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Feminism As Counterdiscourse In FEMINISM AS COUNTERDISCOURSE IN YUGOSLAVIA IN TWO DIFFERENT CONTEXTS By Zsófia Lóránd Submitted to Central European University History Department In partial fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Arts Supervisor: Professor Balázs Trencsényi Second Reader: Professor Jasmina Lukiü CEU eTD Collection Budapest, Hungary 2007 Statement of Copyright Copyright in the text of this thesis rests with the Author. Copies by any process, either in full or in part, may be made only in accordance with the instructions given by the Author and lodged in the Library of the Central European University. Details may be obtained from the librarian. This page must form a part of any such copies made. Further copies made in accordance with such instructions may not be made without the written permission of the Author. CEU eTD Collection ii Abstract CEU eTD Collection iii Acknowledgements I would like to say grateful thanks to my supervisors, Professor Balázs Trencsényi and Professor Jasmina Lukiü. They spent a tremendous amount of time on discussing my ideas, gave a lot of advice, had many suggestions about the texts and also gave encouraging feedback. I would like also to say thanks to Professor Sorin Antohi for encouraging to go on with my initial idea. Thanks to Professor István Rév for the thought-evoking discussions about certain parts of the thesis. Also to the archivists in the OSA, Botond Barta and Robert Parnica for their help. I am also very grateful to Jasminka Pešut from the Centar za ženske studije (Women Studies Centre) in Zagreb for the lot of useful material she provided me with. Thanks to Bojan Aleksov for the contacts he gave. To Frau Butterstein and Hagen Betzwieser for the photocopying in Stuttgart. To Andrijana Teodoroviü, Petar Mitriü and Danilo Šarenac for helping with the language. To all the people with whom we had the lond-durée coffees. And finally, to Stevo Ĉuraškoviü for helping with the translations, guiding in Zagreb, especially in the National and University Library, giving a roof over my head there, photocopying the material I forgot. And for everything. Of course, the responsibility for the final outcome is exclusively mine, all these people simply did their best for the best results. CEU eTD Collection iv Table of Contents Introduction.................................................................................................. 1 1. Background and History.............................................................................11 2. The Emergence of Neofeminizam in Yugoslavia in the 1970s and 1980s...........20 2.1 Neofeminizam – First Conference (1978), Main Topics and Major Figures....21 2.2 Individual Approaches to Feminism – Drakuliü, Ivekoviü, Ugrešiü ...............30 2.3 Neofeminizam and its Place in Relation to Other Counterdiscourses............43 3. Feminism in the New Nation States .............................................................48 3.1 New Challenges for Feminism in the early 1990s .....................................48 3.2 The Rape Discourse in the Wartime Period ..............................................54 3.3 The “Witch-Trial” .................................................................................60 3.4 Redefining Yugoslavia in Retrospect – from Erwartungshorizont to Erfahrungsraum and the other way round (Drakuliü, Ivekoviü, Ugrešiü)............72 Conclusion ...................................................................................................89 Appendix I...................................................................................................93 Appendix II..................................................................................................94 Bibliography.................................................................................................96 CEU eTD Collection v Introduction The second wave of feminism, emerging from the mid-1960s on, has functioned as a counterdiscourse in each society wherever it appeared. While counterdiscourses, in the sense of a mode of speech and a system of thoughts contradicting the ruling one, in general, have played a significant role in totalitarian regimes in Eastern Europe and feminism could have been one of these, the ideas and claims of the second wave feminism in Western Europe are absent from the intellectual history of most East European countries. The only exception is the former Yugoslavia, where in the early 1970s feminist groups started to emerge and work. However, while later in most East European countries the democratic transitions of 1989/90 opened up the space for feminist discussions as well, the Yugoslav history of feminism took a different turn, which is not surprising, considering the history of the country in the early 1990s. In