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Graduation Term
Summer 2025
Degree Name
Master of Arts (MA)
Department
Department of English
Committee Chair
Gabriel Gudding
Committee Member
Ray Levy
Abstract
This thesis intervenes in common transgender narratives of self-becoming and critical disability studies rhetorics, with the critical intention of interrogating how these genric practices become entangled with hegemonic conventions around “reality” and the expected articulation of uncomplicated pride or well-being. Each chapter employs a mix of creative and critical forms following Gloria Anzaldúa’s practice of autohistoria-theoría, reflecting on the relationship between theory-writing and the theorist’s life, and specifically how transgender subjectivity and authority hinges on the manner and skill of the individual’s self-articulation. In this, the thesis is structured around a series of narrative “stages”: (1) the neurodivergent person as framed within psychiatric frameworks; (2) an introduction to the project and its major figures; (3) a series of personal and epistemic complications, and the author’s negotiations in the present; (4) a history with trans embodiment, as unearthed from the author’s archives; (5) a struggle against nihilism; (6) external constraints upon desired gendered expressions, and a reaffirmation of the author’s commitment to his own life.
Access Type
Thesis-ISU Access Only
Recommended Citation
Yuen, Void, "Naming My Selves: Psychotic Rhetorics and Nonbinary Reality" (2025). Theses and Dissertations. 2204.
https://ir.library.illinoisstate.edu/etd/2204
DOI
https://doi.org/10.30707/ETD.1763755358.62307