Abstract

This special issue brings articles discussing experience of LGBTQ+ people in the region of former socialist Europe as situated in a framework formed by institutional, legislative, and ideological regimes, covering several East- and Southeast European societies (Poland, the GDR, Socialist Yugoslavia, Serbia, North Macedonia, Bulgaria), and spanning the socialist period, the transformations of the 1990s, the post-socialism era, and the present-day reality. The authors dwell on different modes of cultural production (television, cinema, literature), expose multiple hegemonic gazes on the history of LBGTQ+ activism and the hegemonic nature of discourses related thereto, as well as point to the ways LBGTQ+ experiences are dependent on social affects shaped by the historically accumulated and institutionalized hegemonic regimes. In its entirety, this issue poses an important question regarding the nature and possibilities of agency and autonomy of LGBTQ+ people as individuals and communities, but also as historical subjects. The editors of this special issue highlight the experience of LGBTQ+ people in the region of former socialist Europe as a productive category, enabling navigation through different temporal frames and complex power relations, while simultaneously avoiding the dangers of stereotyping and generalization. The experience brings together subjective and collective dimensions and helps follow the discrete histories and phenomena across spatial and temporal divisions.