Sexualities, as aspects of identity and as part of the public language of nation, are a controversial feature of post-communist transition in Central and Eastern Europe. Radical political changes have led to the emergence of new social actors, such as the LGBT (lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender) movement, the airing of new discourses about sexuality, as well as the eruption of new social conflicts and divisions.

This interdisciplinary Colloquium will  bring together scholars in the social sciences, history, Slavic and other area studies, as well as activists from LGBT communities, to examine the relationships between gender, nation and sexuality. How, for example, did the emergence of revised national identities after 1989 relate to new conceptions of non-normative gender and sexuality? What were the local dimensions of the ‘lesbian and gay question’, and why did they develop? How did queer sexualities in this region evolve historically? And what influence does that historical legacy have today? What are the specificities and particularities of Central and Eastern European sexual identities, within the region and compared with Western and other non-Western formations?

There will be a screening of the film “Beyond the Pink Curtain” (2009) and a discussion with Director Matthew Charles at 3pm on Thursday 21st January in the Birkbeck Cinema, 43 Gordon Square.

Numbers are strictly limited, so please register early.

Cost, includes vegetarian lunch:  £25 Standard  £10 Birkbeck staff and all students.
Payment is by credit/debit card - Standard Booking Form Birkbeck Staff & all Students

Friday 22nd  January 2010   Room 541  Birkbeck College Main Building   9.30am – 5pm 
(Registration 9.30 in Room 538)

Film screening - Thursday 21st  January 2010  Registration for the free film screening – email Julia Eisner j.eisner@bbk.ac.uk

Detailed program and abstracts:
http://robertkulpa.com/index.php?/projects/BISR-Colloquium.html

Info: http://www.bbk.ac.uk/bisr/news/pinkcurtain

Organiser: Robert Kulpa (roberto@kulpa.org.uk)

PROGRAMME

ABSTRACTS

Mariya Stoilova & Sasha Roseneil

Heteronormativity and the Regulation of Intimate Citizenship in Bulgaria

This paper aims to expand the theorisation of heteronormativity in Central and Eastern Europe, by exploring the regulation of intimate citizenship in Bulgaria since the late 1960s. Our central argument is that the institutionalisation and regulation of intimacy in Bulgaria has been both implicitly and explicitly heteronormative. We set out our understanding of the notion of heteronormativity and discuss its application to the sphere of intimate citizenship, suggesting that looking at heteronormativity allows for analysis of how the heterosexuality-homosexuality binary is constituted and how it 'make[s] heterosexuality seem not only coherent - that is, organized as a sexuality - but also privileged' (Berlant and Warner 2000: 312). We also trace a number of shifts in legislation and policy, largely as a result of accession to the European Union, and the emergence of lesbian and gay activism, during the post-socialist period, which indicate an emergent challenge to the heteronormative framing of intimate citizenship.

So, for example, we discuss how the socialist state regulated individuals' sexuality and reproductive behaviour through the promotion of marriage and procreation, and the penalizing of those who did not have children. We suggest that during socialism there was no right to 'self-definition' and 'self-realisation' (Richardson, 2000: 121) outside the matrix of the married heterosexual socialist citizen with children. The greatest challenges to the marginalisation of homosexuality occurred with the processes of democratisation and social transformation that followed 1989. In relation to this the relaxation of state policing of intimate lives, the final revoking of laws criminalising homosexual acts, and the establishment of rights to non-discrimination and protection from violence are discussed. We explore several court cases concerning discrimination on the basis on sexuality that were won by gay people and argue that their importance goes beyond the protection of the individuals concerned from discrimination; they had a larger cultural and symbolic importance in a situation of rapid social change.

The final part of the article takes the discussion to the most recent debates about intimate citizenship in Bulgaria, which concern a proposal to legally recognise cohabitation, and from which same-sex couples are likely to be excluded. In relation to this some examples of ongoing heteronormativity in the regulation of intimate citizenship are discussed. We explore how LGBT groups are seeking public validation of same-sex relationships within social institutions and how they are seeking to challenge the heteronormative regulation of intimacy.

