POR.~OGRAPHY, PRIMITIVES, AND POSTSOCIALIST SLOVAKIA 

James Quin, National University ofIreland at Maynooth 

Introduction 

The commodified sexual body is a 
particularly interesting site for the 
examination of changes associated with 
postsocialist transition. In asking about the 
significance of bodies, Katherine Verdery 
tells us of an answer offered to her by Jean 
and John Comaroff in a personal 
communication: 

They [the Comaroffs] suggest that 
changes in the global economy have 
made the body (as raw labor power) 
the only salable commodity that 
everyone has, and that advances in the 
process of its commodification (the 
sale of organs and sexual services, the 
marketing of smiles, etc.) place it at 
the forefront of capitalist 
development. (Verdery 1999: 135, n. 
13) 

Not only has commodification of the sexual 
body been at the forefront of capitalist 
development, but it also offers a way of 
thinking about postsocialist transition, as 
suggested by Sascha Goluboff (2002) in 
saying that prostitution is a key metaphor for 
postsocialist transfonnation. In this article, I 
want to suggest that gay pornography 
produced in Slovakia might offer some insight 
into the postsocialist transfonnations of 
images of Slovak primitiveness. Such 
pornographic images can be read as a 
queering of traditional and more recent 
figurations of Slovaks as primitives and of 
Slovakia itself as a primitive place, offering 
instead a more postmodern image of 
flexibility and lack of fixity. 

Relationships between sexuality and 
nationalism have been the subj ect of much 
recent discussion and can be traced back to 
the influence of George Mosse's 
groundbreaking work, Nationalism and 
Sexuality: Middle-Class Morality and Sexual 
Nonns in Modem Europe (1985). Mosse 
traces the ways in which middle-class ideas of 

morality and purity developed into sexual 
nonns which were appropriated by nationalist 
politics. In particular, he traces the association 
between these sexual nonns and the rise of 
Nazism in Germany. Mosse demonstrates 
how the effeminacy of the homosexual was 
seen as contrasting with a nationalist ideology 
of manliness and thereby posed a threat to that 
manliness and its role in the nationalizing 
project. Mosse (1985: 11) discusses "the 
masturbator's presumed passion for secrecy" 
and points out the ways in which 

the love of secrecy and the practice of 
vice not only made men and women 
outsiders in respectable society but 
was a danger to the security of the 
state. At a time when conspiracy 
theories of history were popular, the 
masturbator was viewed as a 
readymade conspirator against the 
state. (Mosse 1985: 11) 

This argument can easily be extended to other 
periods when conspiracy theories were 
popular, for instance, during the Cold War 
when the "(American) national political 
identification of homosexuality with domestic 
subversion" figured gay sexuality as "an alien 
presence, an unnatural because un-American 
practice" (Edelman 1996: 158). A similar 
situation prevailed in the Soviet Union and its 
satellites at the same time, as Laurie Essig 
points out: 

In Stalinist Russia, the pervert was 
never a patriot. Queers were fascists, 
fascists were queers. Good citizens ­
always straight - must control, punish, 
and eventually eliminate treasonous 
desires. (Essig 1999: 5) 

The fear of penetration from outside, and of 
undermining from within, is focused on 
figurations of the body of the homosexual, the 
national concern being to maintain state! 
bodily continence in the face of a threatened 
laxity of statelbody boundaries. The fear in 
nationalist ideologies is of being "buggered." 

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This national concern with continence and the 
maintenance of hard borders may cause 
difficulties for projects, such as postsocialist 
transition, which imply the necessity of an 
openness to change, a willingness to be 
flexible. Slovakia's nationalism after the end 
of the communist party regime in 1989 
certainly seemed to partake of this hard­
bordered and often belligerent attitude in its 
antagonism towards domestic ethnic 
minorities and towards some of its near 
neighbors. Changes of government since 1998 
have tempered that image and paved the way 
for Slovakia to become a member of the 
European Union in 2004. 

In this article, I will examine first of all the 
ways in which a small-time professional 
pornographer in Slovakia produces his 
material, giving an ethnographic account of 
his production process. In particular, I look at 
the ways in which he constructs particular 
ideas of Slovakness and primitiveness in what 
are primarily export materials. I will follow 
that with a discussion of the ways in which 
different figurations of Slovak primitiveness 
have evolved since the nineteenth century. 
Starting with the romantic peasant of the 
nationalist movement, I trace the way in 
which the idea of primitiveness changes from 
being one of the peasant as untouched 
repository of tradition to the more recent 
manifestation of Slovaks as nationalist thugs. 
I then consider the ways in which this image 
has been queered in recent times and compare 
this to the image of the Slovak primitive as 
produced by the pornographer. 

Making Pornography 

Pet'ko was a small-time professional 
pornographer capitalizing on the interest of 
distributors from Western European countries 
and North America in pornography 
originating in Eastern European countries. 
Apart from pornography, he also made 
advertisements for Slovak television stations. 
He had trained as a professional cameraman 
and saw pornography as a perfectly viable 
way of making a living, one that was far more 
lucrative than the advertising business. 

Pet'ko told me he made contact with his 
models through Internet chat rooms, but 
straight chat rooms, not gay ones. Online, he 
said, he tells the boys that he is interested in 
photographing them naked and makes an 
arrangement to meet them. If he thinks they 
are suitable, he often goes ahead with 
videoing them more or less on the spot. An 
empty field or a patch of forest was all that 
was needed to provide an undisturbed location 
for his videoing, though if the weather was 
bad, he would use an indoor location, either 
his own flat in Bratislava or a hotel in a local 
town. 

When I asked him about his models, Pet'ko 
repeatedly used the adjective primitivny 
(primitive) to describe the type of men he 
preferred. He tends to video the type of boys 
he personally likes and these boys, he said, 
have primitivny qualities. They are a bit rough 
and imperfect, maybe even a bit stupid. He 
does not want them to have the good looks of 
fashion models or the perfect bodies of gym­
trained athletes. What he liked, he said, were 
those who look quite ordinary, those who 
might have a large nose, or bushy eyebrows, 
or some other feature that made them 
primitivny. In this sense, primitivny described 
men who were ordinary, usual, or common: a 
kind of "guy-next-door" look. It also 
describes men who contrast with the 
"cultivated" look of men in mainly American 
and Western European videos, whose muscled 
and toned bodies are more evidently the 
product of the gym and the beauty parlor, and 
often the product of deliberate cultivation by 
porn company directors who invest heavily in 
developing the bodies of their models. The 
most important thing for Pet'ko was that they 
have a good penis. It did not have to be 
particularly big, but it should not have any 
deformity or kink. A small penis, he said, can 
be made to seem larger but you can do 
nothing with a deformed one. 

