Binary Gender Structures in Crisis: Semiotic Forms of Identity and Practices of Interdiction of Cisheteronormative Norms

• Grant number: 25/15428-3
• Support Opportunities: Scholarships in Brazil - Post-Doctoral
• Start date: January 01, 2026
• End date: December 31, 2027
• Field of knowledge: Linguistics, Literature and Arts - Linguistics - Linguistic Theory and Analysis
• Principal Investigator: Matheux Nogueira Schwartzmann
• Grantee: Sara Wagner Pimenta Gonçalves Junior
• Host Institution: Faculdade de Ciências e Letras (FCL). Universidade Estadual Paulista (UNESP). Campus de Araraquara. Araraquara , SP, Brazil

Abstract

The present Post-Doctoral project proposes a semiotic investigation into the contemporary crisis of binary gender structures, examining how identity is articulated through semiotic forms and what practices of interdiction emerge in the face of cisheteronormative norms. Starting from the premise that gender is not an essential given, but a construction forged in and by the field of the Other, mediated by language and discourse, this study will be based on the articulation of the metapsychologies of Jacques Lacan and Donald Winnicott (see Lacan, 2008; Kirshner, 2009, respectively). At the core of this analysis will be an understanding of the semiotic practices (Fontanille, 2008) inherent in the constitution and renegotiation of identity, as well as an investigation of the notion of text and the levels of relevance (Schwartzmann, 2018) in which gender manifests. The analysis will focus on how Lacanian concepts - such as the Name-of-the-Father, feminine jouissance (not-all), and the constitutive role of the unconscious discourse - unveil the symbolic and structural nature of identity, unlinking it from biological determinisms and revealing the semiotic positions that subjects can occupy. Concomitantly, Winnicottian formulations of true and false self, potential space, and transitionality will offer a crucial developmental perspective to explore the fluidity and complexity of the experience of gender as a semiotic phenomenon in flux, which manifests from the practical scene to the form of life (Schwartzmann, 2013). The project aims to identify and analyze the semiotic forms (signifiers, discourses, narratives) that both construct and reinforce binarities, as well as those that operate in their interdiction, allowing for the emergence of non-binary and transgender subjectivities. The objective is to map how these symbolic forms are negotiated and resignified in the contemporary gender experience, and the implications of these ruptures for psychoanalytic clinics, social theory, and public policies in the Brazilian context. (AU)