On Moving Across Oneself, Collective Identity, Homo-Nationalis, and the Trans-Subject.

Abstract

This paper contemplates two notions that I have been exploring in relation to the frontier between subjects and collectives. The first is what I call homo-nationalis, the subject formed by and along the organizing principles of nationalism. This subject, I argue, reflects the ideology and reality of the nation-state. It is animated by its imaginaries and unsettled by its fragilities in the deepest psychological sense. The second is what I call the trans-subject. I use this notion inspired by, and wishing to extend the sense of, transing as it pertains to trans-gendering to other categories of subjecthood, aiming to capture the subject's potential to re-form the precepts of subjectivity as it is prescribed for them. I engage these two notions as I reflect on my (countertransference) experience while working with an individual moving across various collective-social frontiers in the process of a religious conversion.