Queers in State Socialism: Cruising 1970s Poland

147 Pages·2020·2.189 MB·English

by  Tomasz Basiuk, Jędrzej Burszta

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