In Search of Territories of Freedom

Ivan Kozlenko’s novel Tanzher (Tangier) became one of Ukraine’s biggest cultural events of 2017, vigorously debated in the country’s media and shortlisted for multiple prizes. This was unprecedented for Ukrainian literature: a queer-themed novel whose plot centers on two pansexual love triangles, one taking place in the 1920s, the other in the early 2000s, did not provoke a torrent of homophobic abuse. Its presentations were not picketed by right-wing extremists, the way this happened on multiple occasions to other recent gay-themed publications, most notably the 2009 anthology 120 storinok Sodomu (120 Pages of Sodom). Set in the city of Odessa, the novel constructs an alternative affirming myth, reinterpreting the episode in the city’s history when it served as Ukraine’s capital of filmmaking in the 1920s and seeking to reinsert this queer-positive narrative into the national literary canon. This article analyzes the project of utopian transgression the novel seeks to enact and situates it both in the domestic sociocultural field and in the broader contexts of global LGBTQ writing, countercultural practices, and the challenges faced by postcommunist societies struggling with the new conservative turn in national cultural politics.