CEU Electronic Theses and Dissertations, 2022
| Author | Stepanovic, Natalija Iva |
|---|---|
| Title | From Nonconformist Lifestyle to Feminist Consciousness: Reading Suncana Skrinjaric and Divna Zecevic in the Context of Yugoslav Second-Wave Feminism |
| Summary | This thesis traces the ways in which two Yugoslav writers, Sunčana Škrinjarić and Divna Zečević engaged with recognizably feminist issues such as marginalization of female intellectuals, embodiment and sexuality, as well as inequality in the public and domestic sphere. I argue that, while their early works primarily display affection toward unconventional lives and persons, Škrinjarić and Zečević eventually articulated feminist stances and produced a number of women-centered texts, including two lengthy life narratives. As they did so before these issues and plots entered wider circulation with the emergence of second-wave feminism in Yugoslavia, their works are omitted from recent scholarship. With the aim of putting them in dialogue with feminist literary studies (Jasmina Lukić and Andrea Zlatar) and historiography (Chiara Bonfiglioli and Zsófia Lórán d), I argue that the authors introduced a novel literary persona, “the feminist intellectual”. The first section examines women’s scholarly pursuits by associating them with Antonio Gramsci’s articulation of the organic intellectual who, unlike the traditional intellectual, emerged from the working class to act as its representative. As Gramsci insists that organic intellectuals are produced through education, as well as immersed in daily life, his theory is useful in analyzing women’s intellectual work, frequently done in between errands, and in countering claims of their innate mental inferiority. Moreover, it is applicable to socialist Yugoslavia as the state had to re-establish its intelligentsia. The following section examines the stratification of Yugoslav intellectuals, and depicts critical discourse used to challenge its exclusionary tendencies: second-wave feminism. By relying on narratology as well as recognizing links between literary motifs and wider cultural context, analytical chapters of the thesis examine the ways in which Škrinjarić and Zečević used (auto)biographical genres to depict failed gender performance, a topic that, as I show by using feminist and queer theory, has subversive potential. Also writing about melancholia, undisciplined bodies and, unconventional (hetero)sexuality, these writers challenged normative constriction of a proper Yugoslav woman, primarily present as the figure of the working mother. Finally, I connect Škrinjarić’s and Zečević’s texts with elaborations of the publishing projects closely related with (Yugoslav) second-wave feminism: the poetic of “women’s writing” that, as understood by literary scholar Ingrid Šafranek, had stylistic as well as material components, and the idea of writing as a collective effort. By emphasizing the complexity and longevity of their efforts to portray women’s life trajectories, their own as well as those belonging to their contemporaries and feminist foremothers, Dragojla Jarnević and Zofka Kveder, I argue that Sunčana Škrinjarić and Divna Zečević should be included in the history of Yugoslav women’s movement. |
| Supervisor | Lukic, Jasmina |
| Department | Gender Studies MA |
| Full text | https://www.etd.ceu.edu/2022/stepanovic_natalija.pdf |
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