Gender, Memory and Youth Culture in Postwar Vukovar
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GENDER, MEMORY AND YOUTH CULTURE IN POSTWAR VUKOVAR, CROATIA By Sara Maksimović Submitted to Central European University Department of Gender Studies In partial fulfillment for the degree of Master of Arts in Critical Gender Studies Supervisor: Professor Jasmina Lukić Second Reader: Nadia Jones-Gailani CEU eTD Collection Budapest, Hungary 2018 Abstract The Battle of Vukovar in 1991 was one of the most violent events in Europe after World War II and a crucial point in the war for Croatian independence (1991-1995). Once a harmonious multiethnic city, Vukovar is now an ethnically segregated community. The postwar generations in Vukovar are born into isolated ethnic communities: Croats and Serbs attend different kindergarten and school programs, even different cafés. This thesis examines ethnic segregation as a state of prolonged conflict which affects Serbian and Croatian youth. It focuses on the position of youth culture in the hegemonic memorial culture of Vukovar, which is characterized by the organization of urban life around gendered nationalist narratives of war. Relying on interviews with teachers and students, as well as other textual and visual materials, I argue that postwar youth culture in Vukovar is a form of negotiation and resistance to the dominant culture which reinforces ethnic segregation through the mobilization of cultural trauma and gendered narratives of nationhood and propose that ‘youth’ is a powerful category through which these hegemonic narratives can be challenged. Key terms: youth culture, segregation, identity, hybridity, memory, commemoration, nationalism CEU eTD Collection i Declaration I hereby declare that this thesis is the result of original research; it contains no materials accepted for any other degree for any other institution and no materials previously written and/or published by another person, except where appropriate acknowledgement is made in the form of bibliographical reference. I further declare that the following word count for this thesis are accurate: Body of thesis (all chapters excluding notes, references, appendices, etc.): 23046 words Entire manuscript: 26290 words Signed _____________________________ CEU eTD Collection ii Acknowledgements This thesis never would have existed without my family. I have my mother and sister to thank for a life-long engagement with the Economics school through stories and projects, and for the connections they so readily placed at my disposal. I also want to thank my father for supporting me in this endeavor despite the differences in our politics. And, of course, I thank Mislav for being the first one to believe I could do this (before I even dared to imagine it). I am just as thankful to my supervisor Jasmina Lukić and second reader Nadia Jones-Gailani for lending me their experience in ethnographic research and academic writing, and for the kind patience and support in times when spirits were low. Finally, I owe special thanks to Mira Majstorović, the current principle of Economics high school in Vukovar, for allowing me to snoop around the school and ask sensitive questions. I hope that my respect for this school and its skills in managing the difficult post-conflict circumstances will come across despite my critique of some of its practices. I also thank Željka Kovačević for trusting me with the password to the documentary Will You Say Hi to Me on the Bus? on Vimeo. I would have been lost without these contributions. CEU eTD Collection iii Table of Contents Abstract ....................................................................................................................................... i Declaration ................................................................................................................................. ii Acknowledgements ................................................................................................................... iii Table of Contents ...................................................................................................................... iv List of Figures and Tables ......................................................................................................... vi List of Abbreviations ................................................................................................................ vii Introduction ................................................................................................................................ 1 Ethnic Conflict in Vukovar ..................................................................................................... 1 Youth and Post-Conflict ......................................................................................................... 4 Identity, Memory and Generation .......................................................................................... 8 Chapter 1. Feminist Methodology ............................................................................................ 13 Chapter 2. Segregation as Normative Identity-Making ........................................................... 19 2.1 Naturalizing Ethnic Difference ....................................................................................... 21 2.2 Segregation as a Transgenerational Responsibility ........................................................ 22 2.3 Ethnic Mixing and the Normativity of Segregation ....................................................... 26 Chapter 3. Gender, Memories and Commemoration in Everyday Lives of Postwar Youth .... 29 3.1 The Good and the Bad: Memories of Masculine Heroism and Guilt ............................. 30 3.2 Dominant Culture and Youth ......................................................................................... 37 CEU eTD Collection 3.3 Resistance to Memory .................................................................................................... 42 Chapter 4. Youth Identities and the Emergence of Youth Culture .......................................... 49 4.1 Masculinity and Ethnic Conflict ..................................................................................... 49 4.2 Postwar Girlhood and the Reproduction of the Nation .................................................. 53 iv 4.3 Doing youth identity, undoing segregation .................................................................... 61 4.4 Subcultures and Hybridity .............................................................................................. 67 4.5 Will You Say Hi to Me on the Bus? ............................................................................... 72 Chapter 5. Conclusion .............................................................................................................. 75 Bibliography ............................................................................................................................. 77 CEU eTD Collection v List of Figures and Tables Figure 1. Table of Interview Participants ................................................................................. 17 Figure 2 The Economics School logo ...................................................................................... 32 Figure 3 The Signature ‘HRBI I SRVATI’ on Milovo brdo .................................................... 69 Figure 4. Signature on the wall of Economics school (courtesy of Ines) ................................. 70 CEU eTD Collection vi List of Abbreviations HDZ (Hrvatska Demokratska Zajednica) – Croatian Democratic Union HOS (Hrvatske Obrambene Snage) – Croatian Defense Forces JNA (Jugoslavenska Narodna Armija) – Yugoslav People’s Army CEU eTD Collection vii Introduction In February 2017, a nineteen-year old male-identified person was arrested in Vukovar for posting stickers with fascist imagery around town, invoking (and unfortunately, celebrating) the historical violence of Croats against Serbs. By this time, I was already preparing to do a qualitative research on postwar youth culture in this small town which seemed to embody, in condensed form, the complexities of identity-making in postwar Croatia. The images in question reminded me that the layers of history that constitute the category of postwar youth exist in a very personal form, even if they sometimes take us half a century into the past. What began as an inquiry into the formation of youth identities with a focus on relationships between ethnicity, gender and age in the reproduction of segregation, expanded towards a consideration of youth responses to postwar culture and the transgenerational effects of cultural trauma, requiring an interdisciplinary approach which cuts across studies of post- conflict, memory, youth and identity. I thus begin by situating my research in the existing scholarship from these fields of inquiry. Ethnic Conflict in Vukovar The final years of social life in the Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia, which was constituted by the now independent states of Bosnia and Herzegovina, Croatia, Kosovo, Macedonia, Montenegro, Serbia and Slovenia, are frequently characterized as a period of ethnic tensions (which were not adequately resolved after World War II) caused by growing economic inequalities and the demise of the unifying ‘Yugoslav’ identity, which followed the CEU eTD Collection death of Josip Broz Tito, the idolized state leader, in 19801 (Mojzes 2011, 132). The absence of an authoritative political figure contributed to increased foreign interventions and economic reforms in the 1980s. Neal Curtis (2007) describes the restructuring