Abstract
Though largely ignored by scholars of political participation, stickers are an increasingly common means of expressing socio-cultural identities and a staple of contemporary protest movements. In Poland, the “LGBT-Free Zone” stickers sold with the newspaper Gazeta Polska in 2019 provided a clear demonstration of ruling party Law and Justice’s (PiS) hegemonic and exclusionary bio-conservative discourse. A year later, during the 2020 presidential elections, as issues related to LGBT+ rights became a key battleground revealing socio-political divisions in the country, a series of pro-LGBT+ stickers appeared in Krakow. This paper first evaluates the combination of linguistic and visual elements that makes political stickers a unique genre of expression. Multimodal discourse analysis of the pro-LGBT+ stickers posted in Krakow subsequently reveals an alternative conceptualization of “Polishness” that includes the LGBT+ community rather than excluding it on biopolitical grounds.
Highlights
Though largely ignored by scholars of political participation, stickers are an increasingly common means of expressing socio-cultural identities and a staple of contemporary protest movements
In Poland, the “LGBT-Free Zone” stickers sold with the newspaper Gazeta Polska in 2019 provided a clear demonstration of ruling party Law and Justice’s (PiS) hegemonic and exclusionary bioconservative discourse
A year later, during the 2020 presidential elections, as issues related to LGBT+ rights became a key battleground revealing socio-political divisions in the country, a series of proLGBT+ stickers appeared in Krakow
Summary
Stickers are “always visible, yet rarely seen, read and understood”[1] in towns and cities across Europe. The posting of an individual sticker in a politically significant location is generally unlikely to evoke the publicity and strength of reaction, both positive and negative, of a strategically placed mural or graffiti.[35] Instead, it seems to be the frequency of stickers’ appearance in the public space, if there is an element of mystery in the messages or content they display, that increases their impact, especially should they attract media attention.[36] In this respect, this paper argues that the linguistic and visual messages street stickers carry are the predominant factors in determining their classification as political While this accounts for the “political” aspect of the concept, it is necessary to differentiate political street stickers from another related, yet separate, medium of political expression: political bumper stickers. The section examines biopolitical theory to provide a suitable basis from which to explore the specific case of Poland during the 2020 presidential election campaign
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