„Do czego się było przyznawać, jak nie istniał homoseksualizm?” Różowy język w narracjach pamięci o męskiej homoseksualności w PRL

The article is based on research material consisting of ethnographic interviews conducted as part of the CRUSEV international research project. The author analyzes chosen narratives from the perspective of the language which the interview partners use to reconstruct their memories from the People’s Republic of Poland, a period when homosexuality was a taboo subject and was scarcely present in public discourse. The author focuses on several aspects of these memory narratives: the self-identification of the interviewees, the issue of coming out to closest family members, and the specific code or “pink language” used by the urban homosexual communities. The author argues that the way in which interviewees construct their life narratives (e.g. allusiveness, playfulness) reflects not only on the specificity of non-normative life in the People’s Republic, but also on the different strategies of constructing pre-emancipatory gay identities.