Text: El Teatro Maya como travestismo cultural. Una lectura performativa y descolonizadora de su arquitectura

My text “El Teatro Maya como travestismo cultural. Una lectura performativa y descolonizadora de su arquitectura” in Spanish is part of extravío #8 (2015) “Visualidades descoloniales: producciones desde América Latina“.

This text emulates the form and structure of a dramatic script in which a guided tour takes place at the Mayan Theatre, in order to show the ways in which the culturally different and the culturally exotic inhabit architecture. It is addressed from a specific angle —that of cultural travestism— and in relation to a particular architectural, cultural and historical context: the Mayan Theater, which opened in 1927 in Downtown Los Angeles in California, USA. Through focusing on the concepts of performativity and drag of Judith Butler, “cultural travestism” of Jossianna Arroyo, and the “coloniality of seeing” of Joaquín Barriendos, the processes of appropriation, exoticization, incorporation, commodification and consumption of imageries belonging to modernity/coloniality of the Mayan Theater are analyzed.