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- Convenors:
-
Agnieszka Koscianska
(University of Warsaw)
Hadley Renkin (Central European University)
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- Format:
- Panels
- Location:
- SO-E487
- Sessions:
- Thursday 16 August, -
Time zone: Europe/Stockholm
Short Abstract:
This panel explores global queer crossings and makings of borders of time and space, rethinking the import of queer mobilities for grasping the social, political, theoretical, and methodological (dis)connections between past and present, East and West, North and South, and their diverse effects.
Long Abstract:
Queer mobilities and border crossings are neither new phenomena nor limited to queer subjects; they encompass past and present queer (and anti-queer) practices, identities, socialities, politics, and mechanisms of knowledge production. Extensive transnational networks of sex, sociality, and knowledge within the Eastern Bloc, for example, were often ignored by postsocialist scholars and activists (East and West) in favor of Western models of identity, community, and politics; patterns of boundary-marking and crossing which have also grounded regional heteronationalist politics. Similar dynamics have been observed in other regions.
This panel cruises queer histories crossing and challenging, as well as affirming, spatiotemporal borders (East/West; North/South, past/present) to ask how historical circulations and borderings of queer identities, socialities, knowledges, and politics set the stage for their current patterns, and how they can help us reconsider the theoretical and methodological implications of queer (im)mobilities. How can anthropologists study past and present queer crossings? How do past movements, transfers, connections, and disconnections inform current queer, and anti-queer, ties of identity, history, and politics? How can we reimagine the consequences of such analyses of queer relations past and present, for rethinking the borders currently binding both queer and anti-queer hegemonic narratives?
We envision a Roundtable format panel, with short (10 min) papers using cases from diverse global contexts to highlight core theoretical issues of queerness, mobility, and border-crossing, which will then be discussed by the panel as a whole.
Accepted papers:
Session 1 Thursday 16 August, 2018, -Monika Baer (University of Wrocław)
Paper short abstract:
Drawing on fieldwork research conducted in Wroclaw (PL), in the proposed paper I analyze how conceptual divisions between North and South or West and East have historically shaped spatiotemporal aspects of identity politics and strategies of non-heteronormative citizens of a "postsocialist" city.
Paper long abstract:
Inspired by analytical perspectives grasping the world as spatially and socially interconnected (although marked by political and economic topography of power), my contribution to the roundtable is thought of as an intervention aimed at destabilizing the major conceptual axes that shaped globally-oriented narratives on non-heteronormative subjects: the divisions between North/South and West/East. To this end, I analyze how historical developments in mainstream LGBT movements in Poland (rooted in Northern/Western-modelled identity politics and strategies based on civil rights paradigm of a (neo)liberal type) have been both adapted and problematized by contemporary activist and non-activist discursive practices of non-heteronormative citizens of Wroclaw (PL). On the one hand, in the specific context of "postsocialist" city (and country), "liberal LGBT rights" still keep their emancipatory potential. On the other one, they become tools of symbolic violence when used to mark certain groups as "backward," "premodern," or simply "passive." In both cases, however, all actants seem to be stuck "in transition", albeit at its different spatiotemporal stages. Keeping that in mind, I would opt for theoretical and methodological approaches moving beyond dichotomous thinking and toward an analysis of historical and current processes of diverse scales, which produce differentiated non-heteronormative experiences and subjectivities. The discussed fieldwork material has been gathered in the course of an action-research project "Divercity: Preventing and combating homo- and transphobia in small and medium cities across Europe" (EU Rights, Equality and Citizenship Program).
Hadley Renkin (Central European University)
Paper short abstract:
Based on ethnographic fieldwork in Hungary since 1999, this paper explores stories of queer im/mobilities and border crossings during Hungarian Socialism, the divergent postsocialist paths they have traveled, and the differing borders of time and space they have shaped for queer people and politics.
