“For a Pole, It all was a Great Abomination”: Grassroots Homonationalism and State Homophobia à la Polonaise—A History Lesson from a Place Between East and West

Abstract

The article historicizes social and state practices that Jasbir Puar dubbed “homonationalism.” It argues against simplistic applications of the term to the relations between “western” and “eastern” European countries. Instead, it appeals for a more profound contextualisation of every national case. Using 20th-century Poland as a case study, it demonstrates that both homophobia and homonationalism had antecedents and that both can be used as political strategies by nationalist actors that have not previously deployed them. It also seeks to decentre the narrative about homonationalism by averting attention from the state and focusing it on lived queer experiences in Poland. The term grassroots homonationalism is an attempt to bring such analytical attention to the agency of queer subjects and their communities. It aims to conceptualise their attitudes toward nationalist discourses and state practices (both homophobic and homonationalist) and expose ways in which non-normative sexualities and their history have been politically instrumentalised. It helps to analyse attitudes that some queers in Poland have adopted when facing the issue that Puar described as a “collusion of nationalism and queer subjects”.