Jelisaveta Blagojevic

Within Walls: provincialisms, human rights, sexualities and Serbian public discourses on EU Integration

In the recent appeal, Dragan Djilas, mayor of Belgrade stated that sexual orientation is a private matter, and "should be kept behind the (four) walls". Accordingly, there are no reasons to "demonstrate" anyone's sexual preferences in public. These words refer to the national discussion about organisation of second gay pride in Serbia. Interestingly, Mayor Djilas is a representative of the Democratic Party, which declares itself as in favour of Europe, EU integration, and human rights. It is also the ruling party in government, and dominant in public political discourses in Serbia.

The metaphor of "the Wall" is unfortunately familiar to all of us - from the Chinese Wall, the Berlin Wall, to the wall separating Palestinian and Israeli settlements. Millions of lives were invested (and wasted) in building, rebuilding and maintaining these walls over the times.

In such a context, Mayor's Djilas words have a dangerous dimension that cannot be silenced and unnoticed. The metaphor of "the Wall" will help me in analysing public discourse on human rights and sexuality in contemporary Serbian society. Additionally, I will refer to the notion of the "provincial mind", introduced in the Serbian philosopher Radomir Konstantinovic's Philosophy of the Provincial (1969). Although predominantly targeting Serbian nationalism, Konstantinovic's notion of the "provincial mind", does not refer to any particular location; it is a manifestation of a certain way of thinking, that may, and indeed, does so, occur everywhere, thereby overcoming any geographical or political demarcations.

Provincialism refers to the relation between subjects, rather than to any particular position. Provincialism is constituted through a denial of the (ex)position towards the difference and otherness. The provincial mind manifests through the unification of ways of thinking, by the various procedures of homogenization of community and thus by the exclusion of differences and otherness. However, sometimes exclusion (annihilation of otherness) operates as an inclusion. For example many contemporary integration discourses tend towards assimilation and absorption of differences.

So by asking questions about sexuality, the Balkans, the EU, gay pride, nation and nationalism and homosexuality, I will explore some deeply intertwined and not much analysed interconnections between them. The presentation, therefore, can be said to deal with provincialisms of every identitarian logic (of thinking and politics) that continue to haunt, like Marx's spectre, every idea of a "community" (be it sexual, national, or pan-national).

Anna Gruszczynska

Tearing down the Walls, Building up Hope: the Involvement of the Metropolitan Community Church in Promoting Eastern European LGBT Rights

The Metropolitan Community Church (MCC), founded in 1968 in LA, is an international fellowship of Christian congregations (currently 250 member congregations in 23 countries) that has a special affirming ministry with LGBT communities. This paper looks at the MCC Eastern European Initiative, a ten-year project launched in 2006, the goal of which is to offer support to local LGBT communities, as well as to plant new MCC churches in Eastern Europe.  For instance, as part of that initiative, MCC has supported the efforts of the Romanian activists to hold gay prides in Bucharest, Romania, and has assisted activists in Chisinau, Moldova in their efforts to organize a demonstration on behalf of the local LGBT community. Church leaders involved in the Eastern European Initiative have also travelled to Latvia, Poland and Bulgaria, where they participated in pride marches and held public MCC worship services.

While there is an ongoing scholarly interest in LGBT communities in Eastern Europe, including scholarly works which look into the involvement of Western activist discourses on local LGBT communities, none of this work addresses the potential impact of the activities of international LGBT Christian movements, such as MCC. While certainly a worthwhile project, the Eastern European initiative raises a number of questions that have not been addressed. To start with, in the context of the initiative, what are the discourses of Eastern Europe that MCC is advancing? The official website of the initiative promises to offer support to "fledgling LGBT communities in countries which continue to emerge from the repression of the former Soviet Union", which raises further questions about the ways in which the project perpetuates the Western/Eastern divide and local/global tensions with regard to LGBT activism. And finally, how do the "fledgling LGBT communities" themselves perceive the involvement of MCC especially in the context where religion is almost unanimously associated with homophobic statements of powerful church authorities?

Joanna Mizielinska

Travelling Ideas, Travelling Times: on the temporalities of LGBT and queer politics in Poland and in the "West"

The presentation will explore how "Western" ideas of LGBT and queer politics travel and are nested in Poland. In doing so, I am particularly interested in the content and functioning of "time". I will suggest that Polish LGBT activism cannot be simply categorised as "identitarian" or "queer" because it exists in a different geo-temporality to the "West".

