INSTITUTUM STUDIORUM HUMANITATIS

FAKULTETA ZA PODIPLOMSKI HUMANISTIČNI ŠTUDIJ, LJUBLJANA

Tea Hvala

“When We Move, It’s a Movement!”

Rdeče Zore Festival as a Feminist-Queer Counterpublic

[»Ko se premaknemo, nastane gibanje!«

Festival Rdeče zore kot feministično-queerovska kontrajavnost]

Masters Degree Thesis

Ljubljana, 2010

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INSTITUTUM STUDIORUM HUMANITATIS

FAKULTETA ZA PODIPLOMSKI HUMANISTIČNI ŠTUDIJ, LJUBLJANA

Tea Hvala

Supervisor: Prof. dr. Svetlana Slapšak Second Reader: Prof. dr. Rosmarie Buikema

“When We Move, It’s a Movement!” Rdeče Zore Festival as a Feminist-Queer Counterpublic

[»Ko se premaknemo, nastane gibanje!«

Festival Rdeče zore kot feministično-queerovska kontrajavnost]

Masters Degree Thesis

Ljubljana, 2010

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Contents……………………………................………………………............................02

Acknowledgements……………………………………………………………..……....04

1. Introduction………………………………………………………………………..…05

2. Methodological Framework…………………………………………………………10

2.1. Situating Myself: Researcher, Organizer, and Participant.....................................10

2.2. Qualitative Oral Interviews....................................................................................11

2.3. Research Method, Theoretical Sources..................................................................13

3. Theoretical Framework……………………………………………………………...14

3.1. Space/Place in Cultural Geography……..…...……..…………...……………….14

3.1.1. Spatial and Social Justice……………………………………………………..….16

3.1.2. Free Spaces and Cultural Activism………..……………………………………..17

3.2. Habermas’s Theorization of the Public Sphere………...........……...…………...18

3.2.1. Feminist Critiques of Habermas…...........................………………..………...…22

3.3. Travelling Concepts….………………………………………………………......25

3.3.1. Public Sphere/Civil Society in the Yugoslav Context….……….……….............29

3.4. Theories of Feminist-Queer Counterpublics.………………………..………..….34

4. Genealogy of Autonomous Women’s and Feminist Groups in Ljubljana……….40

4.1. State Feminism………………………………………………………....………...40

4.2. New Feminism…………………………………………………….………..…....42

4.3. New Social Movements……………………………….………………………... 44

4.3.1. New Women’s and Feminist Autonomous Groups …..……….……….….....….45

4.3.1.1. Claiming Space…………….…………………………………………………....47

4.3.1.2. Fragmentation and Networking…………….……………………....………...…49

5. The Postsocialist Condition………………………………………………………….55

5.1. Discontinuity or Change?...........................................…………………………...55

5.2. Neoconservatism and Ethnocentrism.....………………………………....…...….59

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5.3. Historical Revisionism…………………………………………..….………....…62

5.3.1. Antifeminism……………………………………..…………………...………....65

5.4. Institutionalization and Discursive Colonization…………...…………………....67

5.4.1. Over-genderization……………..………………………………………………..70

5.5. Possibility of Transnational Dialogue……………...…………………....……….71

6. Contemporary Feminist-Queer Counterpublics in Ljubljana…………………....74

6.1. Allying in Defense of Reproductive Rights……………………………………...74

6.2. The “Streetwise” Textbook: Street Actions and Graffiti………………………...77

6.3. (In)visibility of Potential Counterpublics….……………………………….……79

7. Feminist and Queer Festival Rdeče zore: A Case Study………………………......82

7.1. The Launch............................................................................................................83

7.2. Title References…...........………….......……………………...............................85

7.3. A History of Rearticulations……………………………………...……………...87

7.4. Queering Rdeče zore…..........................................................................................92

7.5. Comparison with Ladyfests……………………………………………………...97

7.6. Metelkova’s Cultural Politics of Space……………….……………………….…99

7.7. Rdeče zore’s Internal and External Function………………………...…………102

7.7.1. Horizontal and Inclusive Organization Policy ………….……..…………….....103

7.7.2. Conceptual Openness…………………………………………………………...105

7.7.3. A “Different” Metelkova..……………………………………………………...107

7.7.4. Limitations of Rdeče zore.………….………………………………………......110

8. Conclusion…………………………………………………………………………..113

9. Povzetek v slovenščini/Summary in Slovene …………………………………..…116

10. Appendices………………………………………………………………………....127

11. Bibliography……………..………………………………………………………...134

Authorship Statement………………………………………....……………………....147

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Acknowledgements

This research would not be possible or enjoyable without the help and generosity of the

following people:

My mentors, Prof. dr. Svetlana Slapšak and Prof. dr. Rosmarie Buikema, whom I thank

for their support and patience;

Ms. Trude Oorschot, whom I thank for steering between the administrations of Granada,

Ljubljana and Utrecht with admirable ease;

My housemates and co-workers, whom I thank for politely ignoring my absent-

mindedness during the writing process;

Chiara Bonfiglioli, Nataša Serec, Anna Ehrlemark, Lidija Radojević and Jelena Petrović,

whom I thank for inspiring conversations; Red Chidgey for that and careful proofreading;

Rdeče zore festival team and its allies, and especially all the interviewees who took the

time to answer my difficult questions: thank you, friends and comrades, for helping me

articulate what it is we are doing and whom we are doing it for!

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1. Introduction

In the geopolitical region of former Yugoslavia, several women’s, feminist or/and queer

festivals have been organized in the last decade. Most of them were non-professional,

based on the principles of “doing it yourself” (DIY), similar to Ladyfests (discussed in

Chapter 7.5) which have taken place predominately in Western European and North

American cities since 2000. While volunteer-run, horizontally organized and non-profit

festivals such as Queer Belgrade (Serbia), PitchWise (Sarajevo, Bosnia and Herzegovina)

and Rdeče zore/Red Dawns (Ljubljana, Slovenia) managed to survive throughout the

years, the majority of other non-professional festivals in the region of former Yugoslavia

ceased to exist after their first edition. Some of them took place two or three times (for

example, Zagreb-based festival Vox Feminae and Kutina-based Girlz are Weird) while

others, like FemFest Skopje (Macedonia), Girl Power Fest (Koprivnica), and Zagreb-

based festivals AnarchoFemFest and FemFest happened only once. In addition, there are

three professionally-organized contemporary art festivals in the region which present art

made by women (City of Women, Ljubljana), queers (Queer Zagreb) or lesbians, gays

and other sexual minorities (Gay and Lesbian Film Festival, Ljubljana).

All of these festivals differ in terms of their political views, artistic visions,

program items and target audiences. In spite of those differences, the majority of the then

active festivals were very supportive of Rdeče zore’s 2006 call for cooperation between

“women's, feminist and queer festivals in the Balkans” (Rdeče zore, 2007a: online).

