of the subject. Within this framework the gender binary is reproduced through the reinforcement of normative gender identification and behaviour in a wide range of social practices - such as childhood games, ways of dressing, cultural rituals. Non-recognition and non-identification can relegate an individual to an abject state undermining subjectivity and agency. The current study found that such a process had occurred with some of the research participants during their formative years.

3.9 Conclusion

The theories discussed in this chapter provide an insight into an understanding of how the gender order is made possible through the social interactive order. Their applicability to the analysis of transgender is explored in different ways in the data chapters. The emphasis in the current study is on a socially constructed approach to gender, based on an understanding that individuals construct and reconstruct their identities through performances, reiterated practices, interactions, interpretations, and symbolic exchanges with other individuals. Within this framework, a broad generic approach was adopted that emphasised common aspects of the theories discussed.

Theories of gender as performance and as performativity were traced throughout this chapter. Ethnomethodology and symbolic interactionist theory produced foundational scholarship on the accomplishment and intersubjective performance of gender, that allowed for the work of Goffman then Butler. Ethnomethodology was examined as an historical foundation for other theories of performativity because of its emphasis on the practice and doing of gender, the attribution, acquisition, accomplishment and managed achievement of gender identity, the production of gender through reiterated action and social interaction, as well as the emphasis on agency and reflexivity. All the theories discussed here emphasise how the reiterative performance of daily actions, habits and practices, informs and creates gender. Demonstrated through the notion of gender performance and performativity, gender is something that is done or performed, a socially constructed product of human interaction. These theoretical approaches are applied in the data analysis chapters.

Constructing identities, reclaiming subjectivities, reconstructing selves: an interpretative study of transgender practices Scotland

80 Poststructuralist theory is useful in its investigation into the practices, meanings and discourses which produce transgendered subjectivities, identities, selves. Poststructural interpretation of gender identity is as a cultural not a natural category, and postmodern anti-essentialism argues against the modernist idea of an authentic self. Gender is a performative rather than an ontological category: something you do rather than something you are. The ability to perform multiple identities and present a self that elicits the approval of a particular audience is an aspect of this. A feature of postructuralist and queer readings, is that the individual is not an autonomous subject with an innate or essential identity. The ‘self’ is a socially constructed product of language and of specific discourses. Individuals may believe that they are uniquely themselves, for example many of the research participants expressed the desire to ‘just be me’, but this sense of individuality and autonomy is a social construct rather than a natural circumstance. The ability to think of the self as having an identity is determined by a cultural network of discourses. However, a researcher’s perception that identity is defined by discourses does not necessarily account for a research participant’s personal goal of their ideal life.

There are areas of engagement between all the theories outlined in this chapter:

symbolic interactionism, ethnomethodology, performance theory, practice theory, poststructuralism, queer theory, all emphasize the doing, practice, performance of gender. What is taken from each of the theories discussed here is their efficacy as constructs within which to evaluate the empirical findings of the current study, and for analysing how transgender identities are produced through reiterated social practices and performativity. The theories outlined in this chapter argue that gender, like identity, is a social construct rather than an intrinsic truth. Women and men are not naturally defined categories of being, based on psychological or biological differences. The self is a site of doing both masculinity and femininity. Gender categories are not distinct entities but social products, their meaning is constructed in and through interaction. The theories of gender performativity have obvious implications for the practices of transgender, and the idea of whether performance is credited or discredited for the ability to ‘pass’ in the acquired gender. Transgender people who wish to ‘pass’ or be accepted as ‘authentic’, find they have to learn a different set of practices, hexis, bodily

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81 performances of self, as dictated by accepted values of heteronormativity in Western culture. For example, transwomen may feel they need to learn increased emotional expression, and transmen inscrutability, thus reinforcing stereotypical performances of masculinity and femininity that a more radical transgender politics would attempt to transgress and subvert.

This chapter has provided a conceptual, theoretical structure for the Research Methods Chapter, and the analysis of the empirical data in the chapters that follow.

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