Abstract
The focus of our paper is on the changing status of female authors in post-Yugoslav literary canons caused by feminist interventions. We will point to the broader context of the fall of communism and the decomposition of socialist Yugoslavia, its transition to capitalism and the reintroduction of feminism. We will discuss the different aspects of the politicization of the national canon ranging from pointing to its gender bias, and the restoration of female authors, who have not been part of the canon. Then we will point to the political function of the literary canon in (re)constructing post-socialist, post-Yugoslav national identities and the supporting of female authors as part of the process of European-integration, as well as the possibilities of experimental writing in post-Yugoslav literatures. The essential thing will be to point to feminist reception of post-Yugoslav literatures as an important part of the processes of reconciliation after the Yugoslav war in the first part of the 1990s. In the final part of the paper, we will discuss the anxieties caused by feminism and the stance of most female authors who seek the diversification of female literary production which will move between the positions of particularity and universality.
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Notes
The term region was introduced in the area of the former Yugoslavia as a neutral term, in order to avoid rhetorical use of the adjectives Yugoslav and post-Yugoslav, because in the new situation in the country, these adjectives were described as traumatic, with extremely negative connotations.
Yugoslavia was initially constituted as the Kingdom of Serbs, Croats, and Slovenes, and then it was renamed to the Kingdom of Yugoslavia (1918–1941). The Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia was established after the Second World War (1945–1991). The country fell apart due to a series of wars that took place in 1991 (Djuric and Šuvakovic 2003). The seven countries that were formed after the breakup of Yugoslavia were Slovenia, Croatia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Serbia, Montenegro, the former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia, and Kosovo (with a reminder that our analysis does not include female authors from Kosovo, due to the fact that we do not speak the Albanian language). The war in Croatia lasted from 1991 to 1995, in Bosnia from 1992 to 1995, and in Kosovo from 1998 to 1999.
The numerical analysis which points to the fact that women poets were not usually included in Serbian and Macedonian poetry canons (see Kotevska’s text, 2003, 159–177, and Djurić’s text, 2000). It is also important to point to Tine Hribar’s anthology Contemporary Slovenian Poetry (1984), consisting of 17 male poets. In his anthology titled Contemporary Croatian Poetry (1972), Zvonimir Mrkonjić included 10 female poets and 64 male poets.
By using the notion of global hegemonic feminism our intention is to point to the fact that in most parts of the former Yugoslavia feminism's revival happened due to Anglo-Saxon influence, as after the fall of Berlin Wall the United States established its political and cultural hegemony, and English became the global (Globish) language. French feminism has in most cases been mediated through American and British interpretations. It is through the influence of Anglo-American women studies that feminist and gender studies were initiated in the Yugoslav region.
Feminism appeared in the South-Slavic region, which would later become part of Yugoslavia at the end of the nineteenth century.
Drug-ca žena was the first conference in a socialistic country, organized by Yugoslav feminists in the Student Cultural Centre in Belgrade in 1978.
It is interesting to mention that, during the eighties, the gay poet Brane Mozetič was included in the Slovenian poetry canon.
Highlighting this problem, the Slovenian theoretician Matevž Kos wrote that 1991 brought independence to Slovenia and significant collections of New Generation poetry were published that year “at the center of national culture, but actually on the margins of society’s interest.” (Kos 2004, 2006)
For more about this, see Harrington (2009). As a reaction to this rather ignorant attitude towards feminist criticism in Croatian universities, the Croatist, poet and critic Sanjin Sorel wrote a study called Kidipin glas ili hrvatsko žensko pjesništvo (2016) from a feminist point of view, defending the position that the women’s poetry is of the highest quality at the moment. His interpretation focuses on a period from Renaissance-era Dubrovnik to the contemporary oeuvres of female poets.
For more about this statement, see Djurić and Šuvaković (2003).
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Acknowledgements
The authors would like to thank Rachel Blau DuPlessis, James Sherry and John Cox for reading the paper and for their useful suggestions.
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Djurić, D., Nikčević-Batrićević, A. Demarginalizations and destination(s) of post-Yugoslav literary canons. Neohelicon 46, 575–590 (2019). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11059-019-00493-2
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11059-019-00493-2