CFP for the InterAlia 2026 thematic issue
Queers and the state? Institutions, recognition, and LGBTQIA+ politics forty years after the “Hiacynt” Operations
Editors of the issue: Ewa Majewska and Tomasz Basiuk
We welcome submissions in Polish or English.
In recent years, various excluded and marginalised groups have demanded recognition and the redress of wrongs suffered at the hands of state institutions. In Germany and Austria, these calls for justice have led to a state apology issued to the LGBTQIA+ communities for years of homophobic institutional violence and to the granting of compensation to those persecuted because of homophobia, although a similar gesture has not been made towards transgender people. In the UK, the Prime Minister apologised for the homophobia of the British government to the family of Alan Turing, the brilliant mathematician and logician; meanwhile, the land’s highest court narrowed the definition of gender by declaring that a woman is only someone who has been assigned female gender at birth. In Poland, the Minister of Justice apologised for discrimination and harassment due to gender and sexual orientation during the years of the ultra-conservative government of 2015-2023, but the homophobic actions of the People’s Republic of Poland during Operations “Hiacynt” in 1985-87, along with many other acts of the state police and secret police of the time, were never officially recognised as human rights violations. In many countries, LGBTQIA+ people have no chance of obtaining reparations or recognition of the wrongs they suffered, even though other groups obtain them in analogous situations. Moreover, we are experiencing a conservative turn in state policies towards LGBTQIA+ people, which particularly affects trans and non-binary people directly threatened by laws such as those recently introduced in the US, UK, Russia and Hungary.
In light of events such as Operations “Hiacynt”, the relationship between the state institutions and LGBTQIA+ people – our rights and freedoms and the state’s due diligence in guaranteeing and protecting them – is undoubtedly interesting. Queer theory has only rarely focused on the state and its institutions (see Basiuk and Burszta, 2020; Duggan, 1994; Clower Huneke, 2023; Ludwig, 2011) and it often addressed them negatively as the cause of neglect or repression (Halberstam 2005, 2008 and 2011; Crimp, 2002, Edelman, 2004). The anti-social turn in queer theory has sealed the hegemony of anti-normativity in research, teaching, and activism (Caserio et al, 2006; Halberstam, 2008; Bersani, 1995, Jagose, 2015; Love, 2021). While more nuanced approaches may be more responsive to the affective, social and legal needs of LGBTQIA+ people, they emerge relatively less frequently (Cooper, 2019; Ludwig, 2011, 2015 and 2023).
Research on queer archives is a key area of reflection on state-individual relations, posing the question of the possibility of queering public institutions, including archives, and creating a queer commons (Francis and Felts, 2017; Hartman, 2019; Quinn, 1977; Rawson and Alwin, 2017; Watts, 2018; Zinn, 1977). Scepticism about the role of the state in this regard (see Bersani, 2016; Cvetkowich, 2003; Halberstam, 2005; Panayotov, 2018) coexists with calls for resources that can support historical knowledge, as well as provide evidence for court cases and journalistic investigations (Edenheim, 2014; Majewska, 2018). In some locations, grassroots queer archives have been merged with state archives, e.g., the IHLIA collection has become part of Amsterdam’s public library. The “Hiacynt” Operations also raise the possibility of a transversal approach to an archive in which public institutions would act in tactical alliance with activists and radical theorists, demolishing earlier divides and reproducing queer resistance within state institutions.
The state and its institutions extend beyond the archives to include education, health and safety, science and culture, economics, media, labour, and policing. In neoliberal capitalism, with a premium placed on immediate efficiency, queer studies stands accused of being overly complex. In consequence, combining queer with another complex field: the state and its institutions, only exacerbates complexity. Nonetheless, the themes we wish to tackle are important from the perspective of justifying queer demands, especially in light of the conservative backlash against LGBTQIA+ individuals and communities, and because of the need to protect the freedom of speech and research.
We invite submissions that take up themes of resistance to the state, as well as state-institutional forms of queer dissent, critique and change. We hope for a plurality of opinions and analyses of the state and its institutions from the perspective of queer people and theory. We are particularly (but not exclusively!) interested in articles in social theory, the humanities, cultural theory, literature and art, legal and political science analyses, but also in other fields, addressing the following issues:
– the state and its queer critique;
– what is power?
– queer institutions and the common good?
– what kind of state is good for queers?
– state policies towards queer people/politics of queer people towards the state;
– queer transversality and institutions and the state;
– queer perspectives on redistribution and recognition;
– is queer theory necessarily anti-state?
– queer state, queer resistance and queer utopia;
– the aestheticisation of (queer) politics or the politicisation of (queer) art?
– how does queer democracy differ from contemporary liberal democracy?
– pinkwashing and the demand for equal public institutions;
– homonationalism versus queer socialism in the context of institutions;
– the state, queer, and the common good;
– neither supervise nor punish: queer alternatives to repressive power;
– queer public archive? conditions of possibility;
– queer state and performance normativity;
– queer and crip theory vis-à-vis state institutions;
– queer perspectives towards care versus feminist socialism;
– can liberal democracy be queer?
– the anarchism of the anti-social turn and its implications for LGBTQIA+ people;
– etatistic anarchic theory: the contradictions of anti-state theories in queer studies;
– beyond the state: queer utopias and alternatives,
– critique of and resistance to institutional homophobia, pinkwashing, homonationalism, and pseudo-reform;
– opposition to recent attempts to legally and institutionally exclude LGBTQIA+ people and communities from contemporary societies and access to rights.
PROPOSED TIMELINE FOR THE ISSUE:
Please send article proposals (up to 40,000 characters with spaces), abstracts (up to 300 words) and short bios of the authors to the editorial office at interalia@uw.edu.pl by 30 December 2025. Proposals will be reviewed by the editors (peer review) by 30 January 2026.
After the external review process (double blind peer review), revised and edited articles are invited by 30 May 2026. The issue will be published in the second half of 2026.
