In a paragraph: Identity is a paradoxical construct, borne of the relationship between time, society, and power, and functioning simultaneously as category and process, constraint and possibility, a site for personal meaning-making and collective world-building. In negotiating identity, people navigate between present performance and future possibility through consciousness developed in dialogue with lived experience, historically-constructed power relations, and collective community practices.
The Paradox
Identity presents us with a fundamental paradox: it functions simultaneously as a tool of liberation and of constraint, as both personal meaning-making and collective world-building. I’ve witnessed how this tension manifests in concrete practices of identity formation in my education work. In Trans/gressive Writers’ Workshop (TWW), through collective engagement with poetry, personal narratives, and cultural references, we as trans poets navigate what Susan Stryker (2008) expressed mathematically: identity operates like an equation where different elements can be substituted for one another while maintaining equivalence. “When you say, ‘I am a Socialist’ or ‘I am a Hindu,’” she explains, “the ‘am’ is like an equal sign, and you are saying that your individual sense of being something (an ‘I’) is described by a category that you consider yourself as belonging to” (p. 27).
Judith Butler (1993) deepens this theoretical framework, characterizing identity as a “necessary error” (p. 21). This resonates for me. “As much as it is necessary to assert political demands through recourse to identity categories,” Butler argues, “it is also impossible to sustain that kind of mastery over the trajectory of those categories within discourse” (p. 19). This impossibility — how to control how identity categories circulate — can create what Nielsen (1990) terms “double vision” — the ability to perceive both dominant and marginalized perspectives simultaneously. In other words, experiencing marginalization leads to the ability to understand another person’s perspective.
Gamson (2000) complicates these ideas in exposing the fundamental contradiction inherent in identity-based research and politics. Identity categories, he contends, are “multiple, contradictory, fragmented, incoherent, disciplinary, disunified, unstable, fluid — hardly the stuff that allows a researcher to confidently run out and study sexual subjects as if they are coherent and available social types” (p. 356).
Contemporary identity politics dances across the tension between theoretical deconstruction and political utility. While Butler recognizes the political necessity of identity claims, and Stryker provides a pragmatic model for understanding identity substitutions, Gamson’s critique observes their inherent limitations. Yet as Eli Kean (2021) notes, of salience for many trans people, “When one’s identity is not intelligible, it is nearly impossible to be recognized as deserving of basic human rights” (p. 272). This observation takes on renewed urgency in marginalized groups’ spaces, where community members collectively develop what Ladson-Billings (2000) terms “alterity” — a perspective advantage arising from not being positioned in the center.
Rather than attempting to resolve these paradoxes, I suggest we embrace their tensions. Rather than viewing identity categories’ instability as a weakness, we might reconceptualize this instability as a source of strength — a way to maintain political efficacy while creating spaces for recognition and belonging exceeding existing categorical frameworks. Through collective practices of meaning-making, whether they be poetry workshops or political organizing, we may engage with identity categories while remaining attentive to their constructed and contingent nature, working toward what Muñoz (2019) describes as “world-making projects” traversing and transgressing the limits of the here and now.
Time, Power, Recognition
Identity formation arises at the intersection of temporal consciousness and social power relations. Jameson (1991) articulates the temporal dimension of this process, arguing that identity manifests through “the effect of a certain temporal unification of past and future with one’s present” (p. 26) — a unification Anzaldúa (2022) deepens through her concept of “la facultad” — “the capacity to see in surface phenomena the meaning of deeper realities, to see the deep structure below the surface” (p. 56). The temporal dimensions of identity formation Jameson identifies align with what Muñoz terms “concrete utopias” — those spaces “relational to historically situated struggles, a collectivity that is actualized or potential” (p. 3).
This theoretical synthesis gains particular salience when considered alongside Gutierrez, Rymes, and Larson’s (1995) conception of identity as “interwoven and intimately connected to historically constructed power relations and spaces that exist both within and between spheres of cultural practice” (p. 447). Together, these perspectives argue identity formation operates not solely as individual temporal experience or social construction, but as ongoing negotiation between historical consciousness and power relations — particularly for marginalized subjects developing what Anzaldúa (2022) terms “a tolerance for ambiguity” (p. 110) in navigating multiple, often contradictory ways of being and knowing.
My work with TWW demonstrates to me how identity formation operates simultaneously as temporal process as well as negotiation of power relations.
When participants engage with trans poetry — connecting themes of visibility to their own lived experience — they demonstrate what Charmaraman et al. (2024) characterize as “a dynamic process, characterized by fluctuating levels of exploration and commitment to an identity as one matures socially and cognitively” (p. 2). Through collective interpretation and meaning-making, workshop members navigate between individual temporal experiences and their shared and discrete social contexts, demonstrating how “social identity contributes to an individual’s self-concept, with robust group identification enhancing self-esteem, a sense of belonging, meaning, purpose, and efficacy in life” (p. 2). As participants bring diverse cultural resources into collective meaning-making — from literary analysis to personal narratives, from subcultural references to shared trans experiences — they demonstrate what Gutierrez et al. (1995) describe “becoming a member of a community of practice” — namely, “a process of developing a particular identity and mode of behavior; through participation in a community’s sociocultural practices, members learn which discourses and forms of participation are valued and not valued by the community” (p. 448).