Organizers of eight DIY and professional festivals were invited to Ljubljana where they

could finally meet each other in person, share their experience, and discuss each other’s

organizing strategies as well as the obstacles faced in their work. The meeting took place

in March 2007 and resulted in the shaping of an informal online network FAQ (Feminist-

Activist-Queer). At the founding meeting, the participants stipulated that they did not

wish to unite and unify their agendas, but to make communication and collaboration

between themselves easier and more effective. Whilst the meeting did result in

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collaborations, program exchanges, staff sharing, and some joint funding applications, the

network also brought to light another important difference between the festivals, which

proved to be difficult to bridge despite the organizers’ desire to do so: that of

professionalization. DIY and professional festivals have different conditions as well as

methods of work, and one should be careful when comparing the two. Indeed, in my

thesis I chose not to compare these different branches of festivals and instead to frame

my research within the space occupied by DIY festivals only. In fact, due to spatial and

temporal limitations, my focus was narrowed to a case study of one festival only. I

decided to focus on the DIY festival with the longest tradition in the region – the festival

I know best because I have been co-organizing it since 2002: International Feminist and

Queer Festival Rdeče zore/Red Dawns, based in the Autonomous Cultural Centre

Metelkova mesto in Ljubljana, Slovenia.

For my research, I interviewed seventeen Rdeče zore co-organizers and

volunteers. I asked how they (or rather, we, since the answers were often built up from

our joint effort to articulate what we have been doing together for the last eleven years)

understand the idea of a feminist-queer public space, whether or not the festival fits that

idea, and how the festival intertwines with other initiatives within what is locally known

as the “alternative scene” or the “liberated territory” of Ljubljana. Moreover, how does

Rdeče zore fit in with the “jigsaw puzzle of today's multi-faceted, transnational DIY

grassroots feminism” (Halberstam, 2005: 170) which is often, especially in Western

Europe and U.S., perceived as a specific current within today’s “third wave” feminism?

(Pilcher & Whelehan, 2004; Chidgey, Reitsamer & Zobl, 2009). My research theme was

inspired by Gayatri Spivak’s claim that every resistance or rebellion is bound to fail if

there is no infrastructure, no community in which the act can be understood as such

(Spivak, 1988). It was also inspired by Orchid, a hardcore band from the U. S., whose

members self-ironically proclaimed: “When we move, it’s a movement!” (Orchid, 1999)1

and disbanded soon afterwards. Did my interviewees believe that the impact of their work

1 The slogan was quoted in the introductory text to the sixth Rdeče zore in 2005 and taken from Orchid’s song Snow Delay at the Frankfurt School. The whole lyric (supposedly) quotes a Situationist poster or grafitti seen in the streets of Paris in May 1968: “‘Like anywhere else, there are no coincidences, probability makes for accomplices and change creates meaning.’ When we move, it's a movement!” Orchid replaced the last sentence (“That’s when happiness and misery take shape.”) with their own self-ironic conclusion.

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was too limited, even self-referential, to the extent that the festival can be viewed as a

literally “imagined community”? To what extent did their work touch, cross paths with,

and conflict with other (counter)publics as well as the mainstream media and the “official

public sphere” it frames? How did the organizers deal with the fact that any feminist-

queer initiative is inevitably embedded in a patriarchal and heteronormative cultural

context? And what did it mean to have the privilege of organizing a festival in a

“liberated”, “temporarily occupied” or “alternative” social space like ACC Metelkova

mesto?

Could Rdeče zore, other DIY women’s, feminist and queer festivals from the

region, as well as their European and North American allies be seen as “oppositional

imagined communities”? In Chandra T. Mohanty’s reinterpretation of Benedict

Anderson’s concept, the proliferation of such communities coincides with the expansion

of so-called anti-globalist protests and the popularization of queer theory (Mohanty,

2002). In her view, these communities were originally limited to a certain town or

country, and then started to connect to other independent cultural and activist groups on

both the national and international level. Rdeče zore can indeed be seen as an imagined

local community which has been trying to create a feminist-queer space “from below”

and thus create the conditions in which opposition is possible. Yet, I wanted to test

Mohanty’s theory against the lived experience of Rdeče zore (co)organizers and

volunteers: has their festival managed to provide them with the physical and discursive

space in which they could discuss, develop and try out new strategies of action? If so,

who participated in them?

To summarize: I was interested in addressing two aspects of the festival. The

“internal” view addressed the organizers’ experience of the festival as a temporary and

public feminist-queer space where art, theory and politics can be discussed in a

stimulating, emotionally and intellectually affirmative environment. The second,

“external” view addressed those aspects that made the festival intellectually, artistically

and politically visible to people who were not part of the “scene”. I wondered what – if

anything – made the festival’s policy and events visible to the “general public”. I

rethought my theme through Rita Felski’s and Nancy Fraser’s theorizations of feminist

counterpublics. In Felski’s theory, the “internal function” is defined as “generating a

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gender-specific identity grounded in a consciousness of community and solidarity among

women” (Felski, 1989: 168). In Fraser’s terms, women-only and feminist counterpublics

function as “spaces of withdrawal or regroupment” (Fraser, 1990: 68). Felski claimed that

their second and equally important function is in “seeking to convince society as a whole

of the validity of feminist claims, challenging existing structures of authority through

political activity and theoretical critique” (Feski, 1989: 168). Nancy Fraser spoke of

counterpublics as “bases and training grounds for agitational activities directed towards

wider publics” and added that it is “precisely in the dialectic between these two functions

that their emancipatory potential resides” (Fraser, 1990: 68).

I was especially intrigued by Nancy Fraser’s recognition of both dimensions’

importance and their dialectic relationship since it legitimized my own presupposition

that the “internal” and “external” function of the festival can be juxtaposed and discussed

relationally. In relation to a specific identity developed in spaces of withdrawal or

regroupment, I examined the following questions: Did the festival’s declared politics of

space (re)claiming succeed – or perhaps fail – in creating a safe space where the audience

and participants could discuss feminist and queer ideas, and put them to practice through

cultural forms of activism? Was that space supportive of their political preferences and

their (feminist, queer, lesbian, anarchist or/and other) identities? Did the organizers

develop a sense of solidarity and community in the process? In relation to wider publics, I

wondered which tactics were used by the festival to gain media attention and legitimate

their claims. Which issues and tactics were eventually most visible in the official public

sphere? And last but not least: is there a sense of continuity or discontinuity with

feminists who were active in the past? After all, Rdeče zore festival commemorates and

reinterprets the significance of March 8th, International Women’s Day, each year.

As such, my research provides a new insight into the recent history of feminist,

lesbian, queer and women’s counterpublics in Ljubljana. In the past, the debates have too

often revolved around the immediate effects of feminist interventions in the official

public sphere. Those accounts have obscured the internal function of feminist-queer

counterpublics and, so I believe, self-consciously fell into an ideological trap of

measuring their own political visibility with “masculinist” measures. The latter define

relevant forms of political or public participation in ways that have historically excluded

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(and continue to exclude) so-called “private” and “women’s” as well as “lesbian” and

“queer” issues from the public sphere. Thus, my thesis argues for the necessity of

expanding the notions of political and public beyond those prevalent in the mainstream

media and the official public sphere in Slovenia. My work is therefore a critique of

hegemonic discourse and a contribution to the diversification of (counter)public feminist-

queer discourses.

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2. Methodological Framework

My analysis of International Feminist and Queer Festival Rdeče zore/Red Dawns is based

on my observations as an involved organizer, as a feminist scholar, and as a

participant/witness. In the research process, my views have been influenced and often

changed by the seventeen festival organizers and volunteers I interviewed in July 2009.

