Books and dissertations by Chiara Bonfiglioli
"The Cold War era has generally been represented as a moment of conservatism when it comes to wom... more "The Cold War era has generally been represented as a moment of conservatism when it comes to women’s activism. While women’s political participation in the Second World War had been studied in detail, women’s political and social activism in Cold War Europe has remained under-researched. In my dissertation, I show the liveliness of women’s political and social activism in Italy and Yugoslavia in the early Cold War period (1945-1957), demonstrating that women’s antifascist organizations played an important role in everyday Cold War politics, at the local and at the international level. The thesis studies in particular the local and international activities of the Union of Italian Women (UDI) and of the Antifascist Women’s Front of Yugoslavia (AFŽ), two women’s organizations founded during the antifascist Resistance in Italy and Yugoslavia, which continued to play an active political role after 1945. It also takes into account the activities of the Union of Italo-Slovene Antifascist Women (UDAIS) in the contested border city of Trieste.
The dissertation is based on extensive fieldwork research in Italian and former Yugoslav archives. Oral history interviews and autobiographies represent a crucial complement to the archival research. Archival documents, and excerpts from oral history interviews and autobiographies in Italian, Serbo-Croatian and French are translated and organized into a single historical narrative, which demonstrates the entangled history of women’s antifascist organizations in Italy and Yugoslavia after 1945. By writing this entangled history, I show that transnational connections were established by women across the Italo-Yugoslav border, and across Cold War borders. I explore the bilateral and multilateral relations of the UDI, AFŽ and UDAIS, and their shifting position towards the Women’s International Democratic Federation (WIDF).
This dissertation is founded upon three main theses. The first thesis is that antifascist women’s organizations played an active role in everyday Cold War politics in Italy and Yugoslavia. Throughout the dissertation, I reconstruct the different forms of women’s activism and explore the complexities and limits of left-wing women’s political agency and subjectivity. I focus in particular on the female leaders of antifascist women’s organizations, and on their position towards the base of rank-and-file militants, and towards the “feminine masses”. My second thesis is that Italian and Yugoslav antifascist women’s organizations were crucial in promoting women’s emancipation in the Cold War period. Antifascist women’s organizations promoted women’s literacy on a large scale, as well as access to work and political participation. On the basis of a Marxist faith in modernization and historical progress, antifascist female leaders fought against women’s juridical, economic and social inferiority. Thirdly, I posit that Italian and Yugoslav antifascist women’s organizations provided women with imaginary and physical connections across Cold War borders, not only between Italy and Yugoslavia but also between the West, the Second World and the Third World. As I demonstrate, women’s antifascist internationalism allowed progressive ideas about women’s emancipation to circulate across borders."
Between the 27th and the 29th of October 1978 the international conference “Drugarica Zena. Zensk... more Between the 27th and the 29th of October 1978 the international conference “Drugarica Zena. Zensko Pitanje: Novi Pristup?” - “Comrade Woman. Women’s question: a new approach?” - took place in Belgrade, at the Students Cultural Centre (SKC). The first autonomous second wave feminist event in South-Eastern and Eastern Europe, it is still considered a landmark of feminist history in the former Yugoslavia thirty years later. In 1978 the conference was attended by a number of guests from Western Europe, and aroused the curiosity of feminist reviews and magazines in France, Italy and England. Thirty years later, however, this event is publicly remembered only by feminist groups within post-Yugoslav successor states, while its memory faded elsewhere. These complex dynamics of remembering and forgetting are linked to geopolitical changes that took place on a global level, and most importantly in the region of the former Yugoslavia itself. By first reconstructing the history of this event, and then by looking at its memories thirty years after, I theorise about the effect of geopolitical and historical transformations over transnational feminist exchanges between (former) Yugoslavia and Western Europe. Chapter 1 contains the theoretical and methodological premises of the research: discourses of Balkanism and “nesting orientalisms” are considered, and particularly their gendered character. The issue of the “Western gaze” towards the “Balkans” is discussed, as well as the way in which certain Western feminist interventions reproduced balkanist patterns and genres. The methodological section includes a discussion of the process of combining oral history and feminist methodology. Chapter 2 contains a historical overview of gender relations and women’s movements in socialist Yugoslavia, from the end of Second World War until the late Seventies, overview that permits to better contextualise the meeting of 1978. In chapter 3, the conference is reconstructed as an historical event through press sources and archive material. In chapter 4 and 5, key passages from the twelve interviews with local and international participants are assembled, in order to analyze the memories of the meeting thirty years later.