In TWW, these practices include active listening, embodied support, through gestures and vocalizations, as well as collaborative interpretation emerging through sustained engagement with shared cultural tools.
Intersectional Approaches and Lived Experience: Theorizing Identity at the Margins
Identity formation’s complexity requires of us theoretical frameworks capable of capturing multiple, intersecting dimensions of experience — particularly when examining spaces of collective resistance and transformation. I find an example in Cohen’s (2005) sexual diversity wheel — conceiving of identity as incorporating not only biological sex but also “three psychological components: gender identity (one’s conviction of being male or female); social sex role (femininity and masculinity); and sexual orientation” (p. 68). This framework enters into productive tension with lived experiences of gender expansiveness. When placed in dialogue with Butler’s critique of identity categories, Cohen raises fundamental questions about how we might theorize intersectionality without reifying the very categories we seek to deconstruct.
My own racial and gender identity experience provides me with simultaneous access to privileged and marginalized perspectives, which draws me toward contemporary frameworks of intersectional identity consciousness. Tijerina Revilla and Santillana’s (2014) theorization of Jotería identity/consciousness demonstrates how marginalized identities can be “rooted in fun, laughter, and radical queer love” while remaining “embedded in a Mexican, Latin American, Indigenous, and African diasporic past and present” (p. 174); I find in trans literary spaces a similar capacity to foster joy and creative expression while engaging identity formation’s political dimensions.
As a first year doctoral student, I find the traditional positivistic academic social science stance of neutral observer to prove inadequate when examining spaces explicitly challenging dominant epistemological frameworks. I’m interested in developing research approaches recognizing how marginalized communities themselves develop theoretical frameworks through engagement with lived experience. Thus far, I’ve incorporated my work with TWW into my qualitative academic research in UC Berkeley’s School of Education. In researching my own community, I center what Gutiérrez et al. (2017) term “relational equity” — a symmetrical, equitable relationship between researcher and researched. I’ve written on the ways TWW demonstrates how joy, pleasure, and radical love function as sites of resistance. It’s wonderful.
TWW demonstrates how the very instability of identity categories, reinforced by Gamson’s (2000) critique, offer possibilities for resistance and transformation. Through what Case and Hunter (2014) term “narrative identity work” (p. 908), participants use counternarratives to challenge dominant power structures while simultaneously creating alternative spaces for recognition and belonging.
Transformative identity practices’ potential emerges most clearly in spaces challenging explicitly multiple forms of oppression. As Tijerina Revilla and Santillana’s (2014) articulation of Jotería consciousness demonstrates ways identity categories can be simultaneously embraced and transformed through collective practice, TWW demonstrates how trans literary spaces foster both personal expression and political resistance.
References
Anzaldúa, G. (2022). Borderlands / La Frontera: The new mestiza (5th ed.). Aunt Lute Books.
Butler, J. (1993). Critically queer. GLQ: A Journal of Lesbian and Gay Studies, 1(1), 17–32. https://doi.org/10.1215/10642684-1-1-17
Case, A. D., & Hunter, C. D. (2014). Counterspaces and the narrative identity work of offender‐labeled African American youth. Journal of Community Psychology, 42(8), 907–923. https://doi.org/10.1002/jcop.21661
Charmaraman, L., Zhang, A., Wang, K., & Chen, B. (2024). Sexual minorities and loneliness: Exploring sexuality through social media and Gender–Sexuality Alliance (GSA) supports. International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health, 21(3), 300. https://doi.org/10.3390/ijerph21030300
Cohen, S. (2005). Liberationists, clients, activists: Queer youth organizing, 1966–2003. Journal of Gay & Lesbian Issues in Education, 2(3), 67–86. https://doi.org/10.1300/J367v02n03_06
Gamson, J. (2000). Sexualities, queer theory, and qualitative research. In N. K. Denzin & Y. S. Lincoln (Eds.), Handbook of qualitative research (2. ed.). Sage.
Gutierrez, K., Rymes, B., & Larson, J. (1995). Script, counterscript, and underlife in the classroom: James Brown versus Brown v. Board of Education. Harvard Educational Review, 65(3), 445–472. https://doi.org/10.17763/haer.65.3.r16146n25h4mh384
Jameson, F. (1991). Postmodernism, or, the cultural logic of late capitalism. Duke University Press.
Kean, E. (2021). Advancing a critical trans framework for education. Curriculum Inquiry, 51(2), 261–286. https://doi.org/10.1080/03626784.2020.1819147
Ladson-Billings, G. (2000). Racialized discourses and ethnic epistemologies. In N. Denzin & Y. Lincoln (Eds.), Handbook of qualitative research (pp. 257–277). Sage Publications.
Muñoz, J. E. (2019). Cruising utopia: The then and there of queer futurity (10th Anniversary edition). New York University press.
Nielsen, J. M. (1990). Introduction. In J. M. Nielsen (Ed.), Feminist research methods: Exemplary readings in the social sciences. Westview Press.
Stryker, S. (2008). Transgender history. Seal Press : Distributed by Publishers Group West.