Paper long abstract:
The nature of and relationships between queerness, borders, and im/mobility in postsocialist spaces are complex and deeply contested, in ways that produce and foreclose possibilities for not just personhood and politics, but anthropological analysis. Under Socialism, Hungarian queer people traveling not only to Berlin, Croatia, and the Black Sea coast, and the West, but within Hungary, as well as Westerners coming to Hungary, created both flows and frictions of identity and politics, and new ideas of connections and boundaries between East and West, East and East, and past and present; postsocialist memories and representations of these travels have shaped still other networks and borders. In my contribution to this roundtable, based on long term ethnographic fieldwork in Hungary since 1999, I explore several stories of queer im/mobilities and border crossings during Hungarian Socialism, the divergent postsocialist paths they have traveled, and the differing borders of time and space they have shaped for queer people and politics. I ask how the structures of Socialist life supported, as well as restricted, the production of queer networks? What were the personal and political implications of these, and for whom? And how has knowledge of these past im/mobilities traveled - or not? How has it been incorporated or erased from postsocialist narratives of queer identity and politics, in order to mark or contest the boundaries of East and West, past and present? Finally, how can grasping these relations more clearly help us to construct a more effective anthropology of queer crossings?
Jedrzej Burszta (University of Warsaw)
Paper short abstract:
The proposed contribution to the roundtable will discuss chosen spatial and temporal aspects of the life narratives of Polish queers in the 1970s, based on an ongoing ethnographic and historical research project dealing with queer autobiographies in the 1970s (CRUSEV research project).
Paper long abstract:
Contrary to some studies of non-normative sexual history that focus on the globalization of LGBTQ identities and politics, there existed a distinct Eastern European queer identity that was both different than the Western/global LGBTQ movement. Polish queer culture existed on the margin of the nascent global gay and lesbian movement, although there were instances of a queer crossings between political borders. Polish queers did engage in a cross-cultural exchange which in many ways had significant influence on the types of queer expressions and queer practices found in Communist Poland. The adoption of an anthropological perspective enables to address the personal narratives about the past which shed light on the crossings of different queer histories that are often perceived as homogenous and presented as following the identity discourse established in the West (mainly in the United States). The presentation will focus on the dynamics between the East and West, e.g. in relation to the limited possibilities of mobility (visits to Western / East European countries, sex tourism), the circulation of knowledge and/or certain "artifacts" of queer culture (e.g. magazines, books, pornographic films), and the subjects' contemporary opinions on their own queer life then and now. The presentation will attempt to characterize the dynamic between the popular image of gay life and gay identity discourse in Western countries and how it translated into different approaches to identity represented by Polish queers, and how these at times conflicting identity-positions influence the oral history of Polish queer cultures of the 1970s.
Agnieszka Koscianska (University of Warsaw)
Paper short abstract:
This presentation reflects on flows of expert knowledge of queerness between the East and the West during the Cold War.
Paper long abstract:
In the West, there are "special magazines and clubs designated for homosexuals, along with profiled cafes, beaches and various associations", a Polish sexologist wrote in 1970. He also included a detailed description of US research on homosexuality that led to its depathologization. In this presentation, I reflect on flows of expert knowledge of queerness between the East and the West during the Cold War. With a special focus on sexology, I try to reconstruct how under the conditions of state socialism (censorship, closed borders, inability to self-organize) expert knowledge of queerness was transmitted and what this meant. I ask, how was this knowledge produced and exchanged beyond borders? Who were the experts and what were their sources of information? What did expert knowledge mean to queer subjects? Was it oppressive, or did it contribute to the emancipatory transformation of queer lives by telling stories of queer life in other contexts? What is the meaning of past networks and flows to today's construction of queer expert knowledge? And finally, how can we, as anthropologists, contribute to the project of discovering past queer knowledge?
This presentation is based on my ethnographic and archival research focused on expert knowledge of homosexuality in Poland. My research is part of the multidisciplinary international HERA research project entitled, Cruising the 1970s: Unearthing Pre-HIV/AIDS Queer Sexual Cultures, which centers on queer social, artistic, intellectual and sexual cultures from the time of the sexual revolution to the first reported cases of HIV/AIDS in Europe.