The Sandbox of History: Nationality, Sexuality, and the Historical Impulse in Contemporary Polish LGBTQ Culture by Jodi C
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The Sandbox of History: Nationality, Sexuality, and the Historical Impulse in Contemporary Polish LGBTQ Culture By Jodi C. Greig A dissertation submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy (Slavic Languages and Literatures) in The University of Michigan 2016 Doctoral Committee: Assistant Professor Benjamin Paloff, Chair Associate Professor Tatjana Aleksic Associate Professor Herbert J. Eagle Assistant Professor Tomek Sikora, Pedagogical University of Cracow TABLE OF CONTENTS LIST OF FIGURES ..................................................................................................................... iii Chapter I. Introduction ................................................................................................................ 1 A History of Own’s Own: Homobiografie and the East-Central Europe’s “Time of Coincidence” ............................................................................................................................... 6 Chapter II. Contested Histories, Impossible Rescues: Izabela Filipiak and Piotr Włast .... 21 Księga Em as Untenable Rescue: The Pleasures and Pains of (Un)Doing History .................. 42 Chapter III. Furious Histories and the Possibility of Transhistorical Publics ...................... 62 Hell Hath No Furja: Agnieszka Weseli as Activist-Historian .................................................. 71 The Case of Sadowska and Transhistorical Publics .................................................................. 93 Chapter IV. Anal-yzing Lubiewo: Soviet Tops and Colonial Bottoms ................................. 122 Lubiewo as Literary Phenomenon ........................................................................................... 133 Coming Out of the Colonial Closet ......................................................................................... 142 Performing the Colonial .......................................................................................................... 160 The Colonial Bottom ............................................................................................................... 170 Chapter V. Transhistoricity: Some Concluding Remarks .................................................... 181 BIBLIOGRAPHY ..................................................................................................................... 186 ii LIST OF FIGURES Figure 1.1. “Western 'time of sequence' and Eastern 'time of coincidence'” .......................... 8 Figure 3.1. 2011 Pomada Festival 2 Program Cover ............................................................... 74 Figure 3.2. Poster of Maria Konopnicka, Europride Warsaw 2010. ..................................... 82 Figure 3.3: "Narodowcu! Co wiesz o Konopnickiej" meme ................................................... 83 Figure 3.4. Furja performs "From the Album of Maryja Konopnicka, Part 1" .................. 84 Figure 3.5. Dr. Zofia Sadowska, image from the Główna Biblioteka Lekarska ................. 95 Figure 3.6. Cartoon depicting a masculine Sadowska dragging Plewiński to court on a leash. ............................................................................................................................................. 96 Figure 3.7. Flier for Sadowska's Birthday Party, 2012 ........................................................ 102 Figure 3.8: The original script written by artists from Pod Pikadorem, as published in Kurier Informacyjny i Telegraficzny in 1924 ........................................................................ 108 Figure 3.9. Furja performs "Wsadowska" ............................................................................. 110 Figure 3.10. Furja performs "Koteczka" ............................................................................... 118 Figure 4.1. Image from KPH's "Let Them See Us" Campaign............................................ 137 iii CHAPTER I. Introduction In 2008, journalist-historian Krzysztof Tomasik published a collection of biographical sketches entitled Homobiografie (Homobiographies). In this work, Tomasik connects a variety of Polish historical and literary figures, their lives spanning the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, through evidenced or alleged same-sex desire. Tomasik opens the introduction with the work of author and critic Tadeusz Boy-Żeleński, whose 1929 essay “Ludzie żywi” (“Living People”) underscores how Narcyza Żmichowska’s romance with another woman became a wellspring for the nineteenth century Polish feminist author’s creativity, and criticizes the fact that this aspect of her biography had been studiously ignored by those claiming her for