"Indice
Premessa
Editoriale
Lidia Cirillo, Razzismo e sessismo: una questione preliminar... more "Indice
Premessa
Editoriale
Lidia Cirillo, Razzismo e sessismo: una questione preliminare
Prima parte: razzismo e sessismo nella storia
Lidia Cirillo, Superstizione antigiudaica e razzismo antisemita
Scheda: Sessismo e antigiudaismo (L.C)
Vincenza Perilli, La persecuzione di Rom e Sinti
Scheda: Meridionali razza maledetta (V.P)
Lidia Cirillo, Colonialismo e capitalismo
Scheda: donne e movimenti anti-coloniali
Vincenza Perilli, Brava gente in colonia
Scheda: Il madamato (V.P)
Seconda parte: sul concetto di intersezionalità
Barbara De Vivo: Non tutte le donne sono bianche
Vincenza Perilli: Il concetto di intersezionalità nel contesto europeo
Terza parte: immigrazione e nuove retoriche razziste
Lidia Cirillo, Migrazioni e mercato del lavoro
Sara R. Farris, La retorica dell’integrazione
Scheda: un esercito di donne migranti in sostituzione dello Stato
Sara R. Farris, Donna svelata... meglio integrata!
Scheda: Donne, Islam e Modernità (V.P)
Chiara Bonfiglioli, Corpi estranei: la strumentalizzazione della violenza sessuale a fini razzisti e la rappresentazione dei migranti nel contesto italiano
Chiara Bonfiglioli, Per un’analisi intersezionale della violenza sessuale
Conclusioni
Sitografia (V.P)"
Special issues by Chiara Bonfiglioli
Introduction by Chiara Bonfiglioli, Katja Kahlina and Adriana Zaharijević to a Special Section on... more Introduction by Chiara Bonfiglioli, Katja Kahlina and Adriana Zaharijević to a Special Section on Transformations of gender, sexuality and citizenship in South East Europe, Women's Studies International Forum, 49 (2015), edited by Oliwia Berdak, Chiara Bonfiglioli, Katja Kahlina and Adriana Zaharijević
Special issue of The Italianist, June 2014
Articles by Chiara Bonfiglioli
Nationalities Papers, 2020
This article addresses women's cross-border internationalist connections within the Non-Aligned M... more This article addresses women's cross-border internationalist connections within the Non-Aligned Movement (NAM), focusing on the exchanges between women's organizations in socialist Yugoslavia and the Global South during the 1950s and 1960s, as well as during the UN Decade for Women (1975-1985). As a result of the Soviet-Yugoslav split, Yugoslavia was expelled from the Women's International Democratic Federation (WIDF), the main organization federating antifascist, communist, and socialist women, in 1949. To overcome international isolation, Yugoslav representatives established their own bilateral connections with women's organizations internationally, particularly in the Global South. Throughout the Cold War, the main figure behind women's internationalism in Yugoslavia was Vida Tomšič (1913-1998), a former partisan and leading politician, trained as a lawyer, who had a fundamental role both in nonaligned and UN settings. In this article, I further analyze Vida Tomšič's visits to India, and examine her correspondence with Indian scholar and Women's Studies pioneer Vina Mazumdar (1927-2013). The exchanges between Vina and Vida, as they amicably addressed each other, exemplify the significance of the alliance between activists from socialist countries and activists from the Global South during the UN Decade for Women.
Feminist Review(125, 168-172), 2020
Gender, class and generation were formative of a 'structure of feeling' among textile workers in ... more Gender, class and generation were formative of a 'structure of feeling' among textile workers in the former Yugoslavia. Chiara Bonfiglioli asked former workers at the Dalmatinka spinning mill in Sinj, Croatia, about their experiences of post-socialist transition.