Pet'ko told me that he only uses straight boys 
and never gays. He said this was because 
straight boys are much better at getting and 
maintaining an erection than gays who are 
always worried about how they look on 
camera. He also had a preference for boys 

100 



from outside Bratislava. The amount of 
money he offered for videoing might not seem 
a lot to someone living and working in the 
capital, but to someone from outside 
Bratislava, it often represented half or more 
than half of what they might earn in a month, 
he said. Country boys, he added, were less 
likely to pay attention to, or quibble with, the 
details of the contract they signed than the 
better-educated and street-smart city boys 
from Bratislava. In this sense, primitivny 
described men who were naive, simple, even 
stupid, gross or unintelligent. 

Pet'ko himself emphasized the stupidity of 
these men. Most of them, he said, are doing it 
only for the money: to pay a mobile phone 
bill, or buy a new pair of jeans or trainers. 
They have no idea of making a career out of 
porn modeling. Everything was only short­
term with them, he said. They had no sense of 
a goal or wanting to achieve something, no 
sense of investing in their own future. On the 
other hand, he claimed that he himself was 
working hard towards the future, reinvesting 
his money in his operation. He had recently 
bought new digital video cameras which 
allowed him to use the images as stills, and he 
was investing in new computer software and 
hardware which would allow him to do more 
of the work himself and cut down his use of 
expensive facilities houses. In their stupidity, 
these men could not see the opportunities that 
were open to them, opportunities that Pet'ko 
was happy to take advantage of. 

Even in this short account ofPet'ko's 
operation, it is possible to see something of 
Pet'ko's invention of himself. It would be 
possible to view Pet'ko simply as an 
opportunist, almost a scavenger. He does not 
waste money advertising for models and 
going through interviews or casting sessions. 
He makes contact at no cost to himself 
through Internet chat rooms, and almost 
always videos the men he meets regardless of 
looks or any other criteria for suitability. The 
primitivny quality on which he laid so much 
emphasis might well be seen as making a 
virtue out of a necessity. Though the money 
he offers is not insubstantial, most of the time 
it is not enough to attract good-looking or 

well-built young men, especially those from 
the city who might well know the scale of 
values in the local sex-business economy. In 
decrying the primitivny country men for their 
lack of interest in investing in the future, 
Pet'ko glosses over his own lack of interest in 
investing in them. He offers only short-term 
once-off contracts (though he does retain 
certain rights to act on their behalf), and has 
no interest in extending himself to the 
promotion of a "stable" of porn models in the 
way that larger porn companies do. Even his 
reinvestment in his own operation might be 
seen less as investment than as cutting costs. 
The digital video cameras that allowed him to 
obtain high quality stills from video images 
are a way of avoiding the cost of having to 
take still photographs on location with the 
extra time and money that involves. The new 
computer equipment meant that he could do 
more work from home, reducing his reliance 
on costly facilities houses. Using outdoor 
locations also cuts down on the expense of 
rental for studios or other indoor locations, as 
well as reducing the need for expensive 
lighting equipment and the additional cost of 
time in setting up lighting for individual shots. 

Whilst one might look at Pet'ko's operation as 
opportunistic, it can also be seen as a flexible 
response to an uncertain situation. His lack of 
investment in a "stable" of models meant that 
he would not be encumbered with on-going 
commitments if business took a tum for the 
worst. Likewise, his investment in his own 
equipment and facilities meant that he was a 
self-sufficient video producer, capable of 
doing almost all the production and 
postproduction work by himself~ thereby 
allowing him to offer potential clients a one­
stop shop for all video needs. He also 
demonstrated his ability to tum even the most 
primitivny of models into something one 
might want to watch, an ability which 
reflected both his professionalism and his 
knowledge of the market. Through his 
directions, his use of magazine porn, and his 
editing, he turned reluctant, unsexy young 
men into porn performers. Most important of 
all, Pet'ko was well aware that image is vital. 
The accounts he gave of himself and his work 

101 



during our interviews gave the impression of a 
professional operator in charge of a slick 
operation which can almost magically 
transform primitivny Slovak men into pom 
models. 

I asked Pet'ko if I could view some of his 
material with him, and, on the day I went to 
visit him at his flat in the PetrZalka suburb of 
Bratislava, I was accompanied by our mutual 
friend Robo. When Pet'ko arrived to meet us 
at the bus stop, he was not in a good humor. 
He was waving a piece of paper which tumed 
out to be an e-mail from a pom distribution 
company in San Francisco to which he had 
sent his latest video offering, Masturbating 
Boys. It seemed that they were not interested 
in what he was offering but, since Pet'ko's 
English was not very good, he wanted me to 
translate the e-mail for him. The distributors 
in San Francisco said they liked the material 
but were unsure what he was offering. They 
did not distribute anyone else's material, only 
their own. They were only interested in 
material in which models had sex with each 
other and not the kind of solo masturbation 
scenes in Pet'ko's video. Perhaps most 
frustrating for Pet'ko, they referred to the poor 
quality of the video he had sent them. 
Annoyed at the imputation of unprofessional 
and low-quality material, he called the 
Americans kokoty (pricks) and shouted: 
"Don't they know that this is only sample 
material? Do they think I'm stupid enough to 
send them good quality material?" 

We made our way to his apartment which was 
typical of the panetak pre-fabricated blocks in 
PetrZalka: a single room with a kitchen and 
bathroom, tastefully if sparsely decorated. 
While Robo and I sat down on the couch, 
Pet'ko brought some mineral water and 
glasses, and a large bar of chocolate which 
remained unopened. Returning to a calmer, 
camper tone of voice, he announced that first 
we would have the entertainment and then I 
would help him write a response to the San 
Francisco e-mail. The first video he put on 
was the same as the one he had sent to San 
Francisco. In the middle of the screen, the 
name of his company flashed every couple of 
seconds. He said that this was a way of 

ensuring that no one pirated his sample videos 
since it was almost impossible to remove the 
flashing title. He ejected the cassette and put 
on another, the same material as the first but 
this time markedly better quality and without 
the flashing title. I asked if it would be 
possible to see the material as he videoed it, 
without any postproduction editing or 
dubbing. He said he could show me that, but 
thought that surely I wanted to see the 
finished product. I said I did, but that I also 
wanted to be able to see the difference 
between what he shot on location and what he 
finally produced. So he changed the cassette 
again. This time we got a version which had 
been copied directly from the original tapes 
and had been left uncut and with original 
location sound. 

