The embodied musicality of hetero-cisgender violence: an analysis strategy to study mental health problems from a narrative-dialogic perspective

ABSTRACT This paper proposes a narrative-dialogic analysis strategy to study the relationship between gender/sex identity and mental health problems in the context of heteronormativity. This strategy is called listening to the embodied musicality of hetero-cisgender violence. Inspired by a narrative-dialogic theory of gender/sex identity development and applying methodological tools from dialogic and language-based mental health research, a novel strategy to analyze the relationship between gender/sex identity and mental health is developed. Data from a study conducted in Santiago de Chile with non-heterosexual masculinities is drawn on to exemplify this method. The analysis strategy has the capacity to study narrative meaning-making practices without reproducing traditional divides within the social sciences, such as the mind body split. The codes developed through the analysis strategy address the relationship between gender/sex identity and mental health, by highlighting the embodied emotional effects that hetero-cisgender violence and resistance against it have on narrative meaning-making practices. The analysis strategy presents a novel approach that addresses the embodied emotional texture of self-narratives, as opposed to more traditional dimensions commonly used in the study of the mental health of non-heterosexual people.