The essay addresses contemporary discussions on women's transna-tionalism and women's agency by l... more The essay addresses contemporary discussions on women's transna-tionalism and women's agency by looking at the first conference of the UN Decade for Women held in Mexico City in 1975, and at its specific embedding in Cold War geopolitics. Through an engagement with different feminist and activists voices, and particularly with the less visible anti-imperialist, Non-Aligned and socialist genealogies of women's activism expressed during the meeting, the essay argues that the paradigm of Western feminist knowledge production needs to be revisited, in order to encompass multiple forms of women's political agency that are not expressed through the liberal framework of women's individual autonomy from the state. By juxtaposing Betty Friedan's and Vida Tomšič's stances during the Mexico City event, the paper shows that women's political agency during the Cold War era took different forms, which included both the refusal and the acceptance of women's activism within existing national and international institutions.
The paper analyses the parallel transformations of citizenship regimes and gender regimes in post... more The paper analyses the parallel transformations of citizenship regimes and gender regimes in post-Yugoslav states, analysing the case study of women working in the textile and clothing industry, a traditionally feminised industrial sector in which employment rates have significantly declined in the last twenty years. On the basis of interviews with textile workers and former textile workers living in Leskovac (Serbia), Štip (Macedonia) and Bosanski Novi/ Novi Grad (Bosnia-Herzegovina), the paper shows that post-socialist and post-conflict
deindustrialisation and subsequent transformations in social citizenship had profound implications when it comes to gender regimes. The overall deterioration of labour and welfare rights in the region had major consequences on women's position as workers and citizens, producing the demise of the “working mother” gender contract which existed during socialist times. The “retraditionalisation” of gender relations in the post-Yugoslav region, therefore, is not only a consequence of nationalist discourses, but is also a direct result of transformations in social citizenship which occurred during the post-socialist transition.
Contemporary Southeastern Europe 1(2), 7-23
The paper investigates the living and working conditions of textile workers in the city of Štip (... more The paper investigates the living and working conditions of textile workers in the city of Štip (Macedonia). The textile industry was highly developed during socialist times, but underwent a process of decline after the Yugoslav break-up. While it still represents a relevant economic sector for post-socialist Macedonia, the textile industry is highly dependent on outsourced orders from Western Europe. Local workers’ living and labour conditions, therefore, are affected by the global ‘race to the bottom’ for production costs that is typical of the garment industry. On the basis of a series of interviews conducted in Skopje and Štip with workers and factory owners, the article argues that contemporary working conditions in the Macedonian textile industry are characterised by poor labour rights, gender discrimination and widespread precarity. In contrast to the current circumstances, working and living conditions during socialist times are positively remembered by workers, who claim that their social status and living standards have deteriorated in the course of the last twenty years. This narrative of precarity is also partially shared by local entrepreneurs, who emphasise the global and local obstacles that hinder the development of the textile industry in Macedonia.
Feminist Review (2014) 106, 60–77.
This essay focuses on recent autobiographies written by Italian women born in the 1920s who engag... more This essay focuses on recent autobiographies written by Italian women born in the 1920s who engaged in revolutionary politics during and after the Second World War: Luciana Castellina (La scoperta del mondo, 2011), Bianca Guidetti Serra (Bianca la rossa, 2009), Marisa Ombra (La bella politica, 2010), Marisa Rodano (Del mutare dei tempi, 2008) and Rossana Rossanda (La ragazza del secolo scorso, 2005). In these autobiographies, personal narratives of passionate engagement are entangled with the urgency of antifascist resistance, and with the social and political conflicts that traversed Cold War Italy. Women’s multiple forms of political engagement within the Italian Communist Party are analysed, as well as the contradictory, ambivalent connection between Western European communist activists and Eastern European socialist regimes. The intersections between antifascist, communist and women’s rights politics are also explored, since some of the authors were leaders of the nation-wide left-wing Union of Italian Women. The autobiographies tell the story of an antifascist, left-wing ‘middle wave’ that fought pioneering battles for women’s political and social rights, and narrate its complex, conflictual encounter with second-wave feminism in the 1970s. These writings, therefore, allow us to reflect on changes in gendered subjectivities and revolutionary politics across time and generations.
The Cold War era has been mainly represented as a period of gender conservatism in feminist liter... more 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.
Glasnik Etnografskog Instituta SANU
Book chapters by Chiara Bonfiglioli
Questo saggio si concentra sui processi di globalizzazione, deindustrializzazione e intensificazi... more Questo saggio si concentra sui processi di globalizzazione, deindustrializzazione e intensificazione del lavoro che hanno trasformato
lo spazio post-jugoslavo negli ultimi vent’anni. In particolare, tramite
interviste biografiche condotte in Croazia e in altri stati formatisi
a seguito della disintegrazione dell’ex Jugoslavia, mi propongo
di esplorare la soggettività delle lavoratrici ed ex lavoratrici del tessile,
un settore industriale tipicamente femminilizzato, esposto al
declino industriale post-socialista e alla competizione globale.
