Coming Out in Poland
Coming out of the closet, a concept originating in American culture and consistent with the paradigm of conversion, has been embraced by many Polish LGBT+ activists. However, literary coming-out narratives have played a relatively minor role in Polish homoerotic writings while a prominent American g...
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| Format: | Article |
| Language: | English |
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European Association for American Studies
2019-01-01
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| Series: | European Journal of American Studies |
| Subjects: | |
| Online Access: | https://journals.openedition.org/ejas/13519 |
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| Summary: | Coming out of the closet, a concept originating in American culture and consistent with the paradigm of conversion, has been embraced by many Polish LGBT+ activists. However, literary coming-out narratives have played a relatively minor role in Polish homoerotic writings while a prominent American gay coming-out novel has not had significant resonance after it was published in Polish translation, suggesting that neither the coming-out story nor the rhetorical act of coming out has been adopted without reservation. Moreover, a contemporary call for Polish lesbian women and gay men to come out in order to promote marriage equality seems more directly aligned with the present-day U.S. political context than with any broadly accepted local activist position on the question of same-sex marriage. Given the absence of consensus about the meaning and the goal of coming out, or even its appropriateness, verbal coming out cannot function as performative speech in the Polish context, where it is better understood as periperformative speech (Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick). |
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| ISSN: | 1991-9336 |