Trauma, Violence, and Lesbian Agency in Croatia and Serbia: Building Better Times

Author(s)

Bojan Bilic

Abstract

This book uncovers some of the major moments in the fragile and still poorly known herstory of feminist lesbian engagement in Serbia and Croatia. By treating the trauma of war, homophobia, and neoliberal capitalism as a verbally impenetrable experience that longs to be narrated, this monograph explores the ways in which feminist lesbian language has repeatedly emerged in the context of strong patriarchal silencing that has surrounded the armed conflicts of the Yugoslav succession. With an abundance of empirical material, Bilić illuminates a range of courageous but sometimes contested and controversial activist responses to the challenges posed by the violent intersection of misogyny, lesbophobia, poverty, and nationalism. The book renders visible a surprising diversity of activist initiatives and the resilience of transnational affective ties, which testify to the creativity of lesbian activist mobilisations in the ambivalent semi-peripheral space that used to be Yugoslavia.
Trauma, Violence, and Lesbian Agency in Croatia and Serbia will be of interest to scholars and students researching the history and politics of Eastern Europe, as well as to those working in the fields of political sociology, lesbian and gay studies, gender studies, and queer theory and activism.

Organisation(s)

Department of Education, Department of Social and Cultural Anthropology

No. of pages

224

Publication date

2020

Peer reviewed

Yes

Austrian Fields of Science 2012

504014 Gender studies

Keywords

Sustainable Development Goals

SDG 5 - Gender Equality, SDG 16 - Peace, Justice and Strong Institutions

Portal url

https://ucrisportal.univie.ac.at/en/publications/2bd3beeb-229f-4f61-9156-722d5ee55698