When the Obligation to Be Neutral Becomes the Right to Discriminate: Discursive Struggles Over Lgbt+ Rights at Polish Universities

Abstract

In this article, we discuss the narratives of struggle, resistance, and counter-resistance over the rights of the LGBT+ community at several Polish universities, which remain unnamed in order to protect our informants. In particular, we look at the discourses of LGBT+ groups struggling to establish or maintain organizations of various forms (from students’ study circles to union-like institutions) within the context of internal university structure, Polish academic culture and current political developments in the country. This research draws on semi-structured in-depth interviews we conducted in the spring and summer of 2020. In our analyses of the interview material, we apply a multidisciplinary methodological framework combining CDA and narrative inquiry in order to examine linguistic phenomena participating in constructing a particular version of reality through text in talk. Such research design enables us to offer a case study of the difficulties and obstacles faced by LGBT+ activists in the Polish academia the way they understand them, and of the resistance strategies they employ in this particular context. Our research shows a wide range of resistance strategies employed by the LGBT+ community members that can be classified according to the scale of discriminatory practices they form a response to (systemic/individual discrimination) and the type of the response itself (group/individual response). On the basis of the discussed examples, our article offers an interagentive matrix of strategies of addressing LGBT+ issues emerging within the Polish academic context.

Language, gender and sexuality in 2020

“…Their narratives are transformative because they turn suffering and mourning into collective political struggle that disturbs structural oppression. Pakuła and Chojnicka (2020) outline an 'interagentive matrix' of resistance strategies developed by LGBT+ students and activists in Polish universities. To resist discriminatory practices on several scales, including systemic trans-and homophobia, everyday 'jocular' abuses and rightwing student groups' agitation, the queer students form advocative groups, organise queer lectures and reading circles and support each other individually.…”

“…However, at times their resistance strategies are faced with counter-resistance by bureaucratic procedures of the institution or by individual moralistic vigilantes. In such cases, LGBT+ activists found new resistance strategies, such as removing the terms 'gender' and 'sexuality' from titles for seminars and dissertations but keeping the contents the same (Pakuła andChojnicka 2020:1774). Several other papers from this special issue will be discussed in later sections of this review.…”