Hermeneutic Limits; or, When Not to Theorize: Notes for Interpreting Our Phoenix by Trans Indigenous Mexican-American Composer Mari Esabel Valverde

Trans composers, like other people marginalized by race, gender, or sexuality, are often caught in the trap of identity constructs, which both envoice minorities and also pigeonhole their possible range of musical expression. In this essay on US-based transgender Indigenous Mexican choral composer Mari Esabel Valverde, I let my consideration of “trans music theory” be guided by her view that writers have sensationalized trans identity, and that while she celebrates trans lives in her choral work Our Phoenix (2016), she is not attempting to create music that “sounds” transgender. With Valverde in mind, I construct an intersectional interpretive framework that calls for various kind of limits (the limits of queering, of authorial subjectivity, and of the notion of “unconscious” expression of identity) and proposes essential conditions (the centrality of the voices, bodies, and musical structures of trans composers) that create an ethical environment for a compassionate trans music theory to emerge.