“Feminism is the radical notion that women are human beings.”
Chris Kramarae
From today’s perspective, dealing with women’s / gender history and the history of feminism in Serbia and Yugoslavia in the nineteenth and first half of the twentieth century, certainly presupposes that some of the major research questions are problematized at the heart of feminist theories
This article first discusses the most important challenges and contradictions in the debate led by American Joan Scott and Karen Ofen, two of the most influential theorists among historians of European women’s and gender history, whose views and analysis have had a huge impact on discipline in Europe and the world.
Particularly prominent is their completely different view of the contemporary meaning (and significance) of the gender category for research and analysis in women’s and feminist history. On the other hand, the position of women’s and gender history in the post-communist countries of Eastern and Southeastern Europe, that is, former Yugoslavia, is discussed.
The dilemmas regarding the choice of approach to the analysis of the history of feminism in this region are related to the socialist / communist legacy in general, and relate to the basic views of feminist theories regarding naming phenomena in the past (eg women’s issue, women’s movement, feminism, patriarchy, motherhood / maternalism); to interpretations of the role of the concept of difference in the articulation of emancipatory, feminist, as well as anti-feminist positions in the past; to theoretical considerations of the relationship between the center and the periphery (in this case, the relationship between the Anglo-Saxon model of feminism, long regarded as an axiom, and the peculiarities of various “national” feminisms); as well as the question of critical attitude towards the insufficient theoretical perspective of most works in women’s history in this region.
As the post-communist societies in Eastern Europe joined the countries of the former Yugoslavia in different geopolitical formats and names (Southeast Europe, Western Balkans, etc.) in the mid-1990s, it seems that a new round of research and interpretation of women’s and gender history was launched.
They first found their place in Gender Studies at the Central European University in Budapest in 1994. Conferences, forums, and proceedings have been published.
Then, in 2006, a biographical dictionary on Women’s Movements and Feminisms in Central, Eastern and South Eastern Europe was published. As part of Aspa-sia’s projects, a yearbook of the same name was launched in 2007 and an analysis of the history and status of women’s histories called Clio was published on the Margins: Women’s and Gender History in Central, Eastern and Southeastern Europe.
After the political “opening” of Eastern Europe, an attempt was made to define what constitutes good scientific work in the field of women’s and gender history. In her work, Maria Bukur, editor of Aspasia magazine, fully devoted to understanding women’s history through gender analysis and looking at women’s past through this theoretical context, she was aware of little interest in gender history. So she was ready to allow enough space for the works to fill that void in various ways.
Eastern European proverbs that dealt with women’s history were generally not inclined to accept the theoretical position of gender in research. Bukur said that to Western observers this may seem like an over-focus on making “women visible” and that they can conclude that due to the lack of theoretical perspective, these studies do not sufficiently problematize gender issues, etc. Bukur believes that “Eastern Europe cannot afford such a luxury”, but that the magazine’s overriding goal is to connect researchers and share their experiences.
The period of communism / socialism had different influences on the constitution of national same-geographic traditions in Serbia and the former Yugoslavia. As noted above, their personalities did not disappear with political and social changes in post-communist societies, but these historiographies did not go through a tumultuous period of rethinking under the influence of post-structuralism and post-modernism as in the west.
The ot-clone of socialism and communism was present in every country of the former Soviet bloc, even in the former Yugoslavia, and its specific features influenced historiography as well. What they had in common was that social, and especially women’s and gender history, were still relatively new and poorly represented sub-disciplines in historiography. In addition to these, there are other insights into the question of whether women’s and gender histories in Eastern and Southeastern Europe should be written “from scratch”, whether to apply existing, though controversial, theoretical approaches, and what theoretical perspectives may also be important and useful.
Thus, Katerina Kolozova points out that, when it comes to the Balkans, the question of the context in which the research question arises (which should be a general historical position everywhere in the world) is first and foremost raised. She points out that the context is made up of our dual positions of scholars (Southeast European) and students, or those who learn from the West, but also raises the question of the power vector at play within the relationship between the subject (and production) of knowledge: Western and of the Eastern subject.
Kolozova concludes that in South-East Europe, too, is taught or produced knowledge in the field of women’s studies that is more or less fully imported from the West. Only then do they complement the texts of authors from Eastern and Central Europe who (within the curriculum, for example) are assigned a marginal position. Further, defining Kolozov’s context means self-authorizing the legitimation of one’s own contextual position (or system) as a theoretical and scientific starting point from which one can read, rethink, and criticize the basic category taught within the discipline of gender studies.
To overcome the weaknesses of the “Eastern subject” within the theoretical discourse of gender, she proposes to become familiar with the necessary and legitimate (political-methodological) tools of postcolonial theoretical discourses that can be constructed from the perspective of the Balkans.
“A feminist is anyone who recognizes the equality and full humanity of women and men.”
― Gloria Steinem
If feminist practice received adequate theoretical grounding at the center of which was the gender category in the 1970s, the nineties testify to the gradual but pervasive “dismantling” of feminism.
Theorists increasingly opposed to activists, influenced by the discovery of French feminism, post-structuralist philosophers, and, in principle, the growing resistance to essentialism are doing their utmost to deprive feminist theory of its “long” a sought-after and difficult-to-establish subject.
Their motive for doing so seems strange: sometimes in a very complex and opaque language that does not communicate with most women, they are actually trying to bring back feminism to women who were de facto excluded from it. An alternative to identity politics – which does not seem like an alternative to many second-wave feminists – was invented at universities, with the birth of new theoretical disciplines such as queer and post-colonial theory, black studies, or ethnic studies. And this defragmentation of knowledge is quite in line with the new idea of
A lot of people say that ladies in the 21st century have all rights, but I would like to say that it’s not true. Why? If you take a better look, you can see that women can’t work in many institutions. Don’t think about the U.S., of course, they are almost the same. But what happens in small cities, are there they the same as men? The answer is NO. What about women who are from different religions, do they have their own rights? Can they go alone wherever they want? Can they make their own lives as they want? No, no, and no. How we can say that we have rules which can guarantee that we are all the same?
There are many instances where a Court has said women did the wrong thing and they didn’t get any protection after being raped. That is horrible and hopeless.
“A woman without a man is like a fish without a bicycle.”
― Irina Dunn
In reality, today we have women who are independent, who live as they want. They don’t have to be close to some man, just to have a home, money or something. This time is a big revolution for women but the point is that not all women have the same right. That’s the big global problem. All of us are human beings and all have the right to live our own lives.
A guest post from Ehljijana Zeka
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