Critically queer and haunted: Greek identity, crisiscapes and doing queer history in the present

Abstract

How can one do the history of Modern Greek homosexuality at the present moment, in a country where intersectional precarity, neo-liberal control and proliferating austerity measures ensure that rights and political demands are in jeopardy? How can we historicise the ways in which ethnonationalism and neoconservative rhetoric create a phobic atmosphere, at the very moment when sexual and gender difference become more pronounced and are finally supported by institutional frameworks? This article offers an overview of the major milestones in Greek LGBTQI+ political representation as well as of recent attempts to articulate a Modern Greek queer history. Taking its cue from the shaming campaign against a cross-dressed man found cruising in the outskirts of Athens in 2016 and an analysis of the influential film Strella: A Woman’s Way (2009), it argues that we need to develop a new model of doing queer history in the present. Such a model will be both sensitive to the fluidity and historical challenge of queer emergence, but also remain ready to dwell on long histories of disavowal, institutionalized homophobia and suppression.