Contribution short abstract

This contribution explores LGBTQ+ be/longings in the Balkans as spatial, relational and imaginative projects characterized by degrees of ambivalence, hope(fulness/lessness) and ‘future nostalgia’, focusing on the role of hope, disappointment, trust, and responsiveness as crucial affective practices.

Contribution long abstract

This contribution departs from Aimee Carrillo Rowe’s (2008) provocative reverse interpellation to ‘be’ ‘longing’, a call which draws attention to the political nature of our belongings and co-constitutive nature of our subjecthood and longings. Drawing from Carrillo Rowe’s question, ‘how might our subjects be constituted if we were hailed by the needs and demands, struggles and joys, of those whose lives and loves are excluded from the realm of our affective economies?’ I argue that hope, disappointment, trust, and responsiveness are crucial affective practices in relational projects of be/longing. Relying on twelve months of engaged ethnography and 25 in-depth interviews with LGBTQ+ people in Skopje, Macedonia and Belgrade, Serbia, I explore how LGBTQ+ be/longings in the Balkans are characterized by degrees of ambivalence, hope(fulness/lessness) and ‘future nostalgia’—a longing for the not-there-yet and spatial, relational, and imaginative movements to and from. Be/longings in these two cities are tempered by the complex entanglements of national, transnational, EU and European LGBTQ+ politics. These entanglements generate forms of activism and space-making which frequently fail to meet the myriad expectations of LGBTQ+ people for a ‘better life’, yet it is exactly in this space of ‘hope in the face of heartbreak’ (Muñoz 2009) that the political potentialities of relational ‘being’ ‘longing’ emerge.

Carrillo Rowe, A. (2008). Power Lines: On the Subject of Feminist Alliances. Durham, NC: Duke University Press.

Muñoz, J. E. (2009). Cruising Utopia: The Then and There of Queer Futurity. New York, NY: New York University Press.