My insights have been improved by existing theorizations of “the postsocialist

condition”, primarily through a focus on feminist political theory and historiography. My

understanding of Rdeče zore’s dual function relied on recent research conducted in the

fields of cultural geography and sociology (of cultural activism, social movements, free

spaces, women’s socializing in festive settings, and social justice). The term “queer”,

however, should not be read as a concept or distinct theoretic framework. I use it in

accord with the meanings the festival organizers have invested in the term when

describing their politics. The use and the meaning of “queer” in my thesis therefore

changes according to the context in which it appears. Chapter 7.4 addresses the different

ways in which Rdeče zore organizers have been using “queer” over the festival’s history.

2.1. Situating Myself: Researcher, Organizer, and Participant

I have been co-organizing Rdeče zore since 2002. Because I am so immersed in the

subject of my study, I decided to situate myself in accordance with the principles of

feminist standpoint theory. Initially, I wanted to write the thesis from several points of

view, including that of the relatively detached theorist. The latter promised to provide me

with a means of disidentification, with the epistemic privilege of the “outsider within”

(Harding, 1991; Haraway, 1997). My idea was based on the premise that grammatical

distinctions could help me separate the different subjectivities at play. At the same time, I

felt this approach might falsely suggest that the voices in use – ‘she’ the theorist, ‘we’ the

organizing collective, and ‘I’ the participant or witness – can “solve” the paradoxes

arising from the juxtaposition of these different yet intertwined subjectivities. I eventually

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decided to use first person singular throughout the thesis although I did let myself “slip”

into first person plural when the sense of belonging to Rdeče zore seemed to validate,

rather than disavow my claims.

I thought my paradoxical position should be visible and dealt with in constructive

ways, as it relates to a methodological approach. Feminist historian Luisa Passerini, for

example, managed to do so in her studies by observing “the multiplicity of positions” or

“the pluralisation of one’s own image” as “a metaphor for non-singular subjectivity”

(Passerini, 2008: 266). This view allowed her to be self-reflective, self-ironic, conflicting

and paradoxical: it was also a way to avoid essentialist views on experience as the

authentic and reliable source. I was interested in the experience of Rdeče zore, in what

sort of opinions were formed, changed or abandoned by the people who actively

participated in the process of organizing the festival. However, I was also interested in

knowing how their experience corresponded with or perhaps challenged the existing body

of knowledge on feminist and queer counterpublics. For that purpose, I began my

research by studying critical and feminist political theory on public space as well as

looking at the ways in which the terms “place” and “space” are used in cultural

geography (Chapter 3).

2.2. Qualitative Oral Interviews

I continued my research by interviewing seventeen women who have co-organized the

tenth Rdeče zore festival in 2009. The interviews were oral and qualitative; they were

conducted in either Slovene or English, and consisted of thirteen basic questions that

were modified according to each interviewee’s interests and level of involvement with

the festival. The questions are listed in Appendix 1. Appendix 2 lists the names and short

biographies of all interviewees. Appendix 3 includes an incomplete list of people who

have been co-organizing Rdeče zore since 2000.

The interviews amounted to a hundred pages of transcripts of highly interesting

conversations that reflected on the festival’s internal and external function as a potential

feminist-queer counterpublic. Due to their volume, I was not able to include the

transcripts and their translations into my thesis. Furthermore, I had neither the space nor

time to include a detailed comparative analysis of oral narration and written documents

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even though the clash between them produced some interesting points of departure for

my interpretation of the documented history of feminisms in socialist Yugoslavia and

postsocialist Slovenia (Chapters 4 and 5). For example, I have noticed how writing

demands causality and presupposes the consistency of one’s standpoints and positioning.

Oral narration, on the contrary, seems to offer more space for associative shifts between

different points of interest and an array of possible levels of identification with the

subject. While it was interesting to observe the extent to which my interviewees’

identification with the collective body of Rdeče zore shifted, my thesis does not theorize

about that to the extent it could. Generally speaking, I have let the relationship between

the “I”, “we” and “they” of my interviewees’ positions be as ambiguous as my own. The

intersubjectivity of my positions (researcher, organizer, and participant/ witness) was

paralleled: not only are the organizers’ experiences and their modes of narrating

culturally constructed, since an interview is an intersubjective event in itself, the answers

depended on my questions, the level of empathy and effort involved on my as well as

their side, and the nature of our relationship.

My main target group of interviewees consisted of festival organizers and

volunteers. In this way, it may seem like I have excluded festival audiences from the

conceptualization of Rdeče zore as a counterpublic. However, my narrowed focus is

justified by the specificity of grassroots events such as Rdeče zore. In contrast to

professionally organized festivals, DIY festivals stipulate participation and, in addition,

often cannot afford to distinguish between these roles even if they wanted to due to their

financial limitations. In effect, the same people often play several different roles at once –

including the role of the audience. The second reason for my narrowed focus is that

festivals such as Rdeče zore came into being exactly because the women who organize

them today acted on their own need for local feminist spaces. In other words, they did it

for themselves first and, in the course of years, the new counterpublic was able to

develop primarily because of that motivation.

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2.3. Research Method, Theoretical Sources

My research method was genealogical in the sense that it rests on the conviction that truth

cannot be separated from the procedures of its production. Foucault’s (1998) and new

historicist theorization of genealogies as alternative methods for social and historical

research have proved to be fruitful, especially in Chapter 6 where I have tried to construct

a genealogy of recent autonomous feminist and queer DIY initiatives, many of which

were undocumented previously due to their sporadic, short-lived and often illegal nature.

My reading of Rdeče zore’s geopolitical location relied on postsocialist studies

since they offer the wider framework from where it is possible to understand the

festival’s declared priority issues – and the obstacles the organizers have faced in their

insistence on these issues’ importance. In Chapter 5, I have focused on the political

circumstances that characterize “the postsocialist condition” (Naples, 2004; Iveković, no

date). I have included critiques of “discursive colonization” (Mohanty, 1997; Kašić,

2004) since they offer important insights into the consequences of asymmetric power

relations between “the West” and “the East”. However, when one speaks of self-

organized feminist-queer initiatives rather than institutionalized feminist theories and

“mainstreamed” agendas for gender equality, there are important differences to be

addressed in regard to the many directions in which people and ideas can – and do –

travel. Thus I dedicate a portion of the thesis to theories about travelling theories and

employ a “contact perspective” on the “transculturation of ideas” (Pratt, 2002; Cerwonka,

2008). This enabled a cross-cultural perspective that is nonetheless grounded in a very

particular location. It also allowed the application of travelling theories to my specific

case study: the politics of public space (re)claiming and visibility as declared and

practiced by Rdeče zore.

My understanding of Rdeče zore’s dual function relied on concepts drawn from

cultural geography and sociology, primarily the sociology of cultural activism, social

movements, free spaces, women’s festivals and social change. These concepts and their

common use are discussed in the following chapter and in the introductory notes to my

rewriting of the genealogy of autonomous women’s and feminist groups in Ljubljana

(Chapter 4).

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3. Theoretical Framework

I will introduce my theoretical framework with a brief excursion into cultural geography

and its interpretations of “space” and ”place” even though my focus is on sociological

and political theories of the public sphere. I do so in order to make explicit the ways in

which the terms “space” and “place” have been used in those fields of knowledge that

were originally preoccupied with the politics of space in its most literal, territorial sense. I

do so to demonstrate several interpretative angles that are available for my theorization of

a very specific place: ACC Metelkova mesto, where feminist-queer festival Rdeče zore

has been taking place since 2000.