We had been watching this tape for only a few 
minutes when Robo announced that he did not 
find it at all sexy. We were watching a young 
man masturbating beside a bush near the top 
of a hill beyond which a television mast was 
barely visible in the distance. Apart from the 
sound of the wind buffeting the microphone, 
there were only occasional words of direction 
from Pet'ko behind the camera. Pet'ko told 
Robo this was not supposed to look sexy, 
adding that it was "James' idea" to watch the 
uncut version. Robo said it was not just that, 
but that he did not find guys masturbating 
very sexy, that he preferred something with a 
bit more action. Out of deference to Robo, we 
fast-forwarded a little, Pet'ko telling us that 
this guy went on a bit long before taking his 
pants down because he could not get an 
erection. Pet'ko said he did not like his models 
to take their clothes off entirely and that he 
liked the viewer to be able to see some articles 
of clothing in each shot. This, he claimed, 
made it look a bit more realistic and natural, 
not like they were only models. He added that 
this also helped to hide things you did not 
want shown, like a bruise or cuts, or an ugly 
scar or tattoo. 

Another scene was in a room that Pet'ko told 
us was downstairs from his own apartment. 
The downstairs apartment was up for rent and 
Pet'ko had a set of keys for it, as he wanted to 
buy the apartment. The owners, however, 

102 



were adamant they only wanted to rent it out, 
and Pet'ko thought this was incredibly stupid, 
especially since he was willing to pay more 
than the market price and it had already been 
up for rent for some time without attracting 
any offers. The scene showed a young­
looking blonde-haired guy in a short-sleeved 
blue silk shirt. We watched for a while as he 
massaged the crotch ofhis pants which he 
slowly opened and pulled down to reveal 
white underpants. He continued massaging his 
crotch then pulled them down too to reveal a 
still limp penis. Coincidental with his own . 
directions on the video, Pet'ko told us that this 
guy had been unable to get an erection and 
that he finally had to give him some porn 
magazines in order to provide him with some 
stimulation. The magazines were clearly 
visible in some of the shots, and Pet'ko 
pointed out that these shots were edited out of 
the final version so no one would see the boy 
looking at the porn. 

Several of the scenes were located in forests. 
One of these scenes was set in a forest near 
Trnava and in it a young man approached a 
car which had a rug thrown over the bonnet, 
lifted up his T-shirt and began to play with his 
nipples. Pet'ko let out a long sigh, saying that 
this guy was just fantastic. Evidently Roma, 
Pet'ko said this might appeal to a German 
audience who would think the young man was 
Turkish. On the video, there was little of the 
direction from behind camera which was 
usual in the other scenes, and Pet'ko told us 
the young man did all of it without any 
direction from him. As the young man pulled 
down his shorts, Pet'ko was loudly smacking 
his lips. He fast-forwarded through the scene 
promising us a climax like none we had ever 
seen before. Sure enough, the young man's 
ejaculation came out in long streams rather 
than short spurts. Still licking his lips, Pet'ko 
rewound the tape and played the ejaculation 
again. We watched as the young man pulled 
up his shorts and looked around, as if there 
might be someone watching, and then strolled 
off out of sight into the forest. Robo 
commented that this was much more realistic 
than some of the other scenes where the 
young men looked into the camera, claiming 

that looking into the camera spoiled the 
fantasy. Pet'ko answered that he was talking 
rubbish and that any man would like it when a 
nice boy looked at him. 

The next scene had Pet'ko bouncing up and 
down with excitement. Set in another forest, it 
showed a young man with a shaved head 
wearing jeans and a black T-shirt. He was 
lying on the ground trying to massage an 
average-looking penis into an erection. Robo 
said straight out that it looked like the young 
man was having trouble getting it hard, and 
Pet'ko admitted that the boy was a bit shy and 
had taken a while to get an erection. The next 
shot showed the boy looking down to his right 
where we could plainly see an open porn 
magazine. Pet'ko said he always carried a few 
magazines with him in the car for just such an 
eventuality, reminding us that any shots 
showing the magazines would be edited out of 
the final version. We watched as the young 
man battered away at a half-hard penis and 
finally managed an unspectacular ejaculation 
with a lot of grunting. Pet'ko said this boy was 
fantastic, but Robo, laughing, said there was 
nothing in it to impress him. 

Pet'ko let out a mock-horror gasp at the next 
scene which, apparently, had been shot by 
another cameraman who, Pet'ko claimed, had 
no idea what he was doing because he was 
straight. The scene had been shot in the 
downstairs apartment and showed a rather 
ordinary young man with a shaved head who, 
when he took off his T-shirt, revealed a bit of 
a paunch. Still gasping in horror, Pet'ko 
stammered out that this model was only 
twenty and already he had a belly like a fifty­
year-old. Apart from the ugly model, Pet'ko 
pointed out a number ofbad camera angles 
which, he said, meant that the entire piece 
could not be used and was a waste of good 
money. The following scene, videoed by the 
same cameraman, also induced horror in 
Pet'ko and he finally decided we had looked at 
enough videos. 

Pet'ko asked me if I would kindly act as 
secretary while he dictated what he wanted to 
write to the American distributors. As I sat at 
the computer, Pet'ko put on a CD of music he 

103 



had created for himself on the computer using 
a new piece of software. The music had been 
dubbed over the visuals on the final version of 
his Masturbating Boys video. In the end, the 
message sent to the American distributors 
pointed out that the material they had been 
sent was intended only as a sample and that it 
was low quality to avoid any possibility of 
piracy as he had had experiences with 
unscrupulous distributors before. If they were 
not interested in the solo masturbation videos, 
he could make one with couples or group 
scenes using whichever young men from the 
Masturbating Boys video they wanted. They 
could then distribute this video under their 
own label, or he could act as an agent on 
behalf ofthe boys if the American firm 
wanted to use them to make a video of their 
own. 

