Abstract
This seminar proposes an epistemological reflection on identity, sexuality, body and designation of trans subjects from poststructuralist gender studies perspective. What is your name? Legal name, certificate name, given name, nom de guerre, stage name, job name, forename, surname, nickname, alias, first name, family name, social name - multiple classifications for individuals and bodies. Naming involves characterizing, customizing and distinguishing subjects. Gender identity is crossed by the nominal choice. Once detached from anatomical sex, gender identity is determined, among multiple factors, by speech repetition (Butler, 2003).

Trans bodies go beyond the standard hegemonic man/penis and woman/vagina requiring, therefore, a designation dissident of the binary modelled on biological ontology (Louro, 2004). Consequently, it is possible to think the (social) designation of trans as a strategy of transition between gender and sex, construed as a gender identification mechanism, since it produces other forms of intelligibility re bodies and sexualities. Trans people have two or more first names, one that was assigned at birth, which the dominant culture sought to normalize and the name signed at the beginning of dissident subjectivation process. Trans names do not indicate  membership to the other sex, rather denote a process of identification, a living fiction that resists standardization (Preciado, 2014).

Nota biográfica

Cláudio Alves -  PhD candidate in Psychology at PUC Minas/Brazil with a doctoral internship at CES/UC, MA in Education, Specialist in Affective - Sexual Education and a degree in Biological Sciences. Lecturer and member of the Centre for Gender and Sexual Diversity of the Municipal Secretary for Education of Belo Horizonte/Brazil, which she conducts research on issues of sexuality and gender relations in interface with the education universe. Participates in the development, implementation and monitoring of public policies for the inclusion of sexual diversity in areas of school life. Fellow researcher at the FIP - Incentive Fund for Research at PUC Minas and Full Researcher at GPFEM - Interdisciplinary Group for Feminist Research of PUC Minas.

Note: Cláudio Alves is currently undertaking a PhD Internship at CES between March and June 2015 under tsupervision of Ana Cristina Santos. 
 

Activity within : INTIMATE - Citizenship, Care and Choice: The Micropolitics of Intimacy in Southern Europe  and the Democracy, Citizenship and Law  Research Group (DECIDe)