CEU Electronic Theses and Dissertations, 2022
| Author | Lekova, Anita Georgieva |
|---|---|
| Title | Are You A Gender?: [Homo]Sexual Belonging in Bulgaria |
| Summary | This thesis looks at the ways in which LGBTQIA+ rights have been contested in Bulgaria as a way to illustrate broader patterns surrounding questions around national identity, citizenship and belonging facing Bulgaria after the fall of socialism in the country in 1989. Despite its geolocation in the Balkans, Bulgaria is rarely situated in conversations around Balkan national identity in favour of post-Yugoslavian spaces, leaving a gap in research discussing the role that Balkan collective memory plays within Bulgaria and the particular ways in which this affects the success of European Union initiatives in the country. The Ottoman legacy, however, is crucial to understanding why the country was subject to such a degree of retraditionalisation after the fall of socialism, while Western Europe was taking the first steps towards detraditionalising citizenship in favour of LGBTQIA+ rights. Keeping this in mind, using theories of ‘balkanism,’ ‘nesting orientalisms,’ and sexual citizenship, my thesis aims to portray the ways in which the struggle for LGBTQIA+ rights in Bulgaria actually reveal questions around the role that Bulgaria plays within the European Union and the ways in which the actors involved in this are subject to multiple layers of ‘othering’. Due to its location, Bulgaria has been ‘othered’ by Western Europe long before it was given the ability to return to it. Once within the European Union, however, a reverse trend took place: the European Union’s ‘pink agenda,’ along with the LGBTQIA+ individuals that became associated with it, became the subject of ‘othering’ by Bulgarian politicians, media and ultranationalist groups alike. The connection of the European Union to LGBTQIA+ rights in Bulgaria led to the creation of the queer scapegoat that came to signify the repression that many felt the European Union was placing on the country to become more ‘progressive’. In an attempt to define who is ‘us,’ LGBTQIA+ citizens of Bulgaria were disregarded as an inherent ‘them.’ After analysing four sites in which the dynamic between who belongs and does not belong to the nation is more visible, I conclude by arguing that Bulgarian LGBTQIA+ individuals hold an in-between space in Bulgaria, where they are considered only so much Bulgarian as everything but their sexuality indicates. Nevertheless, I contend that the Bulgarian LGBTQIA+ community should not lose hope, as by the mere act of existing in public, they break the heterosexual performativity of the spaces of the heteronormative nation. |
| Supervisor | Renkin, Hadley |
| Department | Gender Studies MA |
| Full text | https://www.etd.ceu.edu/2022/lekova_anita.pdf |
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