Throughout this account, it is clear that Pet'ko 
knows what image he wants to achieve and, 
even where his raw materials (the video 
images from his locations) are imperfect, he 
knows how to achieve the desired product. 
His models' difficulties in achieving and 
maintaining an erection are glossed over with 
the assistance of magazine pornography 
which makes no appearance in the final video. 
The images used in the final video, then, 
accord with Pet'ko's vision of young men able 
to achieve and maintain erections 
unproblematically. Likewise, their actions 
during the performances are not spontaneous 
but the result of direction from Pet'ko himself. 
Pet'ko's directions have the effect of making 
the men reproduce typical actions and poses 
from porn videos and probably not dissimilar 
from what they were looking at in the 
magazines that Pet'ko supplied them with. 
These directions were later elided by dubbing 
music over the edited images, which, along 
with judicious editing out of any sign of the 
magazines, gives the impression of 
spontaneity. The fact that models keep some 
clothes on during the videoing allows him to 
disguise the unwanted images of scars, tattoos 
or bruises, giving all the bodies an appearance 
of a perfection they do not have. Without the 
use of purpose-built sets, location lighting, or 
even make-up, what Pet'ko achieves through 

the production and postproduction process is 
no different from what is achieved by any 
filmmaker. The effect, in the fmal edited 
video, is one of ordinary-looking young men 
masturbating unproblematically in ordinary­
looking locations such as forests and 
bedrooms. 

Yet what Pet'ko had achieved was also exotic. 
By eliding difficulties and showing ordinary 
locations peopled by ordinary young men, 
Pet'ko is creating an especially exotic image 
of Slovakia and of Slovak men, the kind of 
exotic image which is typical fare in the gay 
porn market. Pet'ko was not trying to create 
anything particularly innovative or unusual: 
he is largely reproducing the kind of images 
that are common in the gay porn market, 
though adding a certain amount of additional 
sales potential by emphasizing the Slovak 
nature ofthe video. This is added to by the 
fact that his original letter to the San 
Francisco company was headed with the word 

SLOVAKIA 

in such a way that no reader could be 
uncertain either about the country of origin of 
the material or the idea that the material was, 
in some way, a representation of Slovakia. In 
this, however, Pet'ko is trying to capitalize on 
the fact that, through the 1990s, a great deal of 
interest had been generated in porn 
originating in Eastern European countries, and 
the fact that there was a ready market for this 
material in America and Western Europe, a 
market where the name Slovakia was not 
unknown. 

Queering 

I want to suggest here that Pet'ko is doing 
something queer, or, rather, that he is 
queering something. I am using the word 
queer here as it is used in queer theory: 

If queer culture has reclaimed "queer" as an 
adjective that contrasts with the relative 
respectability of "gay" and "lesbian," then 
queer theory could be seen as mobilizing 
"queer" as a verb that unsettles assumptions 
about sexed and sexual being and doing. In 
theory, queer is perpetually at odds with the 
normal, the norm, whether that is dominant 

104 



-- - - - - - - -

-

heterosexuality or gay/lesbian identity. It is 
definitively eccentric, abnormal (Spargo 1999: 
39-40). 

Emerging from a burgeoning of gay and 
lesbian cultural studies and from new types of

i activism in response to AIDS in the 1980s, 
queer theory's embrace of a pejorative term 
marked a radical change in the perception of 

I power politics. Queer theory makes extensive 

I 
use of elements of Derridean deconstruction, 
and of Foucauldian analysis of the discursive 
construction of sexuality. The discursive 

I 
construction of sexuality has been taken up by 
queer theorists such as Judith Butler, Eve 
Kosofsky-Sedgwick and D. A. Miller who 

I 
argue that identity (and sexual identity in 
particular) is not essentialist but is produced 
in a material reality which itself is mediated 
through discourse. Thus, identity is a 
simulation, and, for Butler for instance, 
gender is perfonnative. 

I 
I Queer theory, then, participates in a troubling 

of accepted values and ofapparently natural 
distinctions. Queer theory queers the issues 
with which it engages, undermining 
apparently stable categories and insisting on 
the simulated and perfonnative aspects of

I identity. The appropriation of the pejorative 
term "queer" is part of this queering, an 
appropriation that acts both to remind the 
reader of homophobic prejudice and to 
suggest a form of criticism that uses a 
pejorative signifier of transgressive desire and 
sexual instability as a metaphor to describe a 
category that goes beyond categories (Sim 
1998: 345). 

In disrupting accepted ideas about categories, 
queering raises questions about the proper 
relations between things, about the very 
distinctions between proper and improper, 
propriety and impropriety, appropriate and 
inappropriate. In doing this, it disrupts the 
proprietorial relations between things, 
troubling notions of ownership and 
possession. Queering is about appropriation, 
or reappropriation, or even misappropriation. 
Mixing these two senses of the proper and the 
proprietorial, queering can be seen as 
inappropriation, as a form of interference, of 

parasitism. It can be seen as conducting raids 
on the strongholds of everyday life by 
undermining them, tunneling inside them, 
turning them inside out. It creates new and 
troublesome juxtapositions between things, 
demonstrating possibilities and flexibilities, 
just as it weakens the bases of what is solid, 
fixed, and rigid. Queering is bending the rules 
rather than breaking or remaking them, 
bringing out the flexibility that is masked by 
the appearance of rigidity. Indeed, playing 
with appearances is central to queering. Being 
something, or having an identity, is made 
troublesome by the possibilities created by 
giving the appearance of something, of 
passing as something, or parodying, citing, or 
reiterating something. Queering is "fucking 
with" something. 

Queer theory might seem a long way from the 
realities of life in postsocialist Slovakia and 
yet queer was a word I heard often. The word 
most commonly used to refer to the men who 
go to public places (such as parks, forests, 
public toilets) looking for sex was huzeranti. 
Buzerant (pI. buzeranti) may be translated 
into English as 'queer', 'faggot', 'homo', or 
'bugger'. It carries the same pejorative sense 
in Slovak as these nouns carry in English, 
though in Slovak, use of the word huzerant 
also extends to contexts where, in English, we 
might be more likely to use, for instance, 
'troublemaker'. Used in reference to each 
other by men who frequent public sex sites, 
buzerant loses most of its pejorative sense and 
becomes somewhat more affectionate. Pet'ko 
used these sites as locations for his videos and 
I conducted interviews with him at these sites 
on a few occasions. We would wander around 
with Pet'ko giving out in his mildly camp 
manner because there were not enough 
buzeranti there (by which he meant queers), 
but he also frequently warned me against 
bringing my wallet, or any money or 
jewellery when visiting such sites as they 
were frequented by buzeranti (by which he 
meant troublemakers). These latter buzeranti 
were often young men posing as sexually 
available who might be more inclined to rob 
you or beat you up than to have sex with you. 

