Dissidents, disloyal citizens and partisans of emancipation: Feminist citizenship in Yugoslavia and post-Yugoslav spaces

Abstract

This paper aims to offer an alternative reading of the history of feminism in Yugoslavia and its successor states, relying on the concept of citizenship. Assuming that one could differentiate between three different citizenship regimes – the first framed by the socialist self-management state, the second by the nation-building processes and violent disintegration of the former state, and the last one by post-socialist, post-conflict transitional circumstances – the paper explores their impact on an uneven development of gender regimes and feminist activism. Seen as the model instance of activist citizenship, feminist activism is presented through three different phases in order to show how they, as well as the frameworks of their interpretation, change, changing also the meaning of feminism as a political force.