Queer Encounters with Communist Power : Non-Heterosexual Lives and the State in Czechoslovakia, 1948-1989
Abstract
How did the communist regime in Czechoslovakia approach non-heterosexuality? How did young girls and boys come to realize their queer desires and identities within a state known for repressing individuality? What did they do with that self-awareness-and later on, as adults, what strategies did they employ in their everyday dealings with a state that defined homosexuality as a medical diagnosis? Queer Encounters with Communist Power answers these questions as it interweaves groundbreaking queer oral history with meticulous archival research into the discourses on homosexuality and transsexuality in Czechoslovakia from 1948 to 1989. The book overturns much of what we think we know about the queer experience under state socialism.
Using oral testimonies and archival records, the book presents a counter-intuitive reinterpretation of how lesbians and gays lived viable lives under Czechoslovak's Communist regime, finding considerable space inside of the regime for non-heterosexual people to imagine and create alternative lives for themselves. The book offers an eye-opening look at not only the queer past and the ways we view socialist culture, but at state power as well, and as such contributes to the history of sexuality in all geographic fields.