105 



The use of buzeranti in these twin senses 
reflects the meanings of the verb buzerovat' 
from which the noun buzerant is derived. 
Where buzerovat' appears in Slovak-English 
dictionaries, it is usually translated as 'to 
ride'. This translation corresponds with the 
English passive use ofthe verb 'to ride' 
whereby one might be 'ridden' with guilt, or 
'ridden' with anxiety, for instance. Buzerovat' 
has a number of synonyms, in particular 
obt'aiovat' and suiovat'. Obt'aiovat' may be 
translated as 'to accost', 'annoy', 'intrude', 
'molest', 'tease', 'trouble' or 'worry'; 
obt'aiovatel'translates as 'molester', and 
obt'aiujuci as 'meddlesome'. Suzovat' may be 
translated as 'to affEct', 'badger', 'harass', 
'lacerate', 'obsess', 'rack', or 'vex'. These 
senses correspond closely to the troublesome 
nature of the English "queering." 

Slovaks as Primitives 

So what is it that Pet'ko is queering in his 
videos? I want to suggest that what he is 
queering is the very notion ofprimitivny 
which he used so often in describing the kind 
of men he wanted to video. To understand this 
a little better, I want to examine briefly ideas 
about Slovak primitiveness that have been 
used at various times, both before and since 
the fall of the communist party regime in 
1989. 

Many Romantic nationalist movements of 
nineteenth-century Europe sang the praises of 
the idealized peasant, and the Slovak 
movement of the time was no different. The 
movement was led by ~udovit Stur (1815­
1856) who was born into a country that was 
known only as the Upper Provinces of 
Hungary, as it already had been for hundreds 
of years. Increasing magyarization, 
accompanied by political and cultural 
oppression in the 1830s and 1840s, provided 
the impetus for Slovak cultural renewal, and, 
as a student, StUr became involved in 
organizations promoting Slovak language and 
culture. He codified one of the dialects of 
Slovak and his new language was soon 
accepted as "the" Slovak language,and 
became the basis for a national movement 
against increasing Hungarian oppression. This 

new language was used by many of the poets 
in the group around Stur to write poetry 
expressive of the simplicity of an idealized 
Slovak peasant life. 

Stur and his associates (Sturovci or Sturites) 
took the opportunity of the revolutionary year 
of 1848 to try and push forward their 
nationalist aims. With backing from Austria, 
they joined Slav fighters against Hungary, but 
met with little success. As a result of his 
involvement, Stur was kept under surveillance 
for the rest of his life. According to Wallace 
(1976), Stllr "took to writing Slavdom and the 
World of the Future, which was really a 
testament of despair. For the Slovaks he saw 
no prospect within the Habsburg Empire and 
their only hope lay in an ultimate link with 
Russia" (68). Though he died at the age of 
forty-one in a hunting accident, Stur had 
become the father of the Slovak language and 
forefather of the Slovak nation. He was buried 
at Modra just outside what is now Bratislava. 

The Sturite romantic image presents the 
Slovak peasant as primitive in the sense of 
being "virgin," unsullied by centuries of 
domination and oppression. In important 
ways, this pristine state ofthe peasant has 
been maintained over centuries by living in 
remote mountain villages, remote from the 
penetration ofthe non-Slav Hungarians. Thus, 
the Tatra Mountains become something of a 
national romantic symbol, emphasizing this 
remoteness and persistence. The romantic 
image of the peasant is also a figuring of 
Slovakia and of the Slovak nation which, like 
the peasant, has remained unsullied by 
domination, maintaining its essential integrity 
and now ready for awakening. The Slovak 
nation, then, was embodied in these imagined 
romanticized peasants and their peasant 
lifestyle. However, despite the development 
of a national language and the beginnings of a 
national movement, Hungarian domination 
continued until the establislunent of the first 
Czechoslovak Republic in 1918. 

While the establishment of Czechoslovakia 
represented some independence for Slovakia, 
Slovaks began to feel increasingly dominated 
by Czechs. Czechs and Slovaks had been 

106 



I 
I 

brought together in a cormnon cause against 
Austro-Hungary, yet the fraternal relations 
were never entirely balanced. Czechs 
considered Slovaks not simply as "brothers" 
but as "little brothers," an attitude that 
reflected the Czech sense of superiority and 
which developed into an antagonistic relation 
which continued up to and even after the 
break-up of Czechoslovakia in 1993. Ladislav 
Holy quotes from Karel Kalal, writing in 
1905, on this "brotherhood": 

The Czech is the elder and the Slovak 
the younger brother. The younger 
brother is usually inclined to believe 
that the elder aims in his advice only 
at his own advantage. He rejects your 
helping hand, he kicks you...And 
what about you, elder brother? Your 
duty is to look after the younger 
brother even more carefully, to make 
sure that when alone he will not lose 
his way or drown. (Kalal cited in Holy 
1996: 104) 

Holy's concern is with the development of the 
idea of the Czech nation and he details the 
ways in which Czechs developed their image 
of themselves and their nation largely through 
a sense of difference from Slovaks. Thus, 

The image of the healthy Slovak lad in 
his folk costume correlates not only 
with an image of an exotic Other but 
also with an image of youth and 
connotes a more general image of the 
young Slovak as against the old Czech 
nation. (Holy 1996: 104) 

This image of the "healthy Slovak lad" is 
derived from the Sturite nationalist romantic 
peasant image but, here, Slovaks are imagined 
by Czechs as "people without history" (see 
Wolf 1982) in a primitivization or 
infantilization of the "little brothers." The 
image of the Slovak peasant lad comes to 
embody an unalterable essence which defies 
Czech efforts at civilizing it. Slovak 
inexperience and the inclination toward 
authoritarianism, embodied in this image of 
the Slovak lad, were then used to justify the 
application of Czech paternalism, and 
resistance to that paternalism could be 

construed not just as ungrateful but also as 
typical. As Holy puts it: 

"Slovak" frequently evokes the image 
of the well-built lad in folk costume ­
wide white trousers, a wide leather 
belt with strong brass buckles, and a 
short linen shir1 which leaves his bare 
stomach exposed - brandishing an 
ornamental long-handled axe and 
singing a mournful folk-song. This 
image is the creation of a whole range 
of artists, filmmakers, and journalists, 
many of them Slovaks, aimed at 
demonstrating their appreciation of 
ordinary Slovak folk. However, 
among Czechs it perpetuates the belief 
that if it were not for their own 
civilizing efforts, the Slovaks would 
still be walking around with their 
bellybuttons exposed. In this imagery, 
the Slovak is an exotic Other living in 
a traditional and picturesque mountain 
village, and Slovakia is an exotic and 
unspoiled wild country epitomised by 
the rocky mountains of the High 
Tatra, slivovitz, and ethnic dishes 
made of sheep cheese. (Holy 1996: 
103) 

The antagonism of Slovaks towards this brand 
of Czech paternalism continued throughout 
the first Czechoslovak Republic. Right-wing 
nationalist parties in Slovakia, such as the 
HSr:S party of Catholic priest Andrej Hlinka 
capitalized on the perceptions of mistreatme~t 
by the Czechs at the same time as they drew 
their voting strength from the rural areas of 
Slovakia. 