3.1. Space/Place in Cultural Geography

Due to their extensive use in a growing number of sciences, “space” and “place” have

become “fuzzy concepts”, obscuring more than they reveal. In political geography and

early urban studies (1970s), place emerged “as a particular form of space, one that is

created through acts of naming as well as through the distinctive activities and

imaginings associated with particular social spaces” (Hubbard, 2005: 42). In human

geography, especially in materialistic geographic inquiries, definitions of space/place

continue to explore “the relations of domination and resistance that are played out across

different spaces”; they “emphasize the importance of space as socially produced and

consumed” (41). One of the first theoreticians who insisted that every space is relativized

and historicized through social use was Henri Lefebvre. In The Production of Space

(1974) he claimed that every mode of production produces its own space. He

distinguished between “abstract spaces” of capitalism, “sacred spaces” of religion (which

preceded it), and “differential spaces” which he projected into the future. Differential

spaces are, in his account, spaces that paradoxically emerge from abstract spaces by

resisting their force of homogenization.

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For Manuel Castells (1996), contemporary societies are a global “space of flows”.

In his account, the world of bounded and meaningful places (for example, home, city,

region, nation state) has been superseded by spaces which are characterized by velocity,

heterogeneity and flow (supermarkets, shopping malls, airports, highways and multiplex

cinemas as the most typical examples of “non-spaces”). Since Castells believes that

“local” ways of life and the identities of local places are being undermined by the logic of

global and abstract capitalist spaces of accumulation, his views are more pessimistic than

Lefebvre’s. And yet, David Harvey (1989) pointed out the contradictory manner in which

notions of place are becoming more, rather than less important in the period of globalization, stressing that the alleged specificity of place (in terms of its history, culture, environment, and so on) is crucial in perpetuating spatial processes of capital accumulation (Hubbard, 2005: 45-6).

As the point of dialectic conflict, Lefebvre’s differential spaces correspond with

the idea of “free spaces” as they’ve been theorized in sociology. According to Francesca

Polletta, the term has been applied as a “good metaphor” that has required innovative and

genre-stretching definitions of free social spaces. For those sociologists interested in the

use rather than sole existence of free spaces, the most persistent questions are whether

free spaces are the precondition or the consequence of political mobilization. Polletta cut

the Gordian knot by allowing both options. In her view, free spaces are “small-scale

settings within a community or movement that are removed from direct control of

dominant groups, are voluntary participated in, and generate the cultural challenge that

precedes or accompanies political mobilization” (Polletta, 1999: 1). Similarly, Lefebvre

claimed that “new social relations demand a new space and vice-versa” (Lefebvre, 1991:

59).

From a contemporary point of view, one that takes into account a variety of

existing physical and virtual free public spaces, it is highly debatable whether all new

spaces really demand new social relations or whether agents of these spaces are quite

content with regenerating the old. But rather than going into that debate, I want to, at this

point, stipulate the fact that a Lefebvre-like dialogue between sociology and geography

has become very lively in the last decade. The so-called spatial turn in social sciences has

brought attention to concepts such as “spatial justice” and to the “broader spatialization

16

of our basic ideas of democracy and human rights” (Soja, 2009: 32). Likewise, it is now

possible to explore the effects of urban planning on everyday behaviour and processes

like “technological innovation, artistic creativity, economic development, social change,

(...) social polarization, widening income gaps, international politics, and, more

specifically, the production of justice and injustice” (ibid.).

3.1.1. Spatial and Social Justice

The concept of “spatial justice” is fairly new. It gives spatial visibility to social injustice.

It is not a substitute or an alternative for social justice but rather a way of looking at

justice from a critical spatial perspective. It adds what activists involved in feminist street

actions in Ljubljana call “tactics”: specific, down-to-earth tools designed to fight

oppression in contexts small enough to handle. Chela Sandoval defined tactics as “the

moves one makes while engaged with the opposition” (Sandoval, 1991: 15). In her view,

they have to be informed by a strategy: “an informing ideology brought to one’s

engagement with an oppressor or opposing power” (ibid.).

Spatial justice would involve “the fair and equitable distribution in space of

socially valued resources and the opportunities to use them” (Soja, 2009: 32). Places

where this is possible are created and maintained through the “fields of care” that result

from people's emotional attachment (Tuan, 2001). In the case of ACC Metelkova mesto,

this “care” is reflected in its strategies of cultural action and its aesthetics. It is an

emotional bond, visualized in space. There is a boundary that surrounds that bond as

well. Metelkova is a limited space, surrounded by a concrete wall. The wall separates the

former squat, now “autonomous” cultural centre, from its gentrified neighbourhood

(across the street resides the new Ministry of Culture), creating an optical illusion that

Metelkova is a world of its own, out of place, out of time, and out of local urban politics.

Still, the bond/boundary is strong enough to serve as the base for making political claims

in the name of the collective body of activists and artists from Metelkova mesto. Still, for

most people, Metelkova is not a point of collective identification. In the dispersed Rdeče

zore group, only Jadranka Ljubičič and Nataša Serec, members who have been involved

in ACC Metelkova mesto from the start (1993), consistently used the expression “mi” as

in “we, the people of Metelkova” in their interview responses.

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3.1.2. Free Spaces and Cultural Activism

My research focused on the ways in which my interviewees spoke about their emotional/

intellectual and personal/political attachment to the festival, its organizational team and

ACC Metelkova mesto. The latter is more than a venue; it is the symbolic frame that

places the festival into a certain genealogy, the history of many small lesbian, feminist,

women’s and queer initiatives that preceded or coexist with it. In my analysis, I want to

point out another dimension of such public spaces, most often neglected by feminist

accounts which deal with identity construction, deconstruction and reconstruction. The

latter are primarily focused on people’s childhoods spent within the nuclear family;

theoretically, they mostly rely on psychoanalysis (Fraser, 1990: 47) or, in my own

experience, tend to see identity formation in ways that exclude its tactical use. The

existence of a feminist-queer genealogy and the fact that some organizers identify with

Metelkova as much as they do with the festival, could suggest that identity is also

constructed intersubjectively: by choosing to be affiliated with various oppositional

artistic/activist collectives and spaces. This point is relevant for my thesis, and has been

brought to my attention by Nancy Fraser who wrote:

These sites of identity (de)construction are able to explain identity shifts over time as well as their multiplicity. Since the impact of non-representational theories is making itself felt in cultural geography, these theorists have also considered the tension between space and place in relation to concepts of embodiment and performance (as well as images, symbols and metaphors) (Fraser, 1990: 47).

From this perspective, the different meanings – and values – of spaces/places are

constantly (re)created and negotiated through their particular use. Phil Hubbard wrote

that both space and place are “constantly becoming, in process and unavoidably caught

up in power relations” (Hubbard, 2005: 47). Like recent discussions about subjectivity in

feminist philosophy, these debates suggest that the key question might not be what

places/spaces and subjectivites are but what they do. Similary, Chela Sandoval theorized

about a “differential mode of consciousness” already in 1991 when she opposed

essentialist ideas about indentity formation and politics by proposing that the differential

mode offers a strategic politics wherein modernist oppositional identities become tactical

poses” (Garrison: 2000, 147).

