National Reproduction with (Un)Disciplined Bodies: Women Moving to the Politically Possible in pre-Yugoslavian Societies (Examples from Serbia, Bosnia and Croatia)
This paper is about national reproduction relations and the ways they affected women’s bodies in context of women’s accessibility to public and political space in the late 19th century Serbia, Bosnia and Croatia. The end of the 19th and the beginning of the 20th century embark events and processes of national emancipation for the Balkan peoples. The examples taken here are set in the different states of ‘nationalizing’ and ‘nation-building,’ as well as in different iterations of modernity, with the intention to trace possible patterns and typologies in the relation of national reproduction, in its ethno-cultural dimension, and the opening of new political spaces for women from these different national entities and territories through education, autonomous organizing, charity and anonymous domestic labor. I find the interest and vindication of my intention in the historical events after 1918, when the mentioned territories and nationalities became part of new state – the Kingdom of Serbs, Croats and Slovenes/Kingdom of Yugoslavia. With that, the state strategies of national reproduction towards women gained new qualities with centralization and ideological unification of the ideal ‘Yugoslav’ woman as its final edifice. Article received: December 15, 2018; Article accepted: January 23, 2019; Published online: April 15, 2019; Original scholarly paperHow to cite this article: Hadjievska, Ivana: "National Reproduction with (Un)Disciplined Bodies: Women Moving to the Politically Possible in pre-Yugoslavian Societies (Examples from Serbia, Bosnia and Croatia)." AM Journal of Art and Media Studies 18 (2019): 17–31. doi: 10.25038/am.v0i18.298