Queering the Motherland

How are the Olympic Games related to Athenian lgbtq venues? Is Cavafy a national poet or a gay idol? How is sexual subjectivity being shaped within a subtly nationalist discourse that passes as a naturalized 'Greek identity'? And how is the idea of the nation itself being queered by the increasing visibility of its gay and queer subjects? Focusing on the coming out practices of Greek men who desire men during the first decade of the 21st century, this book documents a liminal point in time as regards the manners in which same-sex desire is being experienced and articulated. In exploring the collective and private ways of performing gay and queer subjectivity in contemporary Greece, research interlocutors associate sexual disclosure to the very tenets of national identity: family, religion and motherland. Language and materiality bring out the emerging repertoires of claiming public space and illuminate the cultural idioms of disclosure, as well as the discursive genealogies and kinship modalities of modern culture. This analysis should be useful to anthropologists, gender and queer studies students as well as activists with a special focus on Greek ethnography.