QueerBeograd Cabaret: A Shared Space between Queer, Anti-Facism and No Borders Politics (Theatre Studies)

The clandestine festival QueerBeograd created spaces of critique and transformation in order to foster a politics of interconnectedness. Ivana Marjanovi explores the festival's transnational activist cabaret between 2006 and 2008, which was devised, directed and produced by Jet Moon, a founding member of the QueerBeograd collective. This pioneering study demonstrates how the process of staging QueerBeograd Cabaret created a shared space between queer, anti-fascism and No Borders politics, contributing to the advancement of the intersectionality perspective beyond identity. The study thus investigates historical genealogies of gender and political difference in the former and post-Yugoslav space, bringing these into relation with global social and art movements. Cover Contents Preface Abstract Prologue Acknowledgements 0 Introduction 0.1 Methods of Research and Theoretical Frameworks 0.2 Literature Review 0.3 Pride Parade as a Site of Contradictions. Europeanisation, LGBT and Queer Activism, and Leftist Demands from Within 0.4 Structure of the PhD Dissertation 1 Translating Queer, Contextualising Translation. Tensions towards a Queer Politics 1.1 Feminist and Queer Backgrounds—Dissident Currents—Debates on Intersectionality: Decolonial Feminism and Decolonial Queer 1.1.1 Dissident Currents within Feminism 1.1.2 Dissident Currents within Queer 1.2 Gender and Political Difference: The Histories of Art and Activism in the Yugoslavian Cultural Space 1.3 Anti‐War Agency: Feminists, Lesbians, Gays, Artists and Others 1.4 Translating Queer: QueerBeograd and the Discourse of Kvar 2 Making the World That We Imagine: QueerBeograd Cabaret 2006–2008 2.1 QueerBeograd Cabaret—“Preparing the Space” 2.2 “Queercore/Lubricant” Cabaret (2006) 2.3 QueerBeograd Cabaret (2007) 2.4 QueerBeograd Cabaret “Direcktno” (2008) 3 The Politics of References: Anti‐fascism, Queercore, No Borders 3.1 Weimar Cabaret and the Politics of Anti‐Fascism 3.2 Transnational Radical Queer Activism and Contemporary Queer Cabaret Culture 3.3 No Borders Politics 3.4 QueerBeograd: A Hybridising and Situating Cabaret 4 Queer—or More Precisely, Kvar—as a Method 4.1 Creating the QueerBeograd Festival Time and Space 4.2 Kvar as a Procedure of Organising 4.3 The Method of QueerBeograd Cabaret 4.4 Positions of Enunciation and Subject Matters 5 Conclusion: Staging the Politics of Interconnectedness between Queer, Anti‐Fascism and No Borders Politics a) Creating a space between queer, anti‐fascism and “No Borders” political paradigms b) The process of staging as generating interconnectedness between activism and art 5.1 Advancing Intersectionality KVARenje queer‐a 5.2 QueerBeograd and Pride 5.3 Festivals and Alternative Political Culture After the QueerBeograd festival Bibliography Films and Video Material Other Films and Video Material The clandestine festival QueerBeograd created spaces of critique and transformation to foster intersectional perspectives. Ivana Marjanovic explores the festival's transnational activist cabaret production between 2006 and 2008 and investigates historical genealogies of gender and political difference in the former and post-Yugoslav space. As the only existing academic literature of this scale on the subject, this study demonstrates how the process of staging QueerBeograd Cabaret created a shared space between queer, anti-fascism and no-borders politics, contributing to the advancement of the intersectionality perspective beyond identity.