Examining the Possibility of a Universalist Form of Inclusion beyond European Cultural Hegemonism
Katerina Kolozova
Summary / Abstract: The critique of universalism as a form of domination and subjugation of the variety of possible subject positions (identity configurations) that has been central to the contemporary cultural theory represents a form of methodological and ideological self-normalization. I will argue that the cancelling of the possibility of rethinking universalism in some radically novel way produces the perpetual instance of auto-cancelling of the possibility for radical innovativness of the cultural-political theory and activism today. I am speaking in particular of those forms of theory and activism which deal more closely with the issues of integration of the cultural/ethnic, gendered, sexual and migrant minorities in the dominant society forms in Europe. We shall tackle the question of European cultural hegemony, its production of (Balkan) Otherness and the possibility of political universalism within Europe which would be beyond the logic of Euro-centrism or any other form of centrism.
Keywords: universalism, cultural particularism, Euro-centrism, Balkans, non-standard philosophy, othering
Gyneconomies or Reestablished Discourse on "Sexual Difference"
Sanja Milutinović Bojanić
Summary / Abstract: What are gyneconomies and what motivates them? How do they manifest themselves and why? Are they only about woman/female/feminine, or can we speak about female libidinal economies that together with male ones participate in continued exchange in the life of a man? Remembering the discourse on sexual differences, the sexual difference is interpreted as complementary to gender studies in order to avoid exclusionary values of essentialism and constructivism.
Keywords: gyneconomies, sexual difference, gender studies, libidinal economies
Between "Logic" and "History": Could the Hobbesian Sovereign Be Female?
Marko Simendić
Summary / Abstract: The paper examines the possibility of a woman being the sovereign in Thomas Hobbes’s political theory. Particularly, it is discussed whether, in Hobbes’s view, 1) a woman can become a Hobbesian sovereign, and 2) whether she can make a good sovereign. Although Hobbes’s answer to the second question is positive, his endorsement of custom as means of establishing the heir to the throne favours male over female heirs. Therefore, this question reveals a tension between Hobbes’s “logical” argument about the natural equality of men and women and his “historical” argument about the role of a (discriminatory) custom.
Cyborg - an Impossible Identification: Donna Haraway with Jacques Ranciere
Ivan Milenković
Summary / Abstract: This paper is about the intersecting points of two theoretical models with different origins: Ranciere’s model of diff erentiation of politics and police, and Donna Haraway’s conceptualization of cyborgs. Both models assume Ranciere’s concept of “impossible identification”, that is, the coupling of heterogeneous structures, or paradox. “Impossible identifi cations” are a threat to every existing order that relies on identity of form and content, natural and normative aspect, that is to say on the possibility of an identification corresponding to the police procedures. A cyborg is an aberration, the logic that defines police procedure cannot identify it with anything known or recognizable and therefore the concept of cyborg opens up the sphere of politics.
Summary / Abstract: Reading Jeff Noon’s and Stewart Home’s novels as manifestations of postfuturist writing is here presented in the form of a critique of the world of commoditized emotionality, vulgarized sexuality, afflicted playfulness, and bewildering spirituality. The analysis outlines a vision of writing and activism of singularized humans, galvanized by and fertilizing solidarity and creation. The term postfuture symbolizes oscillations between melancholy and hope at the intersection of time axes. jan jagodzinski’s ideas from Youth Fantasies: The Perverse Landscape of the Media (2004) are deployed to elucidate cultural and emotional dynamism in the novels, questioning the levels/kinds of reality and the notion of alterity. Additionally, the analysis is contextualized within McKenzie Wark’s Gamer Theory (2007), problematizing living under the spectacle and questioning boundaries of freedom. Depersonalization and dehumanization in a profit-based, media-saturated mass culture is thematized through the lenses of Jean Baudrillard’s America (1988), while Felix Guattari’s The Three Ecologies (1999) provides the context for rethinking individuality and communality. Svetlana Boym’s thought provides guidelines for a vision of rethinking subjectivity. The work focuses on the potential of cultural constructivness as a basis for remixing reading-writing tactics and cultural reality.
