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The Caring Leviathan? Hiacynt Pink Files, Biopolitics, and the Queer Critical Theory
Author:
On 15 November 1985, gay men in Poland woke up as the police knocked on their door. The "Hiacynt action" was a series of police and secret services' surveillance operations targeting gay men, showcasing what Michel Foucault called "biopolitical power". This book shows the persistence of the "state of exception" (Agamben) for LGBTQIA+ communities; the archive query it depicts demonstrates the continuous use of Hiacynt documents in current Polish police's operations. The book engages with resistance to the archive and perversions of institutional care for the population, offering a transversal queer critical theory of the state, inspired by Hegel.
"The Caring Leviathan? is a landmark contribution to queer history and critical theory. Through a rigorous investigation of the Hiacynt operations and their unresolved archival afterlives, Majewska shows how state power continues to govern bodies not only through repression, but through the seemingly protective languages of care, order, and security. Historically precise, intellectually bold, and politically urgent, this is an indispensable study about surveillance, memory, accountability, and the unfinished work of queer justice." – Viktor Neumann, art curator and director of the Bonner Kunstwerein
"From a decade of gaining unlikely access into hidden archives, Ewa Majewska has assembled a masterful analysis of government repression and surveillance of gay men in Poland that bristles with relevance for today’s authoritarian mechanisms of scapegoating, surveillance, and control—cloaked, as they often are, in a mantle of feigned official care. Astonishing, unprecedented, and necessary." – Prof. Tim Waterman, University College London
"Through the dark realm of Operation Hiacynt—the police campaign targeting gay men in Poland between 1985 and 1987—Ewa Majewska leads us into the labyrinth of queer theories of the archive and the state. There, amid the shadows of surveillance and erasure, she traces the fragile yet enduring possibility of restorative justice, a horizon of hope increasingly obscured by today’s political and academic climates of despair." – Prof. Paweł Leszkowicz, Academy of Art, Szczecin
"The Caring Leviathan? is a landmark contribution to queer history and critical theory. Through a rigorous investigation of the Hiacynt operations and their unresolved archival afterlives, Majewska shows how state power continues to govern bodies not only through repression, but through the seemingly protective languages of care, order, and security. Historically precise, intellectually bold, and politically urgent, this is an indispensable study about surveillance, memory, accountability, and the unfinished work of queer justice." – Viktor Neumann, art curator and director of the Bonner Kunstwerein
"From a decade of gaining unlikely access into hidden archives, Ewa Majewska has assembled a masterful analysis of government repression and surveillance of gay men in Poland that bristles with relevance for today’s authoritarian mechanisms of scapegoating, surveillance, and control—cloaked, as they often are, in a mantle of feigned official care. Astonishing, unprecedented, and necessary." – Prof. Tim Waterman, University College London
"Through the dark realm of Operation Hiacynt—the police campaign targeting gay men in Poland between 1985 and 1987—Ewa Majewska leads us into the labyrinth of queer theories of the archive and the state. There, amid the shadows of surveillance and erasure, she traces the fragile yet enduring possibility of restorative justice, a horizon of hope increasingly obscured by today’s political and academic climates of despair." – Prof. Paweł Leszkowicz, Academy of Art, Szczecin
Ewa Majewska is a feminist philosopher of culture and an associate professor at the SWPS University in Warsaw. She is the author of The Weak Avant-Garde (MOCAK, 2026); Feminist Antifascism (Verso, 2021) and articles in: Signs, Third Text, Journal of Utopian Studies, EJWS, and Interalia.
This book is of interest to readers and scholars in the following disciplines: critical theory and Hegel; feminist, queer and cultural studies; LGBTQIA+ scholars; activists and librarians; politicians and activists invested in egalitarian policies and reparative justice.