Trans/gender sincerities: A dialogic analysis of four young people’s embodied subjectivities

This thesis combines dialogic theory, intersectionality, and transfeminism in an interpretive case study of how four young people make sense of and negotiate their trans/gender embodied subjectivities. Between January and August 2014, I gathered data using narrative, walking, and art-based interviews, and a focus group. Using dialogical data analysis, I construct three layers of argument that cumulatively contend trans/gender sincerities – subjective realities – are multi-voiced and emergent in dialogic relations with others. First, I interpret the multiple ways participants’ sense their embodied selves, and how they negotiate processes of (mis)gendering. Second, I analyze the contested meanings of trans and cis within participants’ utterances, emphasizing the transformative potential of espousing multiple trans/gender sincerities. Third, I conduct an intersectional analysis of class, race, settler colonialism, sexuality and gender, arguing that trans/gender sincerity is ‘not enough.’ Rather, it must coincide with a critique of how intersecting systems of power mutually constitute trans/gender embodied subjectivities.