18

The meaning of Metelkova necessarily changes over time. These changes depend

on one’s point of view and level of involvement as much as they depend on the process

of gentrification and the hundreds of artists, travellers and activists who have contributed

their work to the centre’s cultural production and daily existence, rather that observing it

as a tourist spectacle or potentially profitable real estate. In this sense, change can be seen

as “a coming together of flows” (Hubbard, 2005: 46) that challenges the idea that local

places are necessarily bounded. In my thesis, I am looking at sixteen years of struggle for

ACC Metelkova mesto from the perspective of feminists’ involvement in the process of

transformation of former military barracks on Metelkova Street in Ljubljana to an

autonomous cultural centre. The involvement in the Network for Metelkova (1990-96)

was crucial for female activists who founded Rdeče zore since the network viewed

cultural and artistic activities as relevant forms of political activism – and managed to

create a large and collectively-run autonomous space for independent artistic and political

initiatives that exists to this day. With “cultural activism”, I refer to the whole repertoire

of tactics – instruments and objects – that “provide a context and space for analysis and

reflection” (Garrison, 2000: 143). For example, some of the tactics that constitute Rdeče

zore’s repertoire today include street actions, public debates, social justice discourses,

performances in public space, visual media, music genres, girl-positive and queer-

positive expressions, shock tactics, and the use of Internet.

My description of the struggle for physical spaces in which autonomous groups

can work on their own terms further stipulates the politics of spatial justice advocated by

the Network for Metelkova (then) and Metelkova’s Forum (today) by tying them to

sociological and feminist theories of free spaces. These theories agree that cultural

activism is especially significant when an institutionalized understanding of politics—

and public space as the site of political participation— excludes certain issues as

personal, apolitical or insignificant. In my thesis, I am specifically interested in looking at

the ways in which Rdeče zore festival organizers and volunteers today – especially those

that do not identify as “Metelkovke” – perceive the ways in which the centre is being

changed (and temporarily “unbounded”) by the presence of a feminist-queer initiative

that sees Metelkova both as an arena for the formation of feminist-queer discourse (and

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tactics) and an arena where that discourse can be tied to the activities of other local

counterpublics.

3.2. Habermas’s Theorization of the Public Sphere

The following chapter is based on feminist critiques of the “public sphere”

(Öffentlichkeit) as it was conceptualized in Jürgen Habermas’s highly influential study

The Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere (1962). Since the idea of public

sphere(s) is indispensable to critical social theory and democratic political practice, my

intention is not to contest the idea of a public sphere (after all, it is the conceptual

condition that makes its critiques possible) but rather to criticize Habermas’s

subordination of all other arenas of political participation to the bourgeois public sphere.

That Habermas’s views on a historically specific public arena of discursive

interaction were accepted as universal and prescriptive is not all “his fault”. As feminist

critics have stipulated, the liberal model of bourgeois public sphere became official

because it was in compliance with “bourgeois masculinist ideology” (Fraser, 1990: 77),

not because the German social philosopher was entirely “gender blind”. Other theorists

agreed that the key categories of his thought (communicative action, democratic

legitimacy, dialogic ethics, discourse, critical social theory and, of course, the public

sphere) can be of use to feminists interested in analyzing social movements in general

and the feminist movement in particular. For Jean L. Cohen, again, the problem lies more

in early “Habermas’s prejudices regarding feminism and in his interpretation and

application of his categorical framework than in the framework itself” (Cohen, 1995: 57).

Since Jürgen Habermas’s work spans over decades and includes several

rearticulations of his 1962 theory of the social sphere (including his mid 1990s attempts

at correcting his earlier “gender blindness” and elaborating his social theory in terms of

the category of civil society), I am not able to discuss them all. My intentions are rather

modest. I am going to focus on those feminist critiques that resulted in the formation of a

new and promising concept. Critical theorists Rita Felski and Nancy Fraser developed the

concept of “counterpublics” which will help me articulate Rdeče zore’s “dual function”.

In the late 1960s and 1970s, Habermas’s definition of the public sphere was

politically important because it provided a way to avoid certain confusions that have long

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troubled socialist and feminist political theories, as well as progressive social movements.

As was the case with “self-managing, real socialist” practice in Yugoslavia, socialist

theories in the West have tended to conflate the apparatuses of the state with public

arenas of citizen discourse and association. In addition, feminist theorists have often used

the term “social sphere” for everything that is located outside the family and domestic

work. In that case, the expression conflated “at least three analytically distinct things: the

state, the official economy of paid employment and arenas of public discourse” (Fraser,

1990: 57). Because Habermas’s concept clarified these differences – and stipulated the

importance of distinguishing between the three – this theorization was warmly received

and extensively used by theorists who were developing alternative models of democracy

in both capitalist and socialist countries.

In 1962, Habermas studied emerging bourgeois public spheres that appeared in

early modern Europe in 18th century as counterweights to absolutist states. These publics

aimed to mediate between society and the state by holding the state accountable to

society via publicity – contrary to previously existing “representational” culture in which,

for example, the French state would “represent itself” to the visitors of the Palace via the

King in order to impress them rather than engage them in dialogue. Later, it meant

transmitting the considered “general interest” of bourgeois society to the state via forms

of legally guaranteed free speech, free press, and free assembly, and eventually through

the parliamentary institutions of representative government. Critics have noted that in this

sense, the public sphere eventually became “an institutional mechanism for

‘rationalizing’ political domination” (59) rather than rendering the state accountable to all

its citizens – despite Habermas’s insistence that the public sphere was (in principle) open

and accessible to all.

The public sphere was seen as a space in modern societies in which political

participation is enacted through the medium of talk; as a space where “private persons”

(citizens) discussed “common affairs” on equal grounds. Since they supposedly regarded

each other as peers and “bracketed” their inequalities of status, the public space

“connoted an ideal of unrestricted rational discussion of public matters” where “‘public

opinion’ in the strong sense of consensus about the common good” (59) would be formed

through the continual circulation and argumentation of conflicting opinions. Habermas

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himself stipulated that this utopian potential of the public sphere was never realized in

practice. Especially in welfare-state mass democracies, when non-bourgeois people

gained access to the public sphere, it became obvious that people of different social

statuses have different needs and ideas about the “common good”. In addition, “publicity

in the sense of critical scrutiny of the state gave way to public relations, mass-mediated

staged displays and the manufacture and manipulation of public opinion” (59).

Supposedly, critical civilians turned into passive consumers and the welfare state merged

the state with society so thoroughly that there was no space left for critical public

discussions. Rather than seeing these changes as an opportunity to conceptualize another

transformation of the public sphere, Jürgen Habermas pessimistically (and in the spirit of

the Frankfurt School) concluded that the public sphere was decaying.

In Theory of Communicative Action (1981) he developed a thesis on the two-sided

character of the institutions of our contemporary “lifeworld” (Lebenswelt) which involve

both alienation or domination and emancipation. Contrary to Marx and Foucault (who

stipulated the former) and Durkheim and Parsons (who stipulated the latter), Habermas’s

theory offered the means to avoid “the stark alternative between apologetic and total

revolution” (Cohen, 1995: 59). This theory also offered the tool to theorize a variety of

possible struggles concerned with the democratization of civil society. Habermas divided

possible struggles into two categories: “defensive” (protection and democratization of

already achieved rights and existing institutions) and “offensive” (radical change or

reform). His analysis of new social movements of the late 1960s and 1970s recognized

only their “defensive” aspect, claiming that they were “too particular” to radically change

the system. Habermas was suspicious of their “apparently anti-institutional, defensive,

antireformist nature” (61) and interestingly, claimed that the feminist movement was the

only “offensive” exception since:

it alone has a dual logic and a clear emancipatory potential: an offensive universalist side concerned with political inclusion and equal rights, along with a particularist side focusing on identity, alternative values, and the overturning of concrete forms of life marked by male monopolies and a one-sidedly rationalized everyday practice (61-2).