AFŽ activists’ biographies: an intersectional reading of women’s agency
On the basis of the dig... more AFŽ activists’ biographies: an intersectional reading of women’s agency
On the basis of the digitalised archive of the Antifascist Women's Front in Sarajevo (archive material, press and secondary literature), as well as on sources previously collected in AFŽ collections in Belgrade, Zagreb and Ljubljana, the contribution provides an intersectional reading of the Antifascist Women's Front of Yugoslavia, looking at women's different positions within the federal, republican and local bodies of the organisation.The essay considers women’s biographical differences in the fields of education, ethnicity, class and political orientation and investigate how they contributed to shape the organisation. In particular, it investigates whether differences among women had a role in the articulation of gendered imaginaries of backwardness and modernity, namely in the construction of AFŽ practices, dedicated not only to the mobilisation of women for the antifascist struggle during WW2, but also to the construction of modern and emancipated femininities in the post-war era.
Published as a book chapter of the volume: Izgubljena revolucija: AFŽ između mita i zaborava edited by Andreja Dugandžić i Tijana Okić (Sarajevo, CRVENA/ROSA LUXEMBURG FOUNDATION, 2016). Translation from English by Selma Asotić
This chapter engages with Rosi Braidotti ’ s nomadic theory from the perspective of transnational... more This chapter engages with Rosi Braidotti ’ s nomadic theory from the perspective of transnational feminist history. While Braidotti ’ s work continues to have wide-ranging impacts within feminist philosophy, in this chapter I suggest that her work also deserves to be valued as an epistemological guide to historical research, particularly research aimed at recovering alternative genealogies of women ’ s and feminist movements across time and space. On the basis of my own historical research on Southern and South-Eastern Europe, I reflect on Braidotti ’ s foundational concepts of “cartography,” “location,” “borders,” “feminism,” and “memory.” Each of these concepts can be taken as an analytical tool to build alternative feminist genealogies within and across European borders. In dialogue with other feminist theoreticians and historians such as Adrienne Rich, Žarana Papić , Lydia Sklevicky, Nancy Chodorow, Luisa Passerini, Clare Hemmings, and Karen Offen, the contribution highlights the potential of Braidotti ’ s thought for transnational feminist history and historiography.
Uploads
Books and dissertations by Chiara Bonfiglioli
The dissertation is based on extensive fieldwork research in Italian and former Yugoslav archives. Oral history interviews and autobiographies represent a crucial complement to the archival research. Archival documents, and excerpts from oral history interviews and autobiographies in Italian, Serbo-Croatian and French are translated and organized into a single historical narrative, which demonstrates the entangled history of women’s antifascist organizations in Italy and Yugoslavia after 1945. By writing this entangled history, I show that transnational connections were established by women across the Italo-Yugoslav border, and across Cold War borders. I explore the bilateral and multilateral relations of the UDI, AFŽ and UDAIS, and their shifting position towards the Women’s International Democratic Federation (WIDF).
This dissertation is founded upon three main theses. The first thesis is that antifascist women’s organizations played an active role in everyday Cold War politics in Italy and Yugoslavia. Throughout the dissertation, I reconstruct the different forms of women’s activism and explore the complexities and limits of left-wing women’s political agency and subjectivity. I focus in particular on the female leaders of antifascist women’s organizations, and on their position towards the base of rank-and-file militants, and towards the “feminine masses”. My second thesis is that Italian and Yugoslav antifascist women’s organizations were crucial in promoting women’s emancipation in the Cold War period. Antifascist women’s organizations promoted women’s literacy on a large scale, as well as access to work and political participation. On the basis of a Marxist faith in modernization and historical progress, antifascist female leaders fought against women’s juridical, economic and social inferiority. Thirdly, I posit that Italian and Yugoslav antifascist women’s organizations provided women with imaginary and physical connections across Cold War borders, not only between Italy and Yugoslavia but also between the West, the Second World and the Third World. As I demonstrate, women’s antifascist internationalism allowed progressive ideas about women’s emancipation to circulate across borders."
