The article presents the project „Antholog y of Polish Queer Literature” as an attempt to reinterpret the Polish literary canon – not only through its contents, but also the successive stages of its creation and the clash with the discourse of state power. The ultimate question is not what the final volume is (in terms of its content), but how it works (worked). The method is therefore autoethnography, and the form – the essay. The article is divided into three parts: 1) the original assumptions of the project and its socio-political context; 2) the clash between queer themes within Polish literature and the discourse of power in the field (that is, the consequences of the fact that the project was funded by the ministerial program the National Program for the Development of the Humanities); 3) the reception of the volume and the reception styles in the context of political disputes. Keywords: autoethnography, essay, canon, queer, national literature