However, feminist critics insisted that this analysis was misleading because it reduced his

dual interpretative framework to a one-sided view on new social movements – including

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the feminist movement. Since Habermas viewed the bourgeois public sphere as the only

universal and emancipatory arena of political participation, it was inevitable that all other

spheres would be labelled as “particularistic”.

3.2.1. Feminist Critiques of Habermas

Both Rita Feski (1989) and Nancy Fraser (1990) began their critiques of Habermas’s

conception of the bourgeois public sphere by questioning its legitimacy. They claimed

that his concept was inadequate for addressing the “limits of actually existing democracy

in late capitalist societies” (Fraser, 1990: 77), constituting not “simply an unrealized

utopian ideal; it was also a masculinist ideological notion that functioned to legitimate an

emergent form of class rule” (62). I follow Fraser’s comprehensive analysis that points

out four assumptions, central to Habermas’s particular idea of the public sphere.

First, the assumption that it is possible to “bracket” out social inequality and

discuss public matters “as if” all participants were equal. Fraser argued that an adequate

conception of the public sphere would require the elimination of inequalities. However,

she also made it clear that that would be difficult to achieve even after everyone was

formally and legally licensed to participate since discursive interaction within the

bourgeois public sphere was “governed by protocols of style and decorum” – “informal

impediments to participatory parity” (63). Habermas’s idealized notion was based (and in

fact, only effective) when it rested on a number of exclusions, mostly based on

differences of class, gender, age and ethnicity.

Second, Habermas assumed that the “proliferation or multiplicity of competing

publics is necessarily a step away from, rather than toward, greater democracy” (62).

Third, and additionally, his idea of “common concerns” excluded “private” interests and

issues as undesirable. Since the domestic sphere and women’s interests were framed as

private, Habermas’s conception automatically excluded women. Contesting both

women’s exclusion and the privatization or domestication of gender politics, Fraser

claimed that the bourgeois public sphere never was public. Mary Ryan’s research on

women’s organizing in the United States in the late 19th century showed that even if

women-only voluntary associations did exist, they were reserved for elite bourgeois

women. For less privileged women, “access to public life came through participation in

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supporting roles in male-dominated working class protest activities while other women

found public outlets in street protests and parades” (61). Since the participants in these

public spheres had their own needs and common concerns, the relations between them

and the bourgeois public were inevitably in conflict. In theory, the circulation of

competing interests in a socially stratified society allows the majority of disadvantaged

people to recognize that at least some of their needs and interests are represented in the

public sphere. Were there no conflicts and competing voices, there would be an

indisputable and hegemonic consent that would take up and seemingly articulate

everyone’s perspective. Yet in practice, only the bourgeois interests would be represented

and everybody else’s silenced.

Habermas’s fourth assumption was that “a functioning democratic public sphere

requires a sharp separation between civil society and the state” (63). He believed the

public sphere was decaying partly because the welfare-state eliminated that separation

and partly because the communication between the public sphere and the state was

blocked by private economic power and entrenched bureaucratic interests. Questioning

the efficacy of public opinion, Fraser claimed that Habermas promoted “weak publics” as

opposed to “strong” ones. If the activities of weak publics (associations, informal groups)

are limited to opinion-making while strong publics (sovereign parliaments) have the

power to form opinions and make decisions, advocacy of a sharp separation between

(associational) civil society and the state will be unable to imagine the forms of self-management, inter-public coordination, and political accountability that are essential to a democratic and egalitarian society (76).

This last point demonstrates that Nancy Fraser, like Habermas, spoke from the

perspective of a hypothetical egalitarian society, rather than “actually existing

democracy”. In fact, her 1990 essay “Rethinking the Public Sphere” was written in hope

that it would expose the limits of democratic practice in contemporary capitalist societies

as well as caution people from “other parts of the world” (obviously referring to the

crumbling socialist systems in Eastern and Central Europe) against its limitations.

Eighteen years later, Nancy Fraser published The Scales of Justice where she tried

to answer the question already posed in 1990: “does it make sense to understand the

nation state as the appropriate unit of sovereignty” (76)? In other words, how to think of

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political spaces in a globalizing world? Especially after 1989, when almost two decades

of conservative rule in North American and much of Western Europe on one hand, and

the fall of communism and the rise of neoconservatives in Eastern and Central Europe on

the other, “miraculously breathed new life into global free-market ideologies previously

given up for dead” (Fraser, 2008: 104). In addition, many discursive arenas have

“overflow[n] the boundaries of both nations and states” (76) due to the growing number

of issues that are indeed of global relevance (for instance, global warming, immigration,

economic crisis and neoliberalism, the “war on terror” as well as women’s rights).

Scholars began to apply the revised concept of the public sphere to transnational political

mobilizations despite the fact that it was originally framed within the nation state – and

despite the fact that feminist, antiracist and multiculturalist revisions of the public sphere

were also nationally framed. Yet, what happened to the state’s accountability if both the

issues of concern and the pressure groups were no longer nationally-bound? And where

to direct criticism if the nation-state is no longer responsible for global issues that

nevertheless affect its citizens?

I am going to return to this question in my review of feminist theorizations of

counterpublic spheres since it also concerns some of the dilemmas addressed by the

Rdeče zore organizational team, especially in regard to the festival’s external function.

First though, I will look at the ways in which the concept of the public sphere (or civil

society, since both terms were used synonymously) was interpreted in former

Yugoslavia. Indirectly, this chapter will also address the dilemma about the

(im)possibility of “translating” specific concepts to those cultural and political contexts

for which they were not originally designed. In order to do that, I will make explicit the

theoretical base that supports my views on travelling ideas or, in other words, the

possibility of their transculturation in conditions of structural inequality.

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3.3. Travelling Concepts

In discussions about the ways in which concepts travel between cultural or historical

contexts, two views prevail: the more common one believes that the only “correct”

interpretation of an idea is possible in its original context. The more interesting view

recognises the possibility of creative or emancipatory use of “borrowed” and “adaptated”

concepts. That ideas most certainly do travel was shown in many literary and postcolonial

studies, such as Edward W. Said’s essays on György Lukács’s theory of reification (Said,

2002) or Benedict Anderson’s study Under Three Flags (2005). The latter focused on the

exchange of ideas and coordination of political actions between Filipino anarchists and

European literary and political avant-garde of the late 19th century. In the introduction,

Anderson described his work as a methodological “sketch” with an “arbitrary beginning”

and “even more arbitrary finis for which no ‘conclusion’ seems feasible” (Anderson,

2005: 5), even though his study is an exemplary case of precision, necessary for

following ideas on their unpredictable ways.

