To Hear Degutytė: What Does It Mean to Read the Queer Past?

The event will be held in Lithuanian.

What does it mean to reread Janina Degutytė today, as previously less visible layers of her life and relationships come into view? What does her long-standing relationship with the artist Bronė Jacevičiūtė-Jėčiūtė tell us, and what changes when we approach it through new ways of reading?

In this discussion, we will explore queer readings of the past: how do we recognise and interpret what was silenced, unnamed, or simply invisible in earlier histories? What do we lose if we dismiss queer readings as anachronistic, imposing today’s categories onto the past? And what do we risk losing if we rely on these categories too confidently?

Together, we will also consider how to avoid idealising historical figures. Do the heroes of our queer cultural histories have to be fighters and activists, always making the “right” choices? Or is it important to see more complicated lives, too – people who tried to survive, create, love, and find their place within particular historical circumstances?

The discussion will feature:
Dr Rasa Navickaitė, researcher and lecturer at Vilnius University’s Institute of International Relations and Political Science (VU TSPMI), whose work focuses on queer and gender history and the politics of sexuality.
Dr Rasa Kamarauskaitė, sociologist researching the everyday experiences of queer people and (in)visibility in Lithuania in the 20th and 21st centuries.
Dr Giedrė Šmitienė, Senior Researcher at the Institute of Lithuanian Literature and Folklore and one of the editors of Janina Degutytė’s Letters.
Assoc. Prof. Dr Jurga Jonutytė, philosopher and literary scholar working at the Institute of Lithuanian Literature and Folklore and teaching in the Department of Philosophy at Vytautas Magnus University (VDU).

The discussion will be moderated by Viktorija Kolbešnikova, one of the organisers of the Kreivės festival and co-curator of the išgirsti queer archive.

During the event, poems by Janina Degutytė, as well as texts from her correspondence with Bronė Jacevičiūtė-Jėčiūtė, selected from the collection of letters Tveriantis ryšys, compiled by Giedrė Šmitienė, will be read by members of the LBT Book Club. The readings are curated by Sandra Amankà, curator of the feminist section of Šiaurės Atėnai and a PhD candidate at the University of New South Wales in Sydney.

The event is organised in cooperation with the LBT Book Club.

The visual features a fragment of Anton Karyuk’s work Portrait of Janina Degutytė.