However, Czech fears of the Slovak 
inclination towards authoritarianism seemed 
to be confirmed by the declaration of Slovak 
independence in March 1939 which led to the 
imposition of the Nazi Protectorate of 
Bohemia-Moravia in the Czech lands. The 
wartime fascist regime in Slovakia seemed to 
emphasize the thuggish nature of the peasant 
image, at once traitorous and welcoming of 
authoritarianism. Even under the communist 
party regimes from 1948, the antagonism 
between Czechs and Slovaks continued with 

107 



constant Slovak pressure for proper Pridham notes that, in international relations, 
federalization which, despite several efforts, "the tenn 'pariah states' is more or less 
was never achieved. The propagation of the interchangeable with 'rogue states'" (Pridham 
"New Socialist Man" under the communist 2001: 69). A key part ofPridham's definition 
party regimes emphasized the easternness of of pariah states is the issue of national image. 
the Sturite peasant ideal, though giving quite a He notes, for instance, that "Rightly or 
different twist to the actuality of Slovak wrongly, Slovakia was perceived abroad as 
peasant life. Under communism, Slovakia was being more at fault [in the split-up of 
resolutely eastern-facing, participating in the Czechoslovakia], as the home-wrecker in the 
authoritarianism to which Slovaks were prone velvet divorce" (85). In this figuration, the 
according to the earlier Czech models. body politic and the politician's body become 
Interestingly, both Alexander Dubcek, who interchangeable. MeCiar was proud of his 
led the efforts to change communism from background as a boxer, and this pugilism, 
within, and Gustav Husak, who replaced added to by his anti-democratic tactics, 
Dubcek and oversaw the period of engendered an image of him, as a Slovak, as 
"normalization" which lasted up until the end being a bully, an image that was easily 
of 1989, were both Slovaks. devolved onto Slovakia itself which then 

The end of the communist party regime in 
1989 and the subsequent elections polarized 
the arguments between Czechs and Slovaks. 
The antagonistic relations between Vladimir 

becomes a "home-wrecker," a rogue or pariah 
state. MeCiar's appearance and behavior 
during election campaigns compounded this 
Image: 

MeCiar, leader of the largest Slovak political In the election campaign MeCiar, like 
party, and Vaclav Klaus, leader of the largest a mountain of flesh, held the anabolic­
Czech party, increased thc likelihood of a filled American body building world 
split. MeCiar's lack of compromise in his champion 111 his anns, opened 
dealings with Klaus may have seemed the incomplete motorway sections 
only way forward for Slovak nationalism, but accompanied by film stars like a 
it was also an indication of things to come. super-bull, and chopped wood on 
Perhaps not surprisingly, Meciar's position as television like a woodcutter until he 
father of the Slovak Republic after 1993 gave broke the axe's handle. (Zajac 1999: 
him a new arrogance, and his authoritarianism 300) 
grew over the following years. Having refused 
to bend in his dealings with Klaus, Meciar 
was not about to bend in dealing with anyone 
else either. National continence could only be 
maintained by a refusal to bend, a refusal to 
have the newly independent nation bow to 
demands either from ethnic minorities 
(particularly Hungarians and Roma) within 

This image of the bull-necked bully has clear 
resonances with Kalal's depiction of the 
Slovak "younger brother" quoted above and 
Zajac extends it to the competing images of 
"old nation" and "young state" which 
resonates clearly with earlier Czech 
figurations of Slovaks: 

Slovakia, or from others outside Slovakia The rhetorical figure of the "young 
(particularly the European Union). Thus, state" became an institutional excuse 
having successfully opened negotiations with for every problem of state offices 
the European Union (EU) and the North from the bad performance of a clerk at 
Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), a post office counter to governmental 
Meciar's anti-democratic actions and instructions that diplomats should 
increasing authoritarianism resulted in both improve the Slovak Republic's 
organizations suspending negotiations with reputation by serving sausages at 
Slovakia, and Slovakia became a "pariah" receptions. In this context, to be 
state. young means "adolescent," "pubertal" 

and "immature." Someone who can 

108 

------------------............... 




not control himself. Someone who 
throws his arms about, behaves like a 
bull in a china shop. Who has spots of 
awakened sexuality on his face. 
Someone who easily gets stressed and 
even more easily offends. It is not a 
young, blushing "blossoming girl," 
but a clumsy fighter, who 
overestimates his strength and learns a 
hard lesson, a "lout," who gets drunk 
for the first time in a pub, mixes his 
drinks and the next morning has the 
first hangover of his life ... 

But this biological metaphor does not 
work in today's highly structured world of 
labels. At home it leads to the inability to 
deal with basic institutional problems, 
abroad it led to negative promotion, 
oscillating between the position of a pupil 
asking for praise from his teacher and a 
tearaway who throws stones through the 
classroom windows and complains that 
no-one likes him. (Zajac 1999: 290-1) 

The bully image gained currency not just 
within the government but on the streets as 
well. The sense that the country was 
deteriorating under the MeCiar regimes was 
added to by increasing violent crime and 
"gangsterism" on the streets. Slovak 
"gangsters" go by a variety of names and 
nicknames, one of which is hlavohrud. This 
translates directly into English as 'head-chest' 
though we might render it better as 'no-neck' 
or 'bullneck.' It describes the almost unifonn 
appearance of the bodies of these men as a 
shaven head attached to a thick-set muscular 
body in such a way that they appear not to 
have any neck at all, just a head stuck on a 
chest. 

The bullish image of Slovakia did not go 
unchallenged. In his article, Zajac notes the 
way in which the boxer image promoted by 
Meciar was contrasted in the 1998 election 
campaign with the marathon runner image of 
the opposition leader, Mikulas Dzurinda, 
emphasizing the differences between 
autocrats and democrats, between symbols of 
roughness and endurance. Zajac also wryly 
points out what both leaders have in common: 

"success in sports, high performance in a field 
that is more understandable for people than 
politics" (301). In the election campaign of 
September 2002, when there appeared to be a 
real chance that MeCiar would return to 
power, attempts continued to try to undermine 
the bullish image of Slovakia. 

