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Queers in State Socialism: Cruising 1970s Poland PDF

147 Pages·2020·2.189 MB·English
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Queers in State Socialism This short collection of essays engages with queer lives and activism in 1970s Poland, illustrating discourses about queerness and a trajectory of the struggle for rights which clearly sets itself apart, and differs from a Western- based narrative of liberation. Contributors to this volume paint an uneven landscape of queer life in state-socialist Poland in the 1970s and early 1980s. They turn to oral history interviews and archival sources which include police files, personal letters, literature and criticism, writings by sexuality experts, and documentation of artistic practice. Unlike most of Europe, Poland did not penalize same- sex acts, although queer people were commonly treated with suspicion and vilified. But while many homosexual men and most lesbian women felt invisible and alone, some had the sense of belonging to a fledgling community. As they looked to the West, hoping for a sexual revolution that never quite arrived, they also preserved informal queer institutions dating back to the prewar years and used them to their advantage. Medical experts conversed with peers across the Iron Curtain but developed their own “socialist” methods and successfully prompted the state to recognize transgender rights, even as that state remained determined to watch and intimidate homosexual men. Literary critics, translators, and art historians began debating—and they debate still—how to read gestures defying gender and sexual norms: as an aspect of some global “gay” formation or as stemming from locally grounded queer traditions. Emphasizing the differences of Poland’s LGBT history from that of the “global” West while underscoring the existing lines of communication between queer subjects on either side of the Iron Curtain, this book will be of key interest to scholars and students in gender and sexuality studies, social history, and politics. Tomasz Basiuk is Associate Professor at the University of Warsaw. He authored Exposures: American Gay Men’s Life Writing since Stonewall (2013), a monograph on the novelist William Gaddis (published in Polish in 2003); co-edited, with Dominika Ferens and Tomasz Sikora, three volumes of essays on queer studies: Odmiany odmieńca/A Queer Mixture (2002), P arametry pożądania (2006), and Out Here (2006); guest-edited a special journal issue on gender and sexuality (Dialogue and Universalism XX.5–6, 2010); and co-edited, with Krystyna Mazur and Sylwia Kuźma-Marowska, The American Uses of History. Essays on Public Memory (2011). He is the co-founder of the online queer studies journal InterAlia (since 2006), a former Fulbright visiting scholar at the CUNY Graduate Center, and a Research Fellow at Indiana University at Bloomington. Basiuk served as Principal Investigator in the HERA-funded “Cruising the 1970s. Unearthing Pre-HIV/AIDS Queer Sexual Cultures.” Jędrzej Burszta holds a PhD in cultural studies from the SWPS University in Warsaw (2019). He is Affiliated Faculty Member at the American Studies Center, University of Warsaw. His research interests include ethnography, queer theory, American speculative fiction, and popular culture. In 2015, together with Zuzanna Grębecka, he authored an ethnography of personal memories of the Soviet Army stationing in Legnica during state socialism in Poland, entitled Mówiono “druga Moskwa.” Wspomnienia legniczan o stacjonowaniu Armii Radzieckiej w latach 1945–1993 (They Called it “Little Moscow.” Memories of Soviet Army Stationing in Legnica in the Years 1945–1933 ). He is also a novelist and writes for the theatre. LGBTQ Histories Queers in State Socialism Cruising 1970s Poland Edited by Tomasz Basiuk and Jędrzej Burszta A Practical Guide to Searching LGBTQIA Historical Records Norena Shopland F or more information about this series, please visit: www.routledge.com/ LGBTQ-Histories/book-series/LGBTQH Queers in State Socialism Cruising 1970s Poland Edited by Tomasz Basiuk and Jędrzej Burszta F irst published 2021 by Routledge 2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN a nd by Routledge 5 2 Vanderbilt Avenue, New