national or moral ends.1 Sometimes called the enfant terrible of Poland’s early twentieth century literary scene, Boy-Żeleński had a keen nose for hypocrisy, and was known for his critiques of both conservative and bohemian circles. Deeply disappointed in the way Żmichowska had been scrubbed of her sexuality, turned from “a fantastic woman into a boring governess,” and “so marinated in virtue that no one wants to pick up her books anymore,” Boy-Żeleński describes the difficulty of challenging established canons: “it is indeed easier to dig out an author from complete obscurity than it is to remove the gravestone of that kind of canonization.”2 Boy- 1 Tadeusz Boy-Żeleński, “Ludzie żywi,” (1929; Wolne Lektury Project, 2014), 48-63. https://wolnelektury.pl/media/book/pdf/boy-ludzie-zywi.pdf. 2 Quoted in Krzysztof Tomasik, Homobiografie: Pisarki i pisarze polscy XIX i XX wieku (Warsaw: Krytyka Polityczna, 2008), 4. Original: “’Zrobiliście z tej wspaniałej kobiety nudną guwernantkę; zamarynowaliście ją w 1 Żeleński argues against the process of “canonization” to which Polish writers are subject, a process that entails an erasure of the nuance and messy contradictions that characterize lived experience, especially those details which are at odds with national or religious “values.” He instead attempts to reanimate the “living” personalities of historical figures who have since been immortalized as pillars of the Polish literary canon; he excavates the biographies of a number of Polish literary luminaries in order to recover their humanity, in all its beauty and ugliness. Tomasik takes Boy-Żeleński’s formulation as his starting point and challenge. In order to expose the “truth” of famous Polish writers’ sexualities, Tomasik “takes on” the national Polish canon, specifically attending to the “private sphere,” which, he claims, is zealously guarded by those who would erase homosexuality from Polish culture completely. He insists that critics need to develop new interpretations of the work of writers whose sexualities had previously been obscured, and theorizes that these readings have the ability to unsettle the Polish canon, as well as the Polish national narrative more broadly.3 Tomasik’s project also has an emancipatory goal: he wants his audience to realize that Polish national heroes, those individuals who have influenced Poland and represented Polish culture abroad, can be gay, and that their homosexuality doesn’t diminish their role in Polish history. Individuals or collective bodies shape and/or consume historical narratives in order to produce a sense of personal and national identity; as Stuart Hall writes, “Identities are the names we give to the different ways we are positioned by, and position ourselves within, the narratives of the past.”4 Within the realm of LGBT historiography, Scott Bravmann terms such narratives cnocie tak, że nikt już jej książek do rąk nie bierze [...] bo zaiste łatwiej się wygrzebać pisarzowi z kompletnego zapomnienia, niż odwalić kamień grobowy takiej kanonizacji.’” 3 Tomasik, Homobiografie, 5. 4 Stuart Hall, “Cultural Identity and Diaspora,” in Colonial Discourse and Post-Colonial Theory: A Reader, eds. Patrick Williams and Laura Chrisman (New York: Columbia University Press, 1994), 394. 2 “gay and lesbian historical self-representations,” or “queer fictions of the past,” in order to evoke how history is a construction, not a given; however, he also points out that these narratives work to cohere and consolidate sexual identity in the present through the assertion of difference or sameness.5 “Queer fictions of the past” have been recently proliferating in Poland in the form of monographs, anthologies, and online databases. These archives are dedicated to not only compiling and circulating information about LGBTQ history in Poland, but also to writing same- sex desire into the national imaginary. Examples range from documentaries about “re- discovered” queer figures to biographical anthologies à la Tomasik’s Homobiografie. “LGBT Polish History” is relatively new discursive territory, its popularization coinciding with the rise of Polish LGBT identity politics in the late 1990s/early 2000s. These “queer lineage” or genealogical projects are not limited to books and film, but also encompass events like lectures, panels, public discussions and presentations of and about Polish/Central European LGBTQ history.6 The tone of these projects vary, as some seem to adhere to more rigid academic parameters, while others have an overtly activist and/or political character. Such projects address very real oppression, discrimination, and violence experienced by individuals who have 5 Scott Bravmann, Queer Fictions of the Past: History, Culture, and Difference (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997), 4-5. 6 For examples of studies of homosexuality in Polish literature,