Becoming apart: Drag and the practice of immanent resistance in postsocialist Belgrade

Abstract

This article considers forms of drag in Belgrade that are critical of contemporary Serbian society and analyzes ways in which drag both participates in, and critically relates to, the postsocialist transitional socioeconomic environment, especially the creative industries. Becoming a part of the creative industries (re)produces drag, as well as lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender subjects as consumers, while the ‘becoming apart’ of drag offers possible sites of resistance to the dominant cultural, social and economic model. As some performances – by the Ephemeral Confessions collective, Dajana Ho and Dragoslavia – are critical of both current forms of capitalism and of cis-hetero-patriarchal regimes of gender and sexuality, as well as of the ethno-nationalist narrative that has shaped the region of former Yugoslavia, analysis of the Belgrade drag scene results in a conceptualization of a critical practice that is immanent to what is being critiqued – immanent resistance.