York, NY 10017 R outledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business © 2021 selection and editorial matter, Tomasz Basiuk and Jędrzej Burszta; individual chapters, the contributors The right of Tomasz Basiuk and Jędrzej Burszta to be identified as the authors of the editorial material, and of the authors for their individual chapters, has been asserted in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers. Trademark notice : Product or corporate names may be trademarks or registered trademarks, and are used only for identification and explanation without intent to infringe. British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data A catalog record for this book has been requested ISBN: 978-0-367-56334-9 (hbk) ISBN: 978-1-003-09733-4 (ebk) Typeset in Times New Roman by Apex CoVantage, LLC Contents List of contributors ix Acknowledgements xii 1 Introduction: queers in the People’s Republic of Poland: an uneven landscape 1 TOMASZ BASIUK AND JĘDRZEJ BURSZTA PART I Socialities and their literary models 9 2 Three circles of male homosexual life in state-socialist Poland 11 JĘDRZEJ BURSZTA 3 One’s younger self in personal testimony and literary translation 23 TOMASZ BASIUK 4 “Transgression has become a fact”: a Gothic genealogy of queerness in the People’s Republic of Poland 33 BŁAŻEJ WARKOCKI 5 Queens and faggots, Petites Folles et Pédales: representation of Communist-era Polish queers in translations of Lubiewo (Lovetown) 45 MATEUSZ WOJCIECH KRÓL viii Contents PART II Expert discourses 57 6 Diagnosing transsexualism, diagnosing society: the blurred genres of Polish sexology in the 1970s and 1980s 59 MARIA DĘBIŃSKA 7 “Treatment is possible and effective?”: Polish sexologists and queers in correspondence in late state socialism 74 AGNIESZKA KOŚCIAŃSKA 8 “No authorities are interested in us, no one interferes in our affairs?”: policing homosexual men in the People’s Republic of Poland 88 KAROLINA MORAWSKA PART III Queer intelligibility and unintelligibility 103 9 “No one talked about it”: the paradoxes of lesbian identity in pre-1989 Poland 105 MAGDALENA STAROSZCZYK 10 Queer (in)visibility in the art of the People’s Republic of Poland 116 KAROL RADZISZEWSKI AND WOJCIECH SZYMAŃSKI Index 129 Contributors Tomasz Basiuk is Associate Professor at the University of Warsaw. He authored Exposures: American Gay Men’s Life Writing since Stonewall (2013), a monograph on the novelist William Gaddis (published in Pol- ish in 2003); co-edited, with Dominika Ferens and Tomasz Sikora, three volumes of essays on queer studies: Odmiany odmieńca/A Queer Mix- ture (2002), Parametry pożądania (2006), and Out Here (2006); guest- edited a special journal issue on gender and sexuality (Dialogue and Universalism XX.5–6, 2010); and co-edited, with Krystyna Mazur and Sylwia Kuźma-Marowska, The American Uses of History. Essays on Public Memory (2011). He is the co-founder of the online queer studies journal InterAlia (since 2006), a former Fulbright visiting scholar at the CUNY Graduate Center, and a Research Fellow at Indiana University at Bloomington. Basiuk served as Principal Investigator in the HERA- funded “Cruising the 1970s. Unearthing Pre-HIV/AIDS Queer Sexual Cultures.” J ędrzej Burszta holds a PhD in cultural studies from the SWPS Univer- sity in Warsaw (2019). He is Affiliated Faculty Member at the Ameri- can Studies Center, University of Warsaw. His research interests include ethnography, queer theory, American speculative fiction, and popular culture. In 2015, together with Zuzanna Grębecka, he authored an eth- nography of personal memories of the Soviet Army stationing in Legnica during state socialism in Poland, entitled Mówiono “druga Moskwa.” Wspomnienia legniczan o stacjonowaniu Armii Radzieckiej w latach 1945–1993 (They Called it “Little Moscow.” Memories of Soviet Army Stationing in Legnica in the Years 1945–1933) . He is also a novelist and writes for the theatre. M aria Dębińska is Assistant Professor at the Institute of Archaeology and Ethnology, Polish Academy of Sciences. Her research interests include anthropology of gender and sexuality, medical anthropology, science and technology studies, and bio-art. She received her PhD in anthropology

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