Year: 2026
Type: article
Abstract: This paper challenges deficit narratives that reinforce a problematic West/East binary and frame queer life under state socialism as uniformly repressive. Drawing on more than 16,000 photographs from the Bulgarian Visual Archive, it develops a queer analytical lens informed by queer visual studies, post-socialist historiography, and queer Marxist theory, to argue for a more nuanced understanding of queer life and desire during the period of state socialism. The analysis reveals moments of homosocial intimacy, gender fluidity, and collective joy which demonstrate that queer lives and desires were not marginal, but deeply woven into the fabric of everyday state socialist experience.
Source: Visual Studies
Author: Jasmina Tacheva
Institution: Syracuse University
Language: English
Topic: Gender and Feminist Studies
Subfield: Gender Studies
Field: Social Sciences
Domain: Social Sciences
Open Access status: hybrid
Funder: Syracuse University
OpenAlex ID: W7126220358