In academic writing, such insistence on the arbitrariness of concepts’ “origins” is

extremely rare. A large body of cultural research is, on the contrary, obsessed with

origins. Edward W. Said, for example, insisted on the importance of theory’s initial

contextualization in his first essay on travelling theories (2005) where he claimed that all

adaptations set in different circumstances risk the original theory’s degradation. Later, in

Travelling Theory Reconsidered, he described this biased reasoning in the following way:

the first time a human experience is recorded and then given theoretical formulation, its force comes from being directly connected to and organically provoked by real historical circumstances. Later versions of the theory cannot replicate its original power: because the situation has quieted down and changed, the theory is degraded and subdued, made into a relatively tame academic substitute for the real thing, whose purpose in the work I analyzed was political change (Said, 2002: 436).

In other words, “concepts with similar names do not always mean or describe similar

things” as “ideas from one historical and political era are routinely decontextualised by

theorists and activists” (Einhorn & Sever, 2003: 167). Using the concept of “civil

society” as an example, Einhorn and Sever identify two myths of transition that prevail in

Western feminist literature, both relying on the concept of civil society as it was

developed and used in the West. Accordingly, the authors claim that once the concept

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was “imported” to the East, civil society was seen from the local perspective as an

“ideological constructions of liberal democracy” (170). I am going to explain later why I

think that, on the contrary, the concept was (at least in Yugoslavia) embraced and even

idealized as the most promising feature of the future democratic society. I mention this

example because I find it ironic that the same authors who criticize Western feminist

“myths” and their discursive colonization of Eastern-European social movements of the

1980s do not recognize the possibility that some concepts and ideas, when set in new

historical or cultural settings, can be radicalized. Like early Said, they noticed the phase

of decontextualization and failed to see the next step, consisting of new and critical

adaptations, recontextualizations and usage. They also failed to see a third option: that a

concept which fails to address specific needs of people in a new context is countered and

eventually abandoned.

As in the case of Habermas, it can happen that the author interprets his or her own

concepts in one-sided or conservative ways even though they carry an “emancipatory

potential” for other interpreters – in this case, for feminists. In Said’s words, this kind of

movement can suggest “the possibility of actively different locales, sites, situations for

theory, without facile universalism or over-general totalizing” (Said, 2002: 452). Moving

away from the vocabulary of import, borrowing and adaptation, Said recognises the

possibility of creative or emancipatory use. Indeed, if we stipulate the importance of

specific contexts and needs that inform the ways in which concepts are going to be

inevitably changed, the primary concern is no longer their “correct” but rather their

meaningful use.

In her critique of Western feminist representations of “third world women”,

Chandra T. Mohanty also pointed out the difference between concepts’ descriptive and

explanatory potential: those feminists who use them to describe and explain women's

“world-wide subordination” are often practicing discursive colonization through a

universalist methodology that ignores the specificity of each context. After all, the

content of concepts such as “reproduction, the sexual division of labour, the family,

marriage, household, patriarchy (...) changes radically from one environment to the

other” (Mohanty, 1997: 63). Yet, I do not think it is wise to look at the relationship of

ideas only through a framework of difference and geographical separateness since even

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the personified use of the expression “travelling concepts” can easily disguise political

interests that encourage the travelling of certain concepts and ideas only.

For my purposes, Allaine Cerwonka’s contact perspective on the transculturation

of ideas seems the most accurate and productive. Her essay on travelling feminist thought

is focused on those “contact zones” where ideas “develop relationally among various

groups and individuals, often within radically asymmetrical relations of power”

(Cerwonka: 2008: 825). Instead of stipulating temporal and spatial separateness, she

writes about “copresence, interaction, interlocking understandings and practices” (825).

This perspective offers an alternative to many critiques of discursive colonization that are

based on an essentialized notion of the East and West. Cerwonka’s alternative relies on

the concept of “transculturation”, borrowed from ethnography and developed by Mary

Louise Pratt in Imperial Eyes (2002). For Pratt, transculturation described

how subordinated or marginal groups select and invent from materials transmitted to them by a dominant or metropolitan culture. While subjugated peoples cannot readily control what emanates from the dominant culture, they do determine to varying extents what they absorb into their own, and what they use it for (Pratt, 1992: 6).

Pratt’s research was focused on representational practices of European colonial travellers

and dynamics of Creole self-fashioning. By selecting and adapting European discourses

on America for their own purpose, the latter created “autonomous decolonized cultures”

yet retained “European values and white supremacy” (5). In Allaine Cerwonka’s work,

transculturation became a methodological principle that undermines the hegemonic

position of the reified East/West divide in contemporary feminist theories on travelling

ideas. Her concept of transculturation stipulates the intersubjectivity of intellectual work

in which knowledge is always a product of mutual relation (of power) and of ideas’

circulation. Moreover, it stipulates the both contexts, the East and the West, are

interdependent. In this way, it allows an increased visibility for structurally marginalized

postsocialist theoretic positions even though their strength is often limited to the

possibility of countering or changing “imported” theories, rather than producing theoretic

“inventions”.

At the same time, political theorist and the coordinator of Center for Women’s

Studies in Zagreb Biljana Kašić warns against

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global feminist paradigms of ‘authenticity’ and difference concerning feminists from the ‘East’ (…) and the paradigm which argues for the ongoing need for a more equal feminist exchange within the ‘mainstream’ despite commodified perceptions of marginality (Kašić, 2004: 479).

Both paradigms exist among feminists from both West and the East and they are partially

based on the long absence of feminist theoretical production from almost all former

socialist countries. Stipulating asymmetrical relations of power, Kašić says that even

when certain theoretical contributions on feminisms appeared from the East during the

last decade, the theoretical climate in the West was already “permeated by intrinsic views

on ‘East feminism(s)’, making it less responsive to acknowledge these new

contributions” (479).

I discuss this issue more in detail in the chapter about “gender-mainstreaming”

(Chapter 5.4). There, I also claim that merely a quick overview of existing literature on

travelling theories demonstrates the continuous effort at dialogue that has been made “on

both sides” of the East/West divide. Below, I am going to discuss the “public sphere” and

“civil society” as examples of concepts that have continually circulated between Western

and Yugoslav theorists from the early 1960s on. I will also discuss the tragic irony based

on historical amnesia in postsocialist Slovenia where – despite the awareness about

existing “feminist paradigms” mentioned above and despite existing dialogues – young

feminists in Slovenia perceive feminist critiques of the public sphere as originating

exclusively from the West.

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3.3.1. Public Sphere/Civil Society in the Yugoslav Context

The Slovene translation of The Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere was

released in 1989 although several Habermas’s essays were translated and published

already in late 1960s. Practically all of his studies were translated to (the language

formerly known as) Serbo-Croatian soon after their original release since Habermas was

collaborating with the Praxis School. Praxis was an unorthodox Marxist and humanist

philosophical movement based in Zagreb and Belgrade. Between 1964 and 1974, its

members published the journal Praxis (in Yugoslav and international version) and

organized an annual summer school in the island of Korčula (Croatia). The summer

school was a meeting place for international philosophers and social critics. Some of the

prominent attendees included Ernst Bloch, Erich Fromm, Richard J. Bernstein and Jürgen

Habermas.

