Liberation in confinement: proto-queer relationalities in Custody and By Touch

This article investigates female homoeroticism encoded in cinematic form. I read two Polish films, In Custody/Nadzór (dir. Wiesław Saniewski, 1983) and By Touch/Przez Dotyk (dir. Magdalena Łazarkiewicz, 1985) to explore the new forms of femininity I call 'proto-queer'. 'Proto-queer' is used here to conceptualize the figure of woman bearing a gendered and sexual instability that carries the hallmarks of what subsequently has become known as queerness. At the historical moment of state socialism, these fledgling forms of queer femininity were neither fully developed nor clearly legible. Yet, their distinctly Polish and socialist inflections allow us to view them as precursors to transgressions that would only later be more recognizable within a queer interpretive framework. The analysis of sexual or erotic otherness in the context of isolation and social exclusion around which both films develop foregrounds the affective power of shame and its transformative abilities. I demonstrate how shame and humiliation are both de-constituting and foundational in relation to sexual identity. I analyze how cinematic articulations of proto-queer intimacies generate a reimagined understanding of female homoeroticism in socialist Poland and how this study contributes to the literature on queerness and its representation more generally.