Paper short abstract:

Hungarian lesbian history-making projects imagine complex histories and identities. They articulate lesbians into national narratives, yet they also situate them within a global lesbian history. They thus position Hungarian lesbians ambiguously, and tensely, with respect to notions of belonging.

Paper long abstract:

In the last decade and a half , a considerable body of scholarship has emerged on the dramatic changes in gender regimes that have characterized Eastern European postsocialist transformations. This research has mapped in compelling detail how these changes have rendered the meanings of social and cultural membership in the postsocialist period markedly different for men and women. The growth of sexual politics movements in post-socialist countries, however, and the roles they play in transforming such notions of belonging, has been considerably less remarked. In this paper I explore three recent history-making projects undertaken by Hungarian lesbian activists: a book series recuperating lesbian ancestors, and two pilgrimages involving recent historical figures. I argue that these projects function discursively and performatively to imagine complex histories which ground complex present-day identities. On one hand they articulate lesbians into the mythologized frameworks of Hungarian national-historical narrative, thus legitimating their presence in present-day national community. On the other, they construct Hungarian lesbians as part of a transnational lesbian history, suggesting that their primary bonds of identity are to a global lesbian community, and its politics. In so doing, I argue, further, these lesbian history-making projects position Hungarian lesbians ambiguously with respect to national and transnational borders of belonging - a situation at once profitable and perilous, and ironically emblematic of the tensions currently facing Hungarian society as a whole, as it strives to integrate its own national, European, and other belongings.