Paper short abstract:

In contrast to the national-conservative movement's xenophobic basic principle "God-Honour-Fatherland", the Polish LGBT movement supports, as an important player of the minority politics, with its visual representations and performative practices the fight for more diversity and tolerance in Poland.

Paper long abstract:

Since the collapse of communism in 1989 and the beginning of Poland's transformation, the issues of protest and contestation became ubiquitous in the Polish society. Various (new) social movements appeared in Poland in the 1990s and one of them is the Polish LGBT movement, a liberal social movement fighting for recognition, more diversity and tolerance in Poland. While supporting the minority politics, the activists reject a nationalist ultra-Catholic "Poland for Poles" ruled by priests and represented by the national-conservative movement, which aims to rise Polish youth in a patriotic spirit, characterized by homo- and xenophobia.

In order to achieve its goals, the Polish LGBT movement produces a wide range of visual forms of representation (e.g. photographs, posters, leaflets, mems, comics or street art) as well as related to them performative practices (e.g. demonstrations, festivals, marches, parades or happenings). By presenting a selection of examples, I would like to: outline which symbolic (counter-) narratives are characteristic for Poland and which (utopian) realities they offer; answer the question about their (trans-) national networks and their role in Poland's democratization and present what do they reveal about the socio-political structures and the conditio humana of the Polish post-communist society.

The presented paper is based on my doctoral thesis concerning cultural representations of Polish post-communist landscape of protest, characterized by a very strong socio-political dichotomy between left- and right-wing movements. Methodologically, it is based on a conjunction of discourse and ethnographic field analysis with participant observations including qualitaive interviews.