Ideological Others and National Identifications in Contemporary Poland

Abstract

This dissertation examines how Polish sexual minorities understand and navigate their national identities in the context of recently renewed nationalist sentiment that has framed them as enemies of and threats to Poland. Ever since the election of the conservative, nationalist Law and Justice party in 2015, sexual minorities have become the primary target for Poland’s Right and Far-Right who frame non-heteronormative sexualities and all things “LGBT” as threats to Poland and Polish national identity. This framing relies on the idea that Polish national identity is, and always has been, determined by one’s adherence to Catholicism and conservative social values. As such, the Polish Right and Far-Right have been narrowing the symbolic boundaries of Polish national identity to include only those who adhere to this constricted conception of “Polishness”. Thus, although Poland remains one of the most ethnically homogenous countries in the world, Polish sexual minorities continue to be framed as external threats to the Polish nation and in some cases not truly Polish. The author introduces the term “ideological others” in order to describe those that are ethnically included in, but symbolically excluded from, the national community. Through the use of 60 in-depth interviews with Polish citizens who identify as non-heteronormative, archival materials, images, and ethnographic fieldwork, this dissertation demonstrates how Polish sexual minorities both navigate their own sexual and national identities given such widespread exclusion as well as how they challenge exclusionary notions of “Polishness”. Findings show that while some of those interviewed struggled to identify with their national identity given the current strength of the Polish Right, most respondents were able to identify with their “Polishness” because they had reframed what being Polish meant to them. Reframing, it is argued, is an important strategy by which ideological others can find meaning in their national identity and continue to feel an attachment to their national community despite a political and social climate that often marks them as enemies of the nation and therefore outside the symbolic boundaries of national belonging. In addition, findings show that in order to contest the Polish Right’s framing of Polish national identity as being premised on conservative Catholicism, sexual minorities and their allies have begun an aesthetic revolt (Zubrzycki 2013) in order to expand the symbolic boundaries of “Polishness”. These actions, it is argued, represent a form of aesthetic revolt that does not entail a wholesale rejection of Polish national identity and its attendant symbols, but rather seeks to reframe and reimagine traditional Polish symbols in ways that are more inclusive of sexual and other minority communities. The inclusion of in-depth interviews helps to demonstrate the important role that intrapersonal processes can play in the eventual realization of aesthetic revolt. The dissertation concludes by analyzing the career of openly gay Polish politician Robert Biedroń, who has been fighting to expand the symbolic boundaries of Polish national identity through activism and vocal criticism of the Polish Catholic Church and its strong and pervasive presence in Polish society ho