Od niepisanej umowy milczenia do protopolityczności: dyskursywny i sieciowy charakter społeczności osób homoseksualnych w „długich latach 70.” w historii mówionej i epistolografii

From an unspoken pact of silence to the protopolitical: discursive homosexual networks in the ‘long 1970s’ as reflected in oral history and epistolographyDuring „the long 1970s” in Poland homosexuality beganto be thematized in public and semi-public discourse, enabling a sense of community among people who were not personally acquainted. The discursive emergence of homosexuality was gradually eroding an unspoken pact of silence which had prevailed before. Early self-organizing relied heavily on private networking, in which forms of proto-political sociality supported and enabled the emergence of properly political activism. The paper draws on oral history interviews and on letters which men in Poland sent to the Austrian organization HOSI Wien in the mid-1980s.