Transformisms. Heterotopia in the Dressing Room Mirror. The Case of Alicante (Spain)

Abstract

Starting from the intertwining of the ideas exposed by J. Butler -in Gender Trouble on the performance of the transvestite and, those of M. Foucault, who defends that the space of the transvestite performance is heterotopic, generating a place-other the party room, the theater, the cabaret and the dressing room, this article aims to emphasize the centrality of the dressing room mirror in the creation of such heterotopic spaces. To achieve this objective, we will use, first of all, a Visual Sociology "with" photographs taken by the photographer Jorge Linares of the most important transformers of the province of Alicante (Spain) at the moment they are in front of the mirrors of the heterotopic space of the dressing rooms. And, secondly, we will apply a social hermeneutic through the analysis of the content of the images that interprets their meaning. All this allows us to conclude that the mirror is not only like the inert witness of the transformation of the trans person, but the very key that makes the creation of her character possible; it is not only an object that returns an image, but a door to a space-other in which Alicia enters and in which, possibly, she also dilutes herself.