Polish LGBT activism serves well as the example, and I will focus on the Campaign Against Homophobia (CAH), the largest and best know Polish LGBT organisation. I will suggest that in its choice of strategies and discourses, one can see a queer mixture of ideas that represents various historical stages of Western LGBT activism. From aggressive, in-your-face "queer" campaigns, through celebration of coming out and identity politics, to assimilationist "do-it-slowly-and-unobtrusively" grassroots work, discourses produced by CAH cannot be easily categorised.

I will suggest that one of the reasons is the "temporal disjunction", a historical void, in which CAH works. 1990s marks the beginning of the LGBT activism in Poland but not in the "West". With the "transformation", "Western" ideas were unanimously applied without much attempt at understanding their cultural and historical context, and functioning. So suddenly Polish homosexuals (just "becoming" "gays" or "lesbians") accessed differentiated models of LGBT and Q activism, , developed over more than 40 years, and used them for own purposes.

In the 1989, "communist time" terminated, and "western time" took its place, becoming a "universal time" for both, West and CEE. But "continuity" from a Western perspective is a knotted and dehistoricised cultural phenomenon, imposed as much as welcomed, of which Polish LGBT activists and academics are trying to make sense. Rather than repeating dominant discourses of CEE "catching up Europe" (i.e. linear narrative of progress) I want to look at much finer processes of weaving and sewing geo-temporal realities in Polish LGBT activism.

Robert Kulpa

British and Polish Discourses About "Homophobic Central and Eastern Europe"

In recent years, Poland and Central and Eastern Europe (CEE) in general have gained a noticeable attention in the UK gay community, mainly due to xenophobic and hostile attitudes of populist and nationalist parties springing up in many former communist countries. Increasingly, we could observe the emergence of a specific discourse about CEE as homophobic. It was mainly influenced by bans of "gay prides" and, in some cases, violent attacks on the peaceful lesbian and gay protesters in some Polish, Latvian, and Russian cities.

I would like to ponder about a troublesome idea of CEE and the process of erasing "difference" from its notion. "Central and Eastern Europe" is homogenised in these discourses, by, e.g. "forgetting" about "positive" factors, like forms of same-sex partnership introduced in some countries. During the presentation, I will discuss the problem of the discursive construction of the CEE as 'homophobic' by UK gay communities. Some probing questions include: why CEE is treaded as uniformly homophobic and any 'positive' differences wiped out? What sort of power relations (between CEE and 'West') are being established in such portrayals of CEE? How can lesbian and gay communities of CEE profit of this discourse? How do UK gay communities profit from it?

On the other hand, I am also interested in Central and Eastern European, and specifically Polish, discourses. Popular lesbian and gay discourses seem to sustain the claim about homophobic Polish society and the "Western Land of Freedom". But where exactly is the "West"? What geographical areas are included/excluded? How does the "West" relate to the "EU"?

2009 witnessed a series of initiatives summarising 20 years of post-communism. The Polish LGBT community also commemorated this moment, as well as 40 years of "gay liberation", in, for example, the pride parade slogan: "40 years of equality, 20 years of freedom". I discuss the significance of those invocations, and, if history is a discursive field selectively created for the purpose of maintaining certain power relations and hierarchies, I ask: What sort of history do Polish lesbian and gay communities create? Why do they evoke Stonewall? And why not Solidarity? What is the significance of 'remembering' and 'forgetting' in the creation of contemporary LGBT politics in Poland?

BIOGRAPHICAL NOTES

Jelisaveta Blagajevic

(MPhil Open University, PhD University of Novi Sad) is a Professor and Dean for Academic Affairs at the Faculty for Media and Communications, University Singidunum in Belgrade where she teaches Critical Thinking, Politics of Love: Postmodernism and Post-structuralism, and Media and Diversity. Since 2001 she has worked for the Belgrade Women's Studies and Gender Research Centre as a coordinator and lecturer. She has also been a visiting lecturer at the Research Centre in Gender Studies - Euro Balkan Institute, Skopje; Institutum Studiorum Humanitatis in Ljubljana; the Faculty of Philosophy at University of Sofia, Bulgaria. She has published in academic journals and cultural magazines. Her latest writings include: "Adieu to Europe: Impossible necessity of Balkans politics" in journal Identities (2009); "Hieroglyphs of Jealousy" (Euro-Balkan Institute Skopje, 2008);  "Zajednica onih koji nemaju zajednicu" (Community Without Community), (Singidunum University, 2008); "Gender and Identity" (co-editor, ATHENA Network, 2006); "Mislim, dakle mislim drugo: Deridina poetika gostoprimstva" (I Think Therefore I think the Other: Derrida's Poetics of Hospitality), in: "Voice and Writing" (Institute for Philosophy and Social Theory, 2005). Research interests: contemporary (political) philosophy, queer and gender studies.

