Trans-ing Cosmopolitanism: Precarious Passages and Transgressive Intimacies in Isabel Sandoval’s Lingua Franca (original) (raw)

This paper explores the intersections of transgendered migration, alternative citizenship, and cosmopolitanism through the lens of trans theory. By analyzing Isabel Sandoval’s Lingua Franca (2019), this article first discusses the portrayal of the vulnerabilities of undocumented and trans im/migrant lives in Trump-era America. From there, I analyze how Olivia carves her way out of her struggles to disrupt and challenge notions of cosmopolitanism that are bounded not just by class and racial divides but also by dominant hetero- and cisnormative discourses on citizenship and belonging. In my reading of the film, I argue that Sandoval performs a trans-ing of cosmopolitanism by rethinking notions of intimate and sexual citizenship along the lines of ethics of care that expands what belonging in the world might mean from the perspective of those in the fringes of intersecting hierarchies of class, race, ethnicity, gender, and sexuality.