Queer repetitions? LGBTIQ+ communities and (post-)Yugoslav history

Aleksandar Ranković

doi:10.32798/zl.1109

Published: 2023-10-15

Vol. 59 No. 1 (2023)

Queer repetitions? LGBTIQ+ communities and (post-)Yugoslav history

Aleksandar Ranković

Zeszyty Łużyckie

Section: Articles

https://doi.org/10.32798/zl.1109

Abstract

The histories of LGBTIQ+ communities often heavily rely on historiographies of democratization and teleologies of progress. As a result, LGBTIQ+ communities seem to have become agents solely in the light of regime change while their socialist pasts have been more difficult to access. Instead of searching for a starting point of LGBTIQ+ activism in (Post-)Yugoslavia, this essay tries to reconnect multiple points in time where LGBTIQ+ actors staged protest and sought for liberation. Through the lens of repetition, I want to revisit the discourses and trajectories of LGBTIQ+ activism in Yugoslavia and the post-Yugoslav space. By looking into various configurations of queer activism – from “homosexual socialization” in socialism to EuroPride in 2022 – I want to provide an analytical framework within which the radical potential of queerness can be uncovered beyond ready-made categories of transitional democracies or minority protection rights.

Keywords:

queer, repetition, LGBTIQ , Yugoslavia, history

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Ranković, A. (2023). Queer repetitions? LGBTIQ+ communities and (post-)Yugoslav history. Zeszyty Łużyckie, 59(1), 53–78. https://doi.org/10.32798/zl.1109

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Aleksandar Ranković

aleksandar.rankovic@univie.ac.at
https://orcid.org/0009-0006-1247-4790

Affiliation:

University of Vienna, Department of Contemporary History Austria

Bio Statement:

Aleksandar Ranković is a PhD candidate at the Department of Contemporary History, University of Vienna. He graduated in Political Science and East European Studies at Sciences Po Paris and University College London. Further research stays at Boğaziçi University in Istanbul (Turkey), Free University Berlin (Germany), and the Research Center of the Slovenian Academy of Sciences and Arts in Ljubljana (Slovenia). His research focus lies at the intersection of the histories of transformation, sexuality, and gender in Yugoslavia and the post-Yugoslav space. His doctoral thesis covers the debates surrounding conscientious objection, military service, and civil service in the Yugoslav People’s Army with a particular focus on gay–lesbian and queer activism of the 1980s and early 1990s.