Premessa
Editoriale
Lidia Cirillo, Razzismo e sessismo: una questione preliminare
Prima parte: razzismo e sessismo nella storia
Lidia Cirillo, Superstizione antigiudaica e razzismo antisemita
Scheda: Sessismo e antigiudaismo (L.C)
Vincenza Perilli, La persecuzione di Rom e Sinti
Scheda: Meridionali razza maledetta (V.P)
Lidia Cirillo, Colonialismo e capitalismo
Scheda: donne e movimenti anti-coloniali
Vincenza Perilli, Brava gente in colonia
Scheda: Il madamato (V.P)
Seconda parte: sul concetto di intersezionalità
Barbara De Vivo: Non tutte le donne sono bianche
Vincenza Perilli: Il concetto di intersezionalità nel contesto europeo
Terza parte: immigrazione e nuove retoriche razziste
Lidia Cirillo, Migrazioni e mercato del lavoro
Sara R. Farris, La retorica dell’integrazione
Scheda: un esercito di donne migranti in sostituzione dello Stato
Sara R. Farris, Donna svelata... meglio integrata!
Scheda: Donne, Islam e Modernità (V.P)
Chiara Bonfiglioli, Corpi estranei: la strumentalizzazione della violenza sessuale a fini razzisti e la rappresentazione dei migranti nel contesto italiano
Chiara Bonfiglioli, Per un’analisi intersezionale della violenza sessuale
Conclusioni
Sitografia (V.P)"
Special issues by Chiara Bonfiglioli
Articles by Chiara Bonfiglioli
deindustrialisation and subsequent transformations in social citizenship had profound implications when it comes to gender regimes. The overall deterioration of labour and welfare rights in the region had major consequences on women's position as workers and citizens, producing the demise of the “working mother” gender contract which existed during socialist times. The “retraditionalisation” of gender relations in the post-Yugoslav region, therefore, is not only a consequence of nationalist discourses, but is also a direct result of transformations in social citizenship which occurred during the post-socialist transition.
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.
Book chapters by Chiara Bonfiglioli
lo spazio post-jugoslavo negli ultimi vent’anni. In particolare, tramite
interviste biografiche condotte in Croazia e in altri stati formatisi
a seguito della disintegrazione dell’ex Jugoslavia, mi propongo
di esplorare la soggettività delle lavoratrici ed ex lavoratrici del tessile,
un settore industriale tipicamente femminilizzato, esposto al
declino industriale post-socialista e alla competizione globale.
On the basis of the digitalised archive of the Antifascist Women's Front in Sarajevo (archive material, press and secondary literature), as well as on sources previously collected in AFŽ collections in Belgrade, Zagreb and Ljubljana, the contribution provides an intersectional reading of the Antifascist Women's Front of Yugoslavia, looking at women's different positions within the federal, republican and local bodies of the organisation.The essay considers women’s biographical differences in the fields of education, ethnicity, class and political orientation and investigate how they contributed to shape the organisation. In particular, it investigates whether differences among women had a role in the articulation of gendered imaginaries of backwardness and modernity, namely in the construction of AFŽ practices, dedicated not only to the mobilisation of women for the antifascist struggle during WW2, but also to the construction of modern and emancipated femininities in the post-war era.
Published as a book chapter of the volume: Izgubljena revolucija: AFŽ između mita i zaborava edited by Andreja Dugandžić i Tijana Okić (Sarajevo, CRVENA/ROSA LUXEMBURG FOUNDATION, 2016). Translation from English by Selma Asotić
The dissertation is based on extensive fieldwork research in Italian and former Yugoslav archives. Oral history interviews and autobiographies represent a crucial complement to the archival research. Archival documents, and excerpts from oral history interviews and autobiographies in Italian, Serbo-Croatian and French are translated and organized into a single historical narrative, which demonstrates the entangled history of women’s antifascist organizations in Italy and Yugoslavia after 1945. By writing this entangled history, I show that transnational connections were established by women across the Italo-Yugoslav border, and across Cold War borders. I explore the bilateral and multilateral relations of the UDI, AFŽ and UDAIS, and their shifting position towards the Women’s International Democratic Federation (WIDF).
