Decadent, transgressive, colonial, queer – these are simply among the adjectives one might use to explain late-nineteenth-century Baltic-German literature. Vikerkaar’s newest situation on queer histories seems concurrently with an exhibit of Baltic-German queer artwork at Tallinn’s KUMU Artwork Museum.
Queer by colonialism
Artist Eric Stenbock, described by W.B. Yeats as a ‘scholar, connoisseur, drunkard, poet, pervert, most charming of men’, wrote quick tales that includes vampires, travellers, beautiful males and dying kids that had been as vibrant as his private life – all financed by the earnings of his household’s intensive land holdings in Estonia.
Vikerkaar publishes tales by Stenbock about girl concurrently in two marriages, a pair in a platonic but fulfilling marriage, and different mixtures that defy heteronormative expectations of affection and sexuality. His writing, as Andreas Kalkun argues, essentially reshape queerness in Estonian literature, whereas elevating sophisticated questions in regards to the colonial relations that enabled nineteenth-century decadent literature.
Queerness glimpsed by allusions and references was additionally central to Elisar von Kuppfer’s identification. Following in Stenbock’s footsteps, Kuppfer sought to revitalize masculinity by artwork, literature and what Foucault would later come to name ‘practices of the self’. His works depict androgynous characters that commemorate the ‘harmony of health, youth and beauty’, and his writing explicitly offers with gay love. The story revealed in Vikerkaar follows a person engaged to a stupendous, but boring girl, who finds himself in love together with her brother as a substitute.
Modern intersectionality
Different essays on this situation contemplate intersectional questions in modern queer tradition. Sara Arumetsa argues for retiring the time period ‘cis-gendered’, which has grow to be a contested, even offensive time period in areas inhabited by the likes of Elon Musk and J.Okay. Rowling.
‘Cis-genderedness’, Arumetsa argues, ‘is best described as a political regime or social and institutional norm, and transgressing it leads to disbelief, confusion, ridicule, lack of medical care, administrative and physical violence, and sometimes death … If we release people from the obligation of being cis-gendered, we would also release those who transgress against this obligation, from the secondary obligation of being transgendered.’
Pauliina Lukinmaa seems at Russian-speaking LGBTIQA+ activism in Estonia after Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine. It’s a blended crowd, encompassing Russians born and raised in Estonia, in addition to activists who fled St Petersburg for Tallinn in 2022. The image Lukinmaa paints is of a various but annoyed group, the place exiles are each impressed by the combination of the area people into state establishments and angered by their apathy and lack of solidarity with communities overseas.
Within the phrases of a queer comic, Sasha Kapadia, Estonia’s LGBTIQA+ group is the sufferer of its privilege: Russian authorities ‘gave me false advertising! They told me how European gays wear golden leather pants and have crazy sex parties. Here in Estonia, people watch TV behind closed curtains. I’m going to the place Putin’s propaganda is definitely true. Not less than they like leather-based pants in Berlin!’
And, based on Ana Mattioli, wrestle has been on the centre of the historical past of trans rights in Spain, ‘From the end of Franco’s dictatorship to the current day,’ writes Mattioli, ‘all trans narratives have been shot through with and reflective of class struggle. Even today, expressing a gender identity that departs from the norm brings about a risk for discrimination and social vulnerability. In other words, transitioning to a different gender generally also means transitioning to a lower-class position.’
