Cover not available
Article published In:
Transnational discourses of peripheral sexualities in the Hispanic world
Edited by Michael J. Horswell and Nuria Godón
[Journal of Language and Sexuality 5:2] 2016
► pp. 222–249

“The museum, cross-dressed as a museum”

Neo-Baroque language and peripheral activist aesthetics in El museo travesti del Perú

| Florida Atlantic University, Boca Raton, USA

This article explicates the discursive strategies deployed by the curator of the Museo travesti de Perú (2008), philosopher, activist, and artist Giuseppe Campuzano (1969–2013), to explore theoretical intersections of national identity and globalization(s) and to appreciate a testimonial, Neo-Baroque, peripheral aesthetic that challenges and “decolonizes” the cultural history of peripheral genders and sexualities in Latin American countries like Peru. Through an analysis of the museum’s visual codes in its works of art and a discursive interpretation of the narratives framing those pieces, this essay demonstrates how the Museo travesti is an exaltation of difference and a critical agent for a citizenship of inclusion — a testimonial agent that activates and circulates works of art in order to not only promote knowledge of reality, but to transform that reality through effects of decolonization from the national periphery.

Keywords: decolonization, travesti, Severo Sarduy, Giuseppe Campuzano, Neo-Baroque, Latin America, Peru, testimonio, peripheral sexuality, museum, transgender, critical discourse analysis
Published online: 29 September 2016
DOI logo
https://doi.org/10.1075/jls.5.2.05hor
References
Anderson, Benedict
1991 [1983] Imagined Communities: On the Origin and Spread of Nationalism. London: Verso.Google Scholar
Bennett, Tony
1995 The Birth of the Museum: History, Theory, Politics. New York: Routledge.Google Scholar
Beverley, John
2008  Testimonio, subalternity, and narrative authority. In A Companion to Latin American Literature and Culture, Sara Castro-Klaren (ed), 571–583. Malden, MA: Blackwell. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Bhabha, Homi
1994 The Location of Culture. London: Routledge.Google Scholar
Boellstorff, Tom, Cabral, Mauro, Cárdenas, Micha, Cotton, Trystan, Stanley, Eric A., Young, Kalaniopua & Aizura, Aren Z
. August 2014 Decolonizing transgender: A roundtable discussion. TSQ: Transgender Studies Quarterly 1 (3): 419–439. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Bourdieu, Pierre, Darbel, Alain & Schnapper, Dominique
1990 The Love of Art: European Art Museums and Their Public. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press.Google Scholar
Buntinx, Gustavo
2013 Qué es y qué quiere ser micromuseo (“al fondo hay sitio”). [URL] (May 5, 2015)
Campuzano, Giuseppe
2008 Museo Travesti del Perú. Lima: Institute of Development Studies.Google Scholar
2009a Contemporary travesti encounters with gender and sexuality in Latin America. Development 521: 75–83. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
2009b Giuseppe Campuzano y El Museo Travesti del Perú. Interview by Lawrence La Fountain-Stokes. [URL] (April 23, 2015)
Deleuze, Gilles & Guattari, Felix
1986 Kafka: Toward a Minor Literature. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.Google Scholar
Duncan, Carol
1995 Civilizing Rituals: Inside Public Art Museums. London: Routledge.Google Scholar
Fernandez, James W
2000 Peripheral wisdom. In Signifying Identities: Anthropological Perspectives on Boundaries and Contested Identities, Anthony P. Cohen (ed), 117–144. New York: Routledge.Google Scholar
Foucault, Michel
1990 [1978] History of Sexuality, Vol. 11. New York: Vintage Books.Google Scholar
Hooper-Greenhill, Eilean
2000 Museums and the Interpretation of Visual Culture. London: Routledge.Google Scholar
Horswell, Michael J
2005 Decolonizing the Sodomite: Queer Tropes of Sexuality in Colonial Andean Culture. Austin: University of Texas Press.Google Scholar
2013 Baroque and Neo-Baroque in the Americas. In Oxford Bibliographies in Latin American Studies, Ben Vinson (ed). New York: Oxford University Press. [URL] (May 31, 2016)Google Scholar
Lewis, Vek
2010 Crossing Sex and Gender in Latin America. New York: Palgrave Macmillan. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Lezama Lima, José
1969 La Expresión Americana. Madrid: Alianza Editorial.Google Scholar
Link, Daniel
2010 Historia americana. [URL] (May 4, 2015)Google Scholar
Longaker, Jacob R. & Haider-Markel, Donald P
2014 Transgender policy in Latin American countries: An overview and comparative perspective on framing. In Transgender Rights and Politics: Groups, Issue Framing, and Policy Adoption. Jami K. Taylor & Donald P. Haider-Markel (eds), 49–79. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press.Google Scholar
López, Miguel A
2013 The Museo Travesti del Perú and the histories we deserve. [URL] (May 5, 2015)
Namaste, Viviane K
2000 Invisible Lives: The Erasure of Transsexual and Transgendered People. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.Google Scholar
Perlongher, Néstor
2008 Prosa Plebeya: Ensayos 1980–1992. Buenos Aires: Ediciones Colihue.Google Scholar
Sarduy, Severo
1968 Escritura/Travestismo. Mundo Nuevo 201: 72–74.Google Scholar
1972 El barroco y neobarroco. In América Latina en su Literatura, César Fernández Moreno (ed), 167–184. México: Siglo XX/UNESCO.Google Scholar
1982 La Simulación. Caracas: Monte Ávila Editores.Google Scholar
1989 Written on a Body. New York: Lumen Books.Google Scholar
Sifuentes-Jáuregui, Ben
2002 Transvestism, Masculinity, and Latin American Literature. New York: Palgrave. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
2014 The Avowal of Difference: Queer Latino American Narratives. Albany: State University of New York Press.Google Scholar
Tuck, Eve & Young, K. Wayne
2012 Decolonization is not a metaphor. Decolonization: Indigeneity, Education, and Society 1 (1): 1–40.Google Scholar
Viteri, Maria Amelia, Serrano, José Fernando & Vidal-Ortiz, Salvador
(eds) 2011 ¿Cómo se Piensa lo “Queer” en América Latina? (special issue: Iconos: Revista de Ciencias Sociales 39.1). Quito: FLACSO Ecuador.Google Scholar
Walker, Charles F
2014 The Tupac Amaru Rebellion. Cambridge: Belknap Press. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Zamora, Louise Parkinson & Kaup, Monika
(eds) 2010 Baroque New Worlds: Representation, Transculturation, Counterconquest. Durham, NC: Duke University Press.Google Scholar