My Name is Masochism: Wanda and Leopold von Sacher-Masoch – Name, Woman, Genre
Biljana Andonovska
Summary / Abstract: This paper deals with the autobiography of Wanda von Sacher-Masoch, notorious masochistic heroine, who spent ten years in a marriage with Leopold von Sacher-Masoch, the “father of literary masochism”. The necessary context for this research is provided by Krafft-Ebing’s medico-forensic study Psychopathia sexualis, Leopold von Sacher-Masoch’s masochistic novel Venus in Furs, Deleuze’s “gynocentric” (re)vision of masochism and Foucault’s analyses of the discursive history of sexuality in western “confessing” societies. The specific issues of proper name, truth, privacy and identity involved, in the case of Wanda von Sacher-Masoch’s Confessions are related to the characteristic features of the specifically women’s experience of writing. Thus, I analyse her “confessional pseudonym” as a double fiction that suggests the ambivalence of establishing female identity at the crossroads of literary fiction and fiction of the social institution of marriage. (Inter)textual strategies of Wanda von Sacher-Masoch’s autobiography are organized as a female counterpoint to Sacher-Masoch’s masochistic lifestyle and narrative, but also as a counterpoint to her own previous “masochistic authorship” under the pseudonym of the heroine of Sacher-Masoch’s Venus in Furs – Wanda von Dunajew. In her late autobiographical Confessions Wanda von Sacher-Masoch tells the masochistic story not as a fiction but as a pressure of fiction on the real life and demystifies male masochistic fantasy as oppressive and restrictive. Different status and value of authorship and statements in the autobiography as a documentary genre allows Wanda von Sacher-Masoch to strengthen privacy and daily life as political spheres, which sets her text in a dynamic relationship with the social environment and feminist movement of the time. Yet, for the same reasons her anti-masochistic autobiographical work may be perceived as still masochistic, based on the conservative, truth-seeking, mimetic genre that conforms to the relational definition of woman’s identity.
Keywords: masochism, sadism, woman, proper name, pseudonym, confession, Wanda and Leopold von Sacher-Masoch, Krafft-Ebing, Marko Ristić
“Men with Feminine Traits”: On the Issue of Masculinity at the Beginning of the 20th century in Serbia
Milan Miljković
Summary / Abstract: In 1903, Sreten Adžić, an acknowledged Serbian pedagogist, published in the journal Delo an important essay on the issue of “men with feminine traits”. According to Sreten Adžić’s implicit explanations, the phrase “men with feminine traits” could be understood as a broad concept that includes both homosexuals and heterosexuals. Following contemporary scientific research data of Magnus Hirschfeld, Karl H. Ulrich and Jean-Marie Charcot, Sreten Adžić argues that the phenomenon of feminine or feminized men is an abnormal biological aberration that could be adequately treated at the early stage of child’s development, by employing different psychological and sociological approaches. Although he believes that femininity in men represents an abnormality, Adžić offers a balanced approach to this issue, one which is not altogether discriminating but represents a liberal view on homosexuality and sexuality in general. Having in mind that this issue was not widely discussed within the Serbian pedagogical or professional journals, due to the wider patriarchal national context, the author argues that Sreten Adžić’s essay represents a very signifi cant text that uses various narrative voices in order to subtly integrate very open-minded and potentially subversive discourse on homosexuality. On the other hand, the author recognizes that Sreten Adžić holds the traditional point of view, as well as that he praises and affirms values of masculinity and virile male identity.
Politics of Memory, Feminism, and Solidarity after the Conflict in former Yugoslavia
Deana Jovanović
Summary / Abstract: In this article I point to idea of solidarity in feminist accounts of facing the past projects after the conflicts in the former Yugoslavia. While I indicate that solidarity plays an important stance in conceptualizing the notion of moral responsibility and feminism, I suggest that feminist approaches to facing the past need to reconsider the notion of Otherness, constructed within categories of gender. This aspect has been neglected in feminist accounts of facing the past. I illustrate the differences between women through an analysis of different memory narratives of women in Serbia who were in particular ways connected with the conflicts. In the conclusion I posit that complexities, as well as a dialogue between different Others within the same collective and category of gender need to be included while theorizing solidarity in the context of facing the past, in order to confront various (political) paradigms of exclusion in Serbia.
Keywords: feminism, solidarity, memory, gender, Otherness, moral responsibility
National Community, Gender and Popular Representation: Theoretical Frameworks
Marija Grujić
Summary / Abstract: The paper briefly outlines some of the most crucial questions of representation and studies of nationalism and gender representations. Primarily, it reassesses the debate on what kind of cultural production participates in the nation-building projects. Michael Billig and Tim Edensor revisited the question of signifiers of the nation, and pointed out that studies of nationalism should not be restricted only to its most violent and most extreme manifestations. In their view, national projects operate also through, what Billig calls, banal nationalism, while being reproduced through everyday practices, entertainment and popular culture. Edensor acknowledges Billig’s concept of banal nationalism, and especially criticizes some of the most influential theoreticians of nationalism for neglecting the fact that nationalist production of culture is not connected only with elitist and “high” culture, but also with popular culture, entertainment and everyday practices. Subsequently, paper discusses the inter-reactions between the national communities and representation of women as signifiers of the nation. Gender representations, and especially representations of women, are included in nationalist projects in a controversial way, often instrumentalized as bearers of “national honour”. Very often, it is possible to observe the representations of women in popular culture and various entertaining contents as signifiers of subtle messages of banal nationalism.