This dissertation is founded upon three main theses. The first thesis is that antifascist women’s organizations played an active role in everyday Cold War politics in Italy and Yugoslavia. Throughout the dissertation, I reconstruct the different forms of women’s activism and explore the complexities and limits of left-wing women’s political agency and subjectivity. I focus in particular on the female leaders of antifascist women’s organizations, and on their position towards the base of rank-and-file militants, and towards the “feminine masses”. My second thesis is that Italian and Yugoslav antifascist women’s organizations were crucial in promoting women’s emancipation in the Cold War period. Antifascist women’s organizations promoted women’s literacy on a large scale, as well as access to work and political participation. On the basis of a Marxist faith in modernization and historical progress, antifascist female leaders fought against women’s juridical, economic and social inferiority. Thirdly, I posit that Italian and Yugoslav antifascist women’s organizations provided women with imaginary and physical connections across Cold War borders, not only between Italy and Yugoslavia but also between the West, the Second World and the Third World. As I demonstrate, women’s antifascist internationalism allowed progressive ideas about women’s emancipation to circulate across borders."
Premessa
Editoriale
Lidia Cirillo, Razzismo e sessismo: una questione preliminare
Prima parte: razzismo e sessismo nella storia
Lidia Cirillo, Superstizione antigiudaica e razzismo antisemita
Scheda: Sessismo e antigiudaismo (L.C)
Vincenza Perilli, La persecuzione di Rom e Sinti
Scheda: Meridionali razza maledetta (V.P)
Lidia Cirillo, Colonialismo e capitalismo
Scheda: donne e movimenti anti-coloniali
Vincenza Perilli, Brava gente in colonia
Scheda: Il madamato (V.P)
Seconda parte: sul concetto di intersezionalità
Barbara De Vivo: Non tutte le donne sono bianche
Vincenza Perilli: Il concetto di intersezionalità nel contesto europeo
Terza parte: immigrazione e nuove retoriche razziste
Lidia Cirillo, Migrazioni e mercato del lavoro
Sara R. Farris, La retorica dell’integrazione
Scheda: un esercito di donne migranti in sostituzione dello Stato
Sara R. Farris, Donna svelata... meglio integrata!
Scheda: Donne, Islam e Modernità (V.P)
Chiara Bonfiglioli, Corpi estranei: la strumentalizzazione della violenza sessuale a fini razzisti e la rappresentazione dei migranti nel contesto italiano
Chiara Bonfiglioli, Per un’analisi intersezionale della violenza sessuale
Conclusioni
Sitografia (V.P)"
deindustrialisation and subsequent transformations in social citizenship had profound implications when it comes to gender regimes. The overall deterioration of labour and welfare rights in the region had major consequences on women's position as workers and citizens, producing the demise of the “working mother” gender contract which existed during socialist times. The “retraditionalisation” of gender relations in the post-Yugoslav region, therefore, is not only a consequence of nationalist discourses, but is also a direct result of transformations in social citizenship which occurred during the post-socialist transition.
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.
lo spazio post-jugoslavo negli ultimi vent’anni. In particolare, tramite
interviste biografiche condotte in Croazia e in altri stati formatisi
a seguito della disintegrazione dell’ex Jugoslavia, mi propongo
di esplorare la soggettività delle lavoratrici ed ex lavoratrici del tessile,
un settore industriale tipicamente femminilizzato, esposto al
declino industriale post-socialista e alla competizione globale.
On the basis of the digitalised archive of the Antifascist Women's Front in Sarajevo (archive material, press and secondary literature), as well as on sources previously collected in AFŽ collections in Belgrade, Zagreb and Ljubljana, the contribution provides an intersectional reading of the Antifascist Women's Front of Yugoslavia, looking at women's different positions within the federal, republican and local bodies of the organisation.The essay considers women’s biographical differences in the fields of education, ethnicity, class and political orientation and investigate how they contributed to shape the organisation. In particular, it investigates whether differences among women had a role in the articulation of gendered imaginaries of backwardness and modernity, namely in the construction of AFŽ practices, dedicated not only to the mobilisation of women for the antifascist struggle during WW2, but also to the construction of modern and emancipated femininities in the post-war era.
Published as a book chapter of the volume: Izgubljena revolucija: AFŽ između mita i zaborava edited by Andreja Dugandžić i Tijana Okić (Sarajevo, CRVENA/ROSA LUXEMBURG FOUNDATION, 2016). Translation from English by Selma Asotić
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.