The Master's thesis presents a qualitative empirical study of the position of non-cisgender individuals in the Slovenian postsocialist context, focusing on the question of non-cisgender identity and/or subjectivity as it is embedded within the capitalist mode of production – a topic that remains largely unexplored in the Slovenian social context. Based on Anglo-American Transgender Marxism, the thesis conceptualizes non-cisgender individuals through the Marxist concept of labor power and analyzes non-cisgender existence through the concept of reproductive labor under capitalism. The study focuses on three research perspectives: 1) identification of the specific needs of non-cisgender individuals; 2) analysis of the organization of the social reproduction of non-cisgender labor power; and 3) analysis of how non-cisgender individuals perceive the reproductive labor necessary for their own social reproduction. The thesis examines the insights of Transgender Marxism within the Slovenian postsocialist context based on 5 narrative interviews conducted with non-cisgender individuals in Slovenia. Through the first research perspective, the study finds that the needs of non-cisgender labor power in the Slovenian social context can be understood through: 1) mastery over the encounter, through which non-cisgender individuals manage their gender expression across different social contexts; and 2) the formation of non-cisgender subjectivity through processes of reciprocal recognition within non-cisgender communities. The study further identifies the key specificity of the social reproduction of non-cisgender labor power: the inaccessibility of social sites that provide the reproductive labor necessary for its reproduction. Through the second research perspective, the study finds that the capitalist nuclear family, which functions as the primary site of the social reproduction of (non-cisgender) labor power in the Slovenian postsocialist context, often does not provide the social reproduction of non-cisgender individuals and/or even actively hinders it. On the other hand, non-cisgender communities—primarily in the form of NGOs and the informal social relations emerging from them—serve as key sites for meeting non-cisgender-specific needs, while they only partially address the survival needs of non-cisgender people. Based on the question of (in)accessibility of non-cisgender communities, the study further identifies various life situations in which the material security of non-cisgender individuals in Slovenia and the expression of their gender non-normativity become mutually exclusive. Through the third research perspective, the study reveals specific practices of non-cisgender individuals in Slovenia that transcend 1) the ideological assumptions of binary gender embedded within the capitalist mode of production (through solidarity-based support as a form of social resistance); and 2) key sites of unpaid and privatized reproductive labor (through the rejection of the capitalist nuclear family form) while 3) simultaneously highlighting the fact that non-cisgender existence is not inherently (anti-)capitalist. By addressing these questions, the thesis contributes a materialist analysis of the social position of non-cisgender individuals in Slovenia using a Marxist theoretical framework. This perspective represents a relatively new approach to the study of non-cisgender identities, which is why these research questions have remained largely unexplored, particularly within the Slovenian social context.
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