(S)he Walks: Gendered Audiences, Memory and Representation in Post-Yugoslav Space

Based on ethnographic studies carried out during commemorations in Vukovar and Srebrenica, this paper analyses gendered representations of said mnemonic events. Specific practices that incorporate both military and civilian components, as well as discourse on heroism and victimhood, lay at the focus of this research: the Column of Remembrance in Vukovar and the Nezuk to Potočari Peace March. Following the theoretical findings on the nexus between memory and gender, the main actors and their agency are studied from the gender perspective. The symbolic capital of the two sites of memory and transformations of memorial practices impact the representation of gender on both state and grassroots levels and give an insight into the questions this paper asks: Why are women present in such large numbers in both Vukovar and in Srebrenica? How is gender represented in the course of these commemorations? What are the political implications of such choices? What kind of strategies are used in official and grassroots initiatives? Finally, how is it connected to gender?

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Ana Ljubojević is a Research Associate at University of Ljubljana within ERC project EIRENE on women in post-war transitions. Previously, she was a Marie Curie postdoctoral fellow at the Centre for Southeast European Studies (CSEES), University of Graz, Austria. She obtained her PhD in Political systems and institutional change at the Institute for Advanced Studies Lucca, Italy. Ana has conducted research on non-judicial mechanisms of transitional justice in Croatia and Serbia and has research interests in memory studies, cultural trauma and social production of memory.