Anna Gruszczynska

(Aston University, Birmingham) is currently finalizing her dissertation on collective identity processes in the context of public gay and lesbian activism in Poland. Her research interests include social movements, protest, intersections of sexualities and health, religion and "gay spiritualities". Together with colleagues at Manchester Metropolitan University, she is involved in a research project "Anglo-Polish perspectives on sexual politics", where the aim is to bring together scholars working in the broad area of Central Eastern European sexualities, with an emphasis on the flow of ideas between Poland and the UK. She has contributed to the edited volume "Beyond the Pink Curtain" (Peace Institute, 2007), published in Sexualities (2009) and Emotion, Space and Society (2009).

Robert Kulpa

is a Ph.D. candidate in the School of Psychosocial Studies, Birkbeck, University of London, UK. He was previously studying at the School of Slavonic and East European Studies, University College London, where he now teaches politics. He is interested in queer studies, post-communist transformations, non-normative identities and nation(alism)s. His recent publications include articles in journals: Europe-Asia Studies and Identities, and books: "Sage Encyclopaedia of Gender and Society", and "The EU and Central & Eastern Europe. Successes and Failures." He is the Guest Editor of the "Queer Studies: Methodological Approaches" Special Issue of the Graduate Journal of Social Science. He is the editor (together with Joanna Mizieli?ska) of the forthcoming book "De-Centring Western Sexualities: Central and Eastern European Perspectives" (Ashgate, 2010).

Joanna Mizielinska

is an assistant professor at the Institute for Sociology at the Warsaw School for Social Psychology. In 2001/2002 she was a Fulbright scholar at Princeton University where she conducted her research under auspices of Prof. Judith Butler. She also teaches gender and queer studies at gender studies at Warsaw University. In 2004/2005 she was a visiting researcher at the Christina Institute in Helsinki University. In 2004 she published her book "(De)Konstrukcje kobieco?ci" ((De)Constructions of femininity) (S?owo/Obraz/Terrytoria). In 2007 her second book was published called "Cialo/plec/seksualnosc: od feminizmu do teorii queer" (Gender/body/sexuality: from feminism to queer theory) (Univeristas). Latest co-edited volume is entitled: "Kooperacja czy konflikt? Kobiety, panstwo i EU" (Cooperation or Conflict? Women, State and the EU)(Wyd. Akademickie i Profesjonalne, 2008)  Academic interests: sex, gender and sexuality in culture, social construction of sexualities/genders/bodies, gender performativity; the problem of exclusion of the Other in culture, society and feminist thoughts; new concepts/models of family, "families we choose"; representation of femininity and masculinity in global culture; feminist philosophy, queer theory. She is the editor (together with Robert Kulpa) of the forthcoming book "De-Centring Western Sexualities: Central and Eastern European Perspectives" (Ashgate, 2010).

Sasha Roseneil

is Professor of Sociology and Social Theory and Director of the Birkbeck Institute for Social Research at Birkbeck College, University of London. She is also Professor II of Sociology in the Centre for Women's Studies and Gender Research at the University of Oslo. She is currently Deputy Scientific Director of FEMCIT, an EU FP6 Integrated Project on "Gendered Citizenship in Multicultural Europe: the impact of contemporary women's movements", under the auspices of which she is directing a comparative study of intimate citizenship in Bulgaria, Norway, Portugal and the UK. Sasha is the author of many articles and books, the latest forthcoming ones are: "Sociability, Sexuality, Self: relationality and individualization" (Routledge), and "Social Research after the Cultural Turn" (ed. with Stephen Frosh) (Palgrave).

Mariya Stoilova

is a research fellow at the Birkbeck Institute for Social Research, University of London. She has completed doctoral research on 'Gender and Generation: Women's Experiences of the Transition from Socialism in Bulgaria' in the School of Sociology and Social Policy at the University of Leeds (2004-2009). At present Mariya is working on an EU FP6 Integrated Project, FEMCIT (www.femcit.org). As part of FEMCIT, Mariya is researching transformations in intimate citizenship in Bulgaria.

Beyond the Pink Curtain? Eastern European Sexualities, Homophobia and Western Eyes