User:Senka/Thesis Proposal

What

I would like to explore forgotten and overlooked queer histories in the context of the Balkans in order to counter the idea that queerness is an export of the 'rotten West'.
This thesis serves as a backbone to the project, by providing the text for the narrative structure the project, possibly in a slightly edited format in order not loose narrative-immersion.

How

In order to challenge how knowledge is produced in an academic context, I want to write a porous essay which allows for more fictional formats to seep into it. This thesis will be akin to theory fiction and will offer more narrative-driven and immersive writing.
Apart from this, considering that the content of my research (archives of queer histories) is often full of gaps and violence, I want the writing to reflect the difficulty of this kind of unearthing. Which is why I will employ a non-linear, fragmented, scattered mode of writing to bring the archival material and its value closer to the reader. I want to employ the scavenger methodology, which is a queer methodology that comprised of different methods fused together to cultivate wonder, offers possibilities for repair and challenges academic modes of knowledge production (this method has also said to make worlds) .
For mode of address, I have been considering writing the thesis in the second person. This is a tool I have used in previous writing to bring political ideas and realities closer to the general reader. This approach allows the reader to feel the text on their skin as if they were the ones going on this search to begin with. Additionally, it opens up the space to learn new things and be challenged (in what they consider knowledge). I would love for my encounters with the stories of the archives to be fleshed out in the thesis through scenes or people the reader speaks with. The footnotes could be a place where these interactions get fully fleshed out.

Key Issues

The 3 key issues I would like to explore are:
1. Narrative structure: homonationalist narratives in the west (of the Balkans) and the narrative of queerness as inherently western (in the Balkans).
For this part I want to look into the structures of narratives, with what political agenda are they crafted with, as well look into the use of language.
Questions:

• What can be done to get out of the one way street in which LGBT questions are considered a marker of Europeanness? And therefore other to a local context? (Modified question taken from: Ulićević, J. & Brković Č. (2022) „Trans otpornost u Crnoj Gori: Medijski narativi o životima trans ljudi“. Postjugoslo/avenski TRANS. Multimedijalni institut: Zagreb. pp. 49. Translation by me)
• How can one counter homonationalist narratives that posit the west as a the source of queerness and non-western countries as a source of backwardness?
• How has the conception of national identities influenced the attitude towards queer identities?

This will be written about in the following way:


• You encounter the narratives about queer people created in the West and the Balkans

• You start to understand how you are being used, weaponized and why

• You look into the intersectional struggles that cause these ideas to arise (you ask yourself: how has the idea of the rotten west arised? How was homonationalism conceived? Who here is being othered and how?)

2. Gaps and inconsistencies in archival knowledge (and alternative archival approaches as remedy)
I want to research queer Balkan histories (from a variety of archives) and what forms of othering affect this region. Along with this I want to explore more fluid approaches to archival practices which experiment in what way knowledge is shared and distributed.
Questions:

• How could one dig up queer histories that have been hiding in plain sight, or overshadowed by violence?
• How does one address the violence cemented in archives? Or address the histories it chooses not to include?

This will be written about in the following way:


• You encounter the archival material (traces of the lived of queer people)

• You encounter critical fabulation (Hartman)

• You encounter the confiscation of memory and conversation footnotes (Ugresic)

3. Political imaginaries
I want to see what potential political imaginaries have in changing the detrimental narrative that circulate about queer people. In exploring political imaginaries, I want to utilize different methods of creating narratives (imagining exercises, critical fabulation, theory fiction), to see what role they can play in bringing about a change.
Questions:

• Which forgotten queer Balkan histories would help us imagine the future differently?
• What do a local queer culture and a queer vocabulary look like when they are not forcefully copy pasted from western queer pop culture?
• How can (3d/immersive) fictioning from archival gaps and remains allow for new political imaginaries of queer futures?

This will be written about in the following way:


• You encounter the idea of a political imaginary

• You encounter the imagination that is allowed to persist (how the archival material has been shaped into narrative)

• You speculate on what the futures that could be and follow different roads of thought to see them

Research Questions

For previous research questions look >here<

Bibliography and references

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