Europe and the European Union are unavoidable, if ambiguous, political references in the post-Yugoslav space. This volume interrogates the forms and implications of the increasingly potent symbolic nexus that has developed between non-heterosexual sexualities, LGBT activism(s) and Europeanisation(s) in all of the Yugoslav successor states. Contributors to this book show how the long EU accession process disseminates discursive tools employed in LGBT activist struggles for human rights and equality. This creates a linkage between “Europeanness” and “gay emancipation” which elevates certain forms of gay activist engagement and perhaps also non-heterosexuality, more generally, to a measure of democracy, progress and modernity. At the same time, it relegates practices of intolerance to the LGBT community to the status of non-European primitivist Other who is inevitably positioned in the patriarchal past that should be left behind. >

This book intertwines academic and activist voices to engage with more than three decades of lesbian activism in the Yugoslav space. The empirically rich contributions uncover a range of lesbian initiatives and the fundamental, but rarely acknowledged, role that lesbian alliances have played in articulating a feminist response to the upsurge of nationalism, widespread violence against women, and high levels of lesbophobia and homophobia in all of the post-Yugoslav states. By offering a distinctly intergenerational and transnational perspective, this collection does not only shed new light on a severely marginalised group of people, but constitutes a pioneering effort in accounting for the intricacies – solidarities, joys, and tensions – of lesbian activist organising in a post-conflict and post-socialist environment. With a plethora of authorial standpoints and innovative methodological approaches, the volume challenges the systematic absence of (post-)Yugoslav lesbian activist enterprises from recent social science scholarship. Lesbian Activism in the (Post-)Yugoslav Space will be of interest to students and scholars across a range of disciplines, including gender studies, history, politics, anthropology, and sociology.

This book uncovers some of the major moments in the fragile and still poorly known herstory of feminist lesbian engagement in Serbia and Croatia. By treating the trauma of war, homophobia, and neoliberal capitalism as a verbally impenetrable experience that longs to be narrated, this monograph explores the ways in which feminist lesbian language has repeatedly emerged in the context of strong patriarchal silencing that has surrounded the armed conflicts of the Yugoslav succession. With an abundance of empirical material, Bilić illuminates a range of courageous but sometimes contested and controversial activist responses to the challenges posed by the violent intersection of misogyny, lesbophobia, poverty, and nationalism. The book renders visible a surprising diversity of activist initiatives and the resilience of transnational affective ties, which testify to the creativity of lesbian activist mobilisations in the ambivalent semi-peripheral space that used to be Yugoslavia. Trauma, Violence, and Lesbian Agency in Croatia and Serbia will be of interest to scholars and students researching the history and politics of Eastern Europe, as well as to those working in the fields of political sociology, lesbian and gay studies, gender studies, and queer theory and activism.

This book explores two festivals over ten years: Queer Zagreb and Ljubljana Gay and Lesbian Film Festival. Kajinić focuses on the festivals’ participation in a regional network of queer festivals and provides an insight into how these festivals and their audiences negotiated the limits of non-normativity in particularly intensive ways between 2002-2012. By offering an interdisciplinary perspective and exploring the possibilities of critical visual methodology, the author relates the history of these important cultural projects and their organizational practices to the ways in which they impacted the lives of their participants. Post-Yugoslav Queer Festivals will be of interest to readers studying the region of Southeast Europe from a range of perspectives including gender studies, history, politics and festival studies.

This powerful book documents the unspoken stories of a diversity of gender embodiments across the post-Yugoslav states, uncovering how they have navigated the murky waters of war, racism, capitalism and transphobia.

The clandestine festival QueerBeograd created spaces of critique and transformation in order to foster a politics of interconnectedness. Ivana Marjanovi explores the festival's transnational activist cabaret between 2006 and 2008, which was devised, directed and produced by Jet Moon, a founding member of the QueerBeograd collective. This pioneering study demonstrates how the process of staging QueerBeograd Cabaret created a shared space between queer, anti-fascism and No Borders politics, contributing to the advancement of the intersectionality perspective beyond identity. The study thus investigates historical genealogies of gender and political difference in the former and post-Yugoslav space, bringing these into relation with global social and art movements.

This book intertwines academic and activist voices to engage with more than three decades of lesbian activism in the Yugoslav space. The empirically rich contributions uncover a range of lesbian initiatives and the fundamental, but rarely acknowledged, role that lesbian alliances have played in articulating a feminist response to the upsurge of nationalism, widespread violence against women, and high levels of lesbophobia and homophobia in all of the post-Yugoslav states. By offering a distinctly intergenerational and transnational perspective, this collection does not only shed new light on a severely marginalised group of people, but constitutes a pioneering effort in accounting for the intricacies – solidarities, joys, and tensions – of lesbian activist organising in a post-conflict and post-socialist environment. With a plethora of authorial standpoints and innovative methodological approaches, the volume challenges the systematic absence of (post-)Yugoslav lesbian activist enterprises from recent social science scholarship. Lesbian Activism in the (Post-)Yugoslav Space will be of interest to students and scholars across a range of disciplines, including gender studies, history, politics, anthropology, and sociology.

This volume combines empirically oriented and theoretically grounded reflections upon various forms of LGBT activist engagement to examine how the notion of intersectionality enters the political context of contemporary Serbia and Croatia. By uncovering experiences of multiple oppression and voicing fear and frustration that accompany exclusionary practices, the contributions to this book seek to reinvigorate the critical potential of intersectionality, in order to generate the basis for wider political alliances and solidarities in the post-Yugoslav space. The authors, both activists and academics, challenge the systematic absence of discussions of (post-)Yugoslav LGBT activist initiatives in recent social science scholarship, and show how emancipatory politics of resistance can reshape what is possible to imagine as identity and community in post-war and post-socialist societies. This book will be of interest to scholars and students in the areas of history and politics of Yugoslavia and the post-Yugoslav states, as well as to those working in the fields of political sociology, European studies, social movements, gay and lesbian studies, gender studies, and queer theory and activism.

This edited collection offers in-depth perspectives into the emergence and development of LGBTQ+ movements in Central and Eastern Europe, including analysis of Estonia, Hungary, Poland, Romania, Russia and Ukraine. The book examines various issues faced by local LGBTQ+ activists, as well as the tactics and strategies which they develop and adopt. The contributors discuss the applicability of Western ideas and concepts to the post-socialist context, considering their ability to fully tackle local nuances and complexities with regards to sexuality and, thus, the dynamics of LGBTQ+ activism. The volume examines differences in the domestic policies of these countries and the consequent effects on LGBTQ+ activism in the region. It also offers important insights into the impact of Western actors in promoting liberal democratic values in the region, and ensuing political and social backlashes. LGBTQ+ Activism in Central and Eastern Europe will be of interest to students and scholars across a range of disciplines, including Gender and Sexuality Studies, Sociology, Anthropology and Political Science.

This book traces the fascinating history of the first Polish gay and lesbian magazines to explore the globalization of LGBT identities and politics in Central and Eastern Europe during the twilight years of the Cold War. It details the emergence of homosexual movement and charts cross-border flows of cultural products, identity paradigms and activism models in communist Poland. The work demonstrates that Polish homosexual activists were not locked behind the Iron Curtain, but actively participated in the transnational construction of homosexuality. Their magazines were largely influenced by Western magazines: used similar words, discussed similar topics or simply translated Western texts and reproduced Western images. However, the imported ideas were not just copied but selectively adopted as well as strategically and creatively adapted in the Polish magazines so their authors could construct their own unique identities and build their own original politics.