‘Donde Rosh’: the interstitial geographies of ­trans- performance in Mexico City

Abstract

This article looks to Mexico City’s Casa Club Roshell, a travesti house and gender workshop, and the homonymous film Casa Roshell (2017) directed by Camila José Donoso, to examine the interstitial geographies of trans- performance. Framed by a context of gender and sexual violence, the author argues that the interstice, understood as a non-normative space in the city and as an encounter, upturns the double binds that suture trans and travesti life, specifically the binarisms of public/private, inside/outside, and visible/invisible, and serves instead as a space of mediation. The author uses a performance studies lens and contends that attention to the aesthetic practices of trans and travesti subjects, and transfeminist art-makers, provides further insight into the spatial contradictions that frame contemporary queer and trans* geographies.