Triangulating Trans Tidalectics: Decolonizing gendered Embodiment in Chantal Spitz'S "Joséphine"

Abstract:This article proposes a close reading of Chantal T. Spitz's short story "Joséphine" in tandem with an engagement with Polynesian orality and tattooing as both metaphors for bodily inscription and as integral to the socially-determined process of gendered identity formation. The author demonstrates how Mā'ohi non-binary gender embodiment is inherently relational and draws upon long histories of oral storytelling and cultural traditions of triangulation. These relational practices of narration, voice, and movement provide counternarratives to Western biomedical utilitarian theories of gender transition. In the short story, Western definitions of gender transition/reassignment and Mā'ohi notions of socially-determined and locally-rooted constellations of gendered self-actualization act simultaneously on the site of the protagonist's gendered body. By adapting Kamau Brathwaite's concept of tidalectics, the author suggests that these influences come together in aqueous rhythm in a "trans tidalectics" that disrupt the telos at the heart of Western gender transition, often historically determined by medical or surgical intervention.