Matija Krizmanić

Dissertation Project

Future making of LGBTIQ+ people in Zagreb

This thesis focuses on future making among LGBTIQ+ identifying people in the city of Zagreb. Understanding the future as not (yet) here temporality (Muñoz), a cultural horizon (Appadurai) and a set of teleoafective orientations (Bryant & Knight), the research will engage the imaginaries and experiences of LGBTIQ+ through narratives, practices and materialities of their everyday lives and (professionalized) activism. Therefore, the future making in this research is conceived through the interaction of individual and collective agency of LGBTIQ+ groups and seeks to uncover teleafective tendencies in LGBTIQ+ lifeworlds and queer socialities through prism of anthropology of the futures, queer anthropology and activist and social movements’ theories and practices. In this vain, throughout the research I engage the narrative and practice of utopia as method (Levitas) and everyday utopias while acknowledging the inherent failure of utopic projects, but also taking utopia as a critique of dystopic present. The methodology of the research consists of engaged ethnography with participatory and collaborative approaches conducted through expert and biographic interviews and participant observation as well as creative workshops and activities and experimental ethnographic writing. This research brings together an analysis of individual future-making pathways of sexual and gender minorities, and LGBTIQ+ activists future-making practices. By intertwining the experiences of everyday life and the imagination of queer sociality together with political agency, the future-making of sexual and gender minorities is understood as a process of community making.

Supervisor: Assoc. Prof. Dr. Sc. Sanja Potkonjak