Queer Primitives 

The Slovenska Demokraticka a Krest'anska 
Unia (or SDKU: the Slovak Democratic and 
Christian Union), the party of out-going prime 
minister Mikulas Dzurinda, took Modra je 
dobra (Blue is good) as its slogan for the 2002 
election campaign, though no one seemed to 
be quite sure what the slogan meant. The 
SDKU started its official campaign a month 
before polling day in the town of Modra 
(Blue) just outside Bratislava where they 
released five thousand blue balloons, ran 
competitions and provided entertainment, and 
ended the day by painting the house in which 
I3udovit' Stur had died blue. As a piece of 
political theater, painting Smr's house blue 
caused no small amount of outrage, and 
bewildered many onlookers and 
commentators who asked if such a national 
monument was a suitable requisite for 
political campaigning. For most, it was an 
entirely inappropriate thing to do, almost a 
desecration of national property: an 
inappropriation of Still. Yet, in symbolic 
terms, it can be seen as an attempt to shift 
away from Sturite nationalism towards entry 
into the European Union and NATO. 

In the wake of the revolution of 1848, Still 
had believed that the only hope for Slovak 
nationalism lay in Russia to the east and in a 
unified Slav opposition to Austria-Hungary. 
(The Slovak word rychod translates as 'east', 
'sunrise' and 'exit'.) In 2002, many now felt 
that this view to the east had been thoroughly 
discredited by successive communist party 
regimes from 1948 to 1989, and by the 
authoritarianism of the MeCiar regimes. 
Looked at in this way, what the SDKU were 
attempting in repainting Smr's house blue was 
nothing less than a symbolic reorientation of 
Stur and Slovakia from east to west, from red 
to blue, from the red flag of communism to 

109 

,41 




r 

the blue flag of the European Union. Turning 
Stur blue was also an attempt to reorient the 
Sturite romantic imagining of the Slovak 
peasant, turning it from a drunken, home­
wrecking Slav to a sober, cooperative 
European. It was an effort to show how 
inappropriate the ideals of nineteenth-century 
romantic nationalism were to the early 
twenty-first century situation of Slovakia 
within Europe, corresponding with European 
notions of nationalism as anachronistic. 

Similar efforts at undermining the bullying 
peasant image can be seen in the writings of 
Slovak novelist Peter Pist'anek. The central 
male characters in his novels are depictions of 
uncouth hlavohrud types which Pist'anek 
satirizes: 

Probably the most popular of the 
writers to emerge after the Changes 
was Peter Pist'anek, the target of 
whose satire is constantly one variant 
or other of Sturite easternizing. The 
grotesque, the slapstick parody 
gangster novel, Rivers of Babylon 
(1991), tells of the postcommunist rise 
to riches of a muscular, uneducated, 
greedy bully of a country boy. 
Although this country boy is of 
Magyar background and Balkan name, 
Racz, he embodies the Upper 
Hungarian peasant sweetly besung by 
Stur and loudly bemoaned as a 
stinking sot by (anti-Sturite) Launer. .. 
The eponymous Slovak peasant of the 
title of Mlady Done (Young Done, 
1993) constitutes an even more 
grotesque satirical embodiment of the 
Stur ideal than Racz. (Pynsent 1999: 
18) 

Pist'anek's satirizing of the contemporary 
manifestation of the Sturite peasant also begs 
the question of what it means to be a man in 
contemporary Slovak society, and this 
question is taken up by the so-called 
"Genitalist" school of writers which sprang up 
in Pist'anek's wake: 

Two things characterize the 
Genitalists, an ironization of male 
genitalia and an explicit concern in 

their fiction with modern Theory, 
especially French varieties ... 
Furthermore, the Genitalist may not 
mention genitals at all. Female 
genitalia constituted a "daring" topos 
of the 1980s and early 1990s. The 
Genitalists' concern with male 
genitalia manifests the impact of 
feminism (they ironize maleness, and, 
indeed, male insecurity faced with 
feminism); they probably also ironize 
the "phallicity" of Slovakness. 
(Pynsent 1999: 22) 

The ironization of phalli city can be 
considered as another extension of efforts to 
deal with manifestations of the Slovak 
peasant, in particular, to undermine and 
subvert such manifestations, and we can see a 
further extension of this in what I suggest 
Pet'ko is doing with his primitivny young men 
in his videos. 

Perhaps the most significant part ofPet'ko's 
images ofprimitivny Slovak men has to do 
with the sense that he produces them as an 
advertisement. This is not just an 
advertisement about Slovakia, but an 
advertisement to fantasize about these young 
men's sex. In the images that are presented to 
the viewer, these young Slovak men are 
depicted not as sexually continent but as 
incontinent: ordinary-looking young men are 
presented as masturbating in forests, on the 
sides ofhills, in rooms, on the bonnet of cars. 
In fact, it seems as if they are masturbating 
everywhere and anywhere. In addition, these 
young men are ordinary-looking enough to 
give the impression that it is all Slovak men 
who are like this. Despite claiming that some 
of the men were downright ugly, Pet'ko 
included them all in the final video on the 
assumption that someone might fmd them 
attractive and therefore purchase the material. 
These men are not particularly handsome, or 
well-built, and most of them have very 
average penises, thus adding to the fantasy 
that this is not studio-based, that these are not 
"cultivated" models, that, in fact, they are just 
Slovaks. Yet it remains a fantasy, one that is 
created primarily in Pet'ko's postproduction 

110 



------

processes, and this play between fantasy and 
the reality has queer aspects. 

Pet'ko's particular enj oyment of the skinhead 
he had videoed, and his contrasting horror of 
the skinhead videoed by another cameraman, 
seems to me to indicate the ways in which 
Pet'ko reveled in the possibility of 
undermining, of fucking with, the image of 
the hlavohrud. There is nothing particularly 
new in queering the skinhead image. Murray 
Healey's work (1996) gives an interesting 
account of the ways in which the skinhead 
image has been appropriated by gays. 
Following the theories of performativity 
developed by Butler, and the ways in which 
drag has been exemplified as a form of 
perfonnativity, the appropriation by gays of 
the skinhead image is seen as an example of 
queer theory in practice. The fact that gay 
men "pass" as skinheads undermines the 
notion that all straight men are straight. That 
is, if a skinhead who appears to be straight is 
in fact gay, then, chances are, there are other 
skinheads and straight men who are not 
straight either. (These ideas have not gone 
unchallenged even among queer theorists: the 
relations between "passing" and racial 
oppression in particular are hotly debated. See 
Lloyd (1999) for one discussion of this.) 

