ABSTRACT
The chapter traces the Gothic genealogy of queerness in Polish literature to the anthologies Galernicy wrażliwości (Galley Slaves of Sensitivity, 1981) and Odmieńcy (Queers, 1982), which opened the book series Transgresje (Transgressions). The author describes these volumes as a variant of queer theory and compares the influential literary scholar Maria Janion, creator and editor of the series, to Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick, especially in her interpretation of the Gothic aesthetic. The author notes Janion’s polemically contested readings of Witold Gombrowicz, especially the novel Opętani (Possessed), which was only published in its entirety in the 1970s, and regards the Transgresje anthologies as a deliberately queering archive intended to conceptualize difference within the deceptively monolithic Polish cultural identity, which he sees as determined by the country’s perennially semi-peripheral status.