this thesis I examine two periods of feminism in the former Yugoslavia and in its successor states. The first period in focus is the time of the emergence of the movement, the late 1970s and early 1980s, and then, following a short overview of the events of the late 1980s, the second period to look at is the early nineties, that is the time of the birth of the new nation states, the break-up of Yugoslavia and the Yugoslav wars.1 The analysis is directed to two phenomena: the major elements of the feminist discourse of the age, published in debates, manifestos, scholarly articles and literary works, and on the activity and career of three significant figures of Yugoslav feminism, three Croatian authors: Slavenka Drakuliü, Rada Ivekoviü and Dubravka Ugrešiü. Since, as we will see, feminism in CEU eTD Collection the 1970s-1980s was thinking in terms of Yugoslavia and the three authors claim a Yugoslav identity, albeit in different ways, the inclusion of elements from the 1 I avoid the use of the term “Balkan wars”. The reason for this is in accord with the argumentation of Maria Todorova. The specific concept of “Balkan violence” is confronted with the European one, and is of course more cruel, barbarian, etc. Moreover, the term “Balkan wars” does not differentiate between the Yugoslav successor states and other countries, who had nothing to do with that war. Cf. Maria Todorova, Imagining the Balkans (NY and Oxford: Oxford UP, 1997), 137. 1 history of feminism in the other republics is necessary and the use of the term “Yugoslavia” in the title is justified. The literature on the topic so far has been diverse and fragmented. There are some early texts about the beginnings by scholars who were themselves present at the beginning of the movement, by Barbara Jancar (Barbara Jancar- Webster later on) and Sabrina Ramet.2 Barbara Jancar even wrote a very informative book about women’s role in the partisan movement and in the Second World War (WWII), mostly based on fieldwork and oral history, thus revealing aspects of the beginnings which would not be available any more, since the book was written in the late 1980s.3 By authors like Jasmina Lukiü, Celia Hawkesworth4 and Andrea Zlatar there are texts both in Serbo-Croatian and English on the appearance and success of the women’s writings in the late 1970s, which with this number of remarkable authors was a new phenomena in South Slavic literatures. However, these articles and books do not embed the literary phenomena into a broader political or intellectual history, since they are literary historical works focusing on those aspects of the writings.5 In the thesis, I place these literary text into the (feminist) political context. The discussion on the second period I examine is even more fragmented and consists of various articles about new feminist groups6 and about the wartime mass rapes,7 but probably also due to the closeness 2 See Barbara Jancar, “The New Feminism in Yugoslavia,” in Yugoslavia in the 1980s, ed. Pedro Ramet (Boulder, Colorado: Westview Press, 1985), 200-223; idem. “Neofeminism in Yugoslavia. A Closer Look,” Women & Politics Vol. (8)1 (1988): 1-30; idem. “Women in the Yugoslav National Liberation Movement,” in Gender Politics in the Western Balkans, Gender Politics in the Western Balkans: Women and Society in Yugoslavia and the Yugoslav Successor States, ed. Sabrina P. Ramet (Pennsylvania: Pennsylvania State UP 1999), 67-87 and Sabrina P. Ramet, “Feminism in Yugoslavia,” in Social Currents in Eastern Europe: the Sources and Meaning of the Great Transformation (Durham–London: Duke UP, 1991), 197-211; idem., 1999. 3 Barbara Jancar-Webster [Jancar], Women & Revolution in Yugoslavia 1941-45 (Denver, Colorado: Arden Press Inc., 1990). 4 CEU eTD Collection Also the translator of several works by Dubravka Ugrešiü into English. 5 Celia Hawkesworth, “Croatian Women Writers 1945-95,” in A History of Central European Women’s Writing, ed. Celia Hawkesworth (London: Palgrave MacMillan–UCL, 2001); Jasmina Lukiü, “Women- Centered Narratives in Contemporary Serbian and Croatian Literatures,” in Engendering Slavic Literatures, ed. Pamela Chester and Sibelan Forrester (Bloomington: Indiana UP, 1996); Andrea Zlatar, Tekst, tijelo, trauma: Ogledi o suvremenoj ženskoj književnosti (Text, tear, trauma: Essays on contemporary women’s literature) (Zagreb: Ljevak, 2004). A remarkable gesture of the volume edited by Hawkesworth about “Central European women’s writing” is that while Croatian literature deserves a place in it, the other countries of the former Yugoslav federation are left out. 6 Lepa Mladjenovic [Mlaÿenoviü] and Donna M. Hughes, “Feminist Resistance to War and Violence in Serbia,” in Frontline Feminisms: Women, War, and Resistance, ed. Marguerite R. Waller and Jennifer Rycenga
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