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Abstract

Drawing on queer and feminist scholarship and anthropological studies on death this article aims to explore the Mexican third gender muxes’ negotiations of local temporalities of life highly connected to heteronormativity and reproduction. The article argues that muxes’ life course is structured in two central processes both connected to death. In the first process muxes negotiate a position in the family by taking on the role as caretaker of their parents in their death. In the second life process, beginning with their parents’ death, muxes seek to maintain a position within the family through rituals connecting them to their parents while also grasping opportunities to structure alternative temporalities of life. In their own death muxes are challenged with receiving care not having children and therefore produce alternative organizations around death and sickness. The overall argument of the article is thus that not only family but also death is heteronormatively marked and that muxes, given their position outside of these norms, must renegotiate both family and death and create an alternative muxe time for living as well as for dying.