Feminist Translations in a Socialist Context: The Case of Yugoslavia (Gender&History, volume 30, n.1, 2018) (original) (raw)
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2016
Through a focus on early publications by feminist intellectuals in Yugoslavia during the 1970s, this paper aims to demonstrate methods of feminist critique of the theory and practice of women’s emancipation in the context of a state socialist (in this case selfmanaging socialist) country in East Central Europe. After a brief overview of feminist organizing in Yugoslavia until the late 1980s, this paper looks at conferences and journal publications, which also provides the opportunity to better understand the workings of the Yugoslav public space and publishing processes. The text, written with a conceptual and intellectual historical focus, analyzes the discursive interventions and reformulations of matters related to women’s emancipation. The new Yugoslav feminist approaches rethought and reformulated the “women’s question.” Reading the prevailing currents of feminism in North America and Western Europe, feminists in Yugoslavia searched for ways to reframe this question into a crit...
Adriana ZAHARIJEVIC THE STRANGE CASE OF YUGOSLAV FEMINISM: FEMINISM AND SOCIALISM IN ‘THE EAST’
The text counters the prevailing idea that there was no feminism in the socialist Eastern bloc, carefully presenting a peculiar case of Yugoslav feminism which grew out of socialist political and cultural framework. Yugoslavia was the country where the organization of the singular feminist event in the Eastern world, the conference “Comrade Woman – The New Approach?” (1978), took place. The text traces the ideas on emancipation and liberation which appeared in Yugoslav scientific and literary journals, immediately after the “Comrade Woman” and until the late 1980s, before the proclaimed fall of the Iron Curtain. The written material is grouped into three sections, according to how the so called woman’s question was elaborated. By re-reading this material, the text examines if feminism was legitimized within the dominant socialist discourse, or whether it was purely translated as something externally Western. The aim of the text is to describe how scholars and activists portrayed emancipation and liberation at that very time: to see if they negotiated or failed to negotiate Western definitions and Eastern realities. In that sense, given material is not used to simply reinforce or refute the claim that feminism was an imported Western (i.e. capitalist) product that had no place interfering with the development of socialism. It also urges us to re-consider the common knowledges we have, in order to see how they become situated as common.
Through a focus on early publications by feminist intellectuals in Yugoslavia in the 1970s, this paper aims at showing ways of feminist critiques of the theory and practice of women’s emancipation in the context of a state socialist (in this case, self-managing socialist) country in East Central Europe. After a brief overview of feminist organising in YU till the late 1980s, the paper looks at conferences and journal publications, which also gives a chance to understand a bit better the workings of the Yugoslav public space and publishing processes. The text, written with a conceptual and intellectual historical focus, analyses the discursive interventions and reformulations of matters related to women’s emancipation. The new Yugoslav feminist approaches rethink and reformulate the “women’s question”. Reading the recent currents of feminisms in North America and Western Europe, the feminists in Yugoslavia are in a search for ways to reframe this question into a critique that is constructive as well as innovative in their own context. Keywords Feminism, dissent, socialism, women’s question, Marxism, sisterhood.
Slavica non leguntur: On a Feminist Project of Interwar Yugoslavia
2015
The article outlines the challenges for literatures created in ”small” languages. The only chance for such cultures to emerge from literary obscurity is to be translated into a ”big” language, a lingua franca of an international influence. This phenomenon is well illustrated by the spectacular Bibliography of Books by Female Authors in Yugoslavia, published by the Federation of Women with University Education in 1936 in the Kingdom of Yugoslavia. The book, a unique and remarkable feminist project of interwar Yugoslavia, was conceived to defy the Slavica non leguntur statement (the Slavic languages are not read [world-wide]). It features the intellectual achievement of women from South-Eastern Europe. This first discussion of Bibliography, which was composed in four languages: Serbian, Slovene, Croatian and French, presents its structure, aims and premises in a wider feminist context of interwar Yugoslavia
Review Essay of: Biljana Kašić, Jelena Petrović, Sandra Prlenda, and Svetlana Slapšak, eds., Feminist Critical Interventions: Thinking Heritage, Decolonising, Crossings, Zagreb: Red Athena University Press and Centre for Women’s Studies, 2013. Christine M. Hassenstab and Sabrina P. Ramet, eds., Gender (In)equality and Gender Politics in Southeastern Europe: A Question of Justice, London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2015.
Women’s Political and Social Activism in the Early Cold War Era: The Case of Yugoslavia
The Cold War era has been mainly represented as a period of gender conservatism in feminist literature, and communist women in Eastern and Western Europe have been often described as manipulated or deprived of agency due to their lack of autonomy from Communist Party politics. On the basis of archival sources and autobiographies, this article explores the Cold War activities of a women’s organization founded in Yugoslavia during the Second World War: the Antifašistički Front Žena (Antifascist Women’s Front, or AFŽ). The article describes the activities of the AFŽ from its creation until its dissolution in 1953, focusing on its campaigns for women’s political, economic, and social rights in the postwar and early Cold War period. By engaging with the pioneering work of Zagreb feminist historian Lydia Sklevicky and with new archival sources, the article aims to shed light on women’s political and social agency in Cold War times.