Leo Bersani demonstrates that a similar fear 
of "passing·' is behind the American debate on 
gays in the military and the compromise 
policy that was reached: 

perhaps the most serious danger in 
gay Marines being open about their 
gayness is that they might begin, like 
some of their gay civilian brothers, to 
play at being Marines. Not that they 
would make fun of the Marines. On 
the contrary: they may find ways of 
being so Marine-like that they will no 
longer be "real" Marines... What 
passes for the real thing self-destructs 
from within its theatricalized 
replication. The imaginary negates the 
real to which it purportedly adheres. 
In imagining what he presumably 
already is (both gay and a Marine), the 
gay Marine may learn the invaluable 

111 

lesson that identity is not serious (as if 
what he is imitating never existed 
before it was imitated). (Bersani 
1995: 17-18) 

Bersani develops this ar6'1lment with reference 
to D. A. Miller (1992) who argues that there is 
a difference between the macho straight male 
body (as "the body that can fuck you, fuck 
you over") and the gym-body of gay male 
culture, and goes on to add: 

Even the most macho gay image tends 
to modify cultural fantasy about the 
male body if only by suspending the 
main response that the annored 
(macho straight male) body seems 
developed to induce: if this is still the 
body that can fuck you, etc., it is no 
longer ~ quite the contrary ~ the body 
you don't fuck with. (Miller 1992: 31) 

Pet'ko's production ofprimitivny young 
Slovak men does something similar. PeCko 
remakes the continent and impenetrable body 
of the primitivny peasant as a flexible and 
ambi6'1l0US body. Yet these are not presented 
as images of gay men: they might be gay men 
passing as straight, or straight men passing as 
gay. What matters is the ambif,'1lity, the fact 
that they are not essentialized as one thing or 
another. The fact that he advertises his video 
as being from Slovakia emphasizes the 
representative nature of the material: it is 
intended to show what Slovakia is like. Yet 
his use of t)l)ical romantic, touristic locations 
is an inappropriation of these sites, an 
inappropriation that plays with the traditional 
romantic significance of rurality in images of 
Slovak peasants. The locations and even the 
men may appear stereotypical, but what they 
are doing and how it is presented are not only 
not stereotypical but also undennine the very 
meaning of the stereotypical images, 
rendering them useless. 

Significantly, in his offer of services to the 
American distribution company, Pet'ko does 
not limit his or their options but offers the 
widest range of possibilities, demonstrating 
his openness to negotiation: he is willing to 
offer whatever they want to buy, and both his 
products and his young men share this 

... --~~ 



----------~~~----........................... 

------~---------------- ------ ­

flexibility. On the other hand, Pet'ko's 
reaction to the e-mail he received from San 
Francisco showed that he was not willing to 
suffer the possibility of being treated as ifhe 
were in some way primitive as a producer. In 
particular, he found the accusation that his 
material was poor quality offensive, since he 
prided himself on the up-to-date technology 
he used in his productions. In his e-mail back 
to them, he seemed keen to emphasize the 
flexibility of his services but also to make the 
Americans aware that he was not about to be 
exploited or manipulated. Ifhe was queering 
primitive images of Slovaks, presenting the 
body you don't fuck with as at least offering 
flexible possibilities, he was also keen to 
present himself, as a Slovak, as someone who 
was not to be fucked with at the same time as 
offering flexibility. He puts into circulation 
images of men without fixed identities, 
images that are flexible because ambiguous. 

Conclusion 

In her work on the political uses of dead 
bodies, Katherine Verdery demonstrates the 
ways in which the traumatic dislocation of the 
end of communist party regimes required the 
reordering of meaningful worlds (Verdery 
1999). This reordering is often accomplished 
through the manipulation of dead bodies, 
through the movements of statues embodying 
particular histories or through the movements 
of dead bodies, disinterred and reinterred. The 
circulations of dead bodies that she describes 
are attempts to fix a new order of things, 
primarily by establishing dead bodies in new 
national genealogical orders. Yet, in important 
ways, it is less the fixing of these bodies in a 
new order than their adaptability and 
ambiguity that is useful. The fact that they can 
be resignified in particular ways to suit 
particular needs makes their ambiguity 
apparent. And this has resonances with areas 
of contemporary critical thinking in relation to 
postsocialism and identity. Elsewhere, 
Verdery discusses the "fuzzy" nature of 
property which undermines commonly-held 
notions of property (1999a) and a similar 
concern about the "fuzziness" of citizenship 
and ofborders can be seen in Fowler (2002) 
and Batt (2002). Dunn (1999) shows the ways 

in which notions of communist inflexibility 
are undermined by workers' i1exible practices 
in a Polish factory. Such f1exibility is not 
unique to postsocialist transition: it has 
resonances with the kind of flexibility Martin 
(1994) sees in contemporary American 
society, and the kind of flexibility that is 
associated with contemporary postmodern 
theories of identity. Zygmunt Bauman, for 
instance, sees the lack of fixed identity as a 
strategy in postmodern life: 

And so the snag is no longer how to 
discover, invent, construct, assemble 
(even buy) an identity, but how to 
prevent it from sticking. Well­
constructed and durable identity turns 
from an asset into a liability. The hub 
of postmodern life strategy is not 
identity building, but the avoidance of 
fixation. (Bauman quoted in Miles 
2001: 96) 

Likewise, Colwell (1996), discussing the 
work of Deleuze and Butler sees the 
maintenance of fluidity as a way of subverting 
the categories of subject positions and the 
essentializing forms of the politics of the self. 

Pet'ko uses images of young Slovak men that 
give the appearance of romantic peasants of 
the Sturite type, even locating them in the 
same kind of rural environment praised by the 
Sturovci. Yet the images he produces are far 
from being stereotypical of the kind of 
essentialized Slovak peasant that became 
Other to the Czech self. Indeed, what he 
produces are images of de-essentialized young 
men. Pet'ko, in demonstrating the ambiguity 
of his models and the f1exibility of his 
production operation, queers older ideas of 
Slovak primitiveness, and resists new 
attempts to primitivize or to impose 
primitiveness. 

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112 

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