Several organizers of the 1978 feminist meeting in Belgrade attended courses

taught by the older generation of Praxis philosophers and were clearly influenced by their

critique, “denouncing the gap between revolutionary discourse and lived reality in

Yugoslavia” (Bonfiglioli, 2008: 44). While new feminist positions were continually

discouraged by the older generation of state feminists, Praxis journal was banned on

several occasions because it was critical of Leninist theory and practice as promoted and

enforced by the League of Communists of Yugoslavia. By 1975, under increasingly

repressive conditions, it was impossible to publish it in Yugoslavia. In fact, only the

international version of the journal (Praxis International) survived to this day. In 1994 it

was renamed to Constellations: an International Journal of Critical and Democratic

Theory. First co-editors of Praxis International were Richard J. Bernstein and Mihailo

Marković, followed by Seyla Benhabib and Svetozar Stojanović. Today, the editors are

Andrew Arato and Nadia Urbinati while the former co-editor Nancy Fraser remained a

member of the Editorial Council. I mention the history and international exchange of

ideas within Praxis because my critique of Habermas’s conception of the public sphere

primarily relies on feminist political theorist and pragmatist philosopher Nancy Fraser.

While I am unable to prove any direct theoretical connections or mutual influences, I do

think the case of Praxis suggests that ideas travelled – and continue to travel – across the

East/West divide in multiple directions. This example warns against making too hasty

30

conclusions about the prevalence of “discursive colonization” or unidirectional transfer of

knowledge from the West to the East.

Local reviewers of The Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere mentioned

that in Slovenia, Habermas is “a well known and influential author” (Gantar, 1991: 220).

Like critics in the West, they saw Habermas’s idea of the public sphere as historically

specific and too narrow to accommodate the proliferation of public spheres in

contemporary society. These critiques were specific to the extent that they frequently

used the example of the labor movement2 to prove their point and usually replaced

Habermas’s term “public sphere” (which translates as “javnost”) with “civil society”

(“civilna družba”), therefore treating them as synonyms. In the afterword accompanying

the Slovene translation, media theorist Andrej Škerlep “extrapolated” Habermas’s theses

to the case of Federal Socialist Republic of Slovenia. He wrote that since the Yugoslav

constitution

did not contain a model of the liberal public sphere, the symbolic reproduction does not follow the principle of a free discursive establishing of will. The legal institution of ‘verbal delict’ and its ‘universal’ presence in real socialism shows that political authorities in these societies hold a monopoly on interpretations of society and history. The official ideology is presented as a monolithic and legally sanctioned worldview that sets the inner limits to all public discourses (Habermas, 1989: 318).

As was the case in Western democracies, the common understanding of the public sphere

(or civil society) was based on a number of exclusions. Its exclusionary nature was

largely left unnoticed because the 1980s social movements in Slovenia idealized civil

society to the extent that it, in Tomaž Mastnak’s words,

embodied good in relation to bad, evil. That evil was of course represented by the communist state. Consequently, apologists of civil society were unable to understand and conceptualize the state. At the same time, they ignored the repressive, authoritarian, destructive potentials of democracy. Democracy was accepted as an unquestionable good and equated with civil society. However, they forgot that democracy is not possible without the state. And when civil society won, its agents did not know what to do with

2 Already in 1972, Oskar Negt and Alexander Kluge criticized Habermas’s historic reconstruction of the liberal bourgeois public sphere, claiming that it idealized certain historic tendencies on the account of others – bourgeois on the account of “plebeian” or proletarian (see Negt & Kluge, 1993). In later writings, Kluge preferred to speak about oppositional or counterpublic sphere since those terms privileged a broader, more heterogeneous idea of publics that included manual and service oriented workers as well as artistic and intellectual laborers. However, Negt and Kluge did not pay attention to gender-based exclusion that was characteristic of their work as much as it was of Habermas’s.

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the state so they abused, disfigured, mutilated and almost destroyed it by releasing the authoritarianism and totalitarianism of civil society (Trampuš, 2009: 24).

In Mastnak’s view, the concept of civil society was used increasingly uncritically when

the social movement in Ljubljana became more successful in the end of eighties. One

such “success” was the official recognition of those oppositional groups that framed

political change in national terms and fought the regime with political, rather than artistic

projects, namely the older generation of intellectuals gathered around Nova Revija

magazine. For them, the struggle for public spaces turned to a preoccupation with state

machineries. Similarly, in Poland “many of the men who had been at the forefront of

these former dissident organizations went on to dominate the new institutions of power”

(Einhorn & Sever, 2003: 172). This development corresponds with Nancy Fraser’s point

that “the official bourgeois public sphere (…) was, and indeed is, the prime institutional

site for the construction of the consent that defines the new hegemonic mode of

domination” (Fraser, 1990:117). Even though Fraser's critique refers to democracies in

Western Europe and United States, we can see that the realm of the public and thus

political in late 1980s Yugoslavia was framed in a similar way.

However, a detailed look at the status of women’s initiatives in socialism

complicates the possibility of comparison. I discuss the reasons for the specificity of the

Yugoslav context in Chapter 4. At this point, it will suffice to note that while the “real”

position of women in socialism was no better than the position in the West, symmetrical

comparisons are hardly possible due to the quite different setting of the private/public

divide. A symmetrical comparison could easily conclude that contemporary feminist

priorities in postsocialist countries merely reflect Western feminisms’ second-wave phase

and are, as such, “backward” or in their “developing phase”. Issues that were

characteristic for feminisms in Western Europe and the U.S. in the 1970s (political

representation, welfare, childcare, reproduction and abortion, sexuality, domestic labour,

domestic violence) are indeed some of the priorities of feminists in postsocialist countries

today, but the reason is not in their “comparative backwardness”.

Some of these issues entered the feminist agenda in former Yugoslavia only after

1991 because that is when social benefits for women (as well as other rights) were lost.

Since these rights were not won by an explicitly feminist struggle in the first place, they

32

were understood as (lost and women-specific) rights only when conservative politics

attempted (and in several cases succeeded) to eliminated them. Vlasta Jalušič writes that

before 1991, it was considered “natural” to be entitled to decide over one’s own body.

Yet, because these rights came “from above”

there existed the feeling among many women that one did not have to fight for these rights. When the anti-abortion campaign started, nobody really believed that these long-lasting rights could be taken away. Because ‘democratization’ promised so much for everybody, no one thought that the new-born democrats could put reproduction rights into question (Jalušič: 1998: 119).

Perhaps this is also the reason why feminist critiques of the public sphere (or civil

society) in Slovenia were scarce. After all, civil society has enabled the proliferation of

feminist autonomous groups. To criticize it would be to shatter their very foundation.

However, Chiara Bonfiglioli is right to notice that the “reproduction of patriarchal

patterns within official and alternative leftist forces and student’s movements” eventually

pushed new feminists who have been engaged in these movements to “criticize not only

conservatism or state institutions but also dogmatic leftist political practices” (Bonfigioli,

2008: 49).

This view differs from the “myths of transition” identified by Barbara Einhorn

and Charlotte Sever in their study of prevalent Western feminist views on Yugoslav and

Polish feminism. The authors speak of a misunderstanding based on two different views

on what constitutes significant forms of resistance and the public/private divide. The first

myth is that “under state socialism, despite women’s official political ‘equality’ they

were politically inactive, lacking (as did men) a civil society space filled with the voices

of democratic control” (Einhorn & Sever, 2003: 156). This is partly true, with the

correction that the public sphere in Habermas’s sense did not exist until the late 1970s.

Before, during and after WII, women in Yugoslavia were politically active within self-

managed women’s and workers’ organizations that were incorporated into the state.

According to the second myth, women in Central and Eastern Europe after the fall of

state socialism “rejected feminism, and indeed politics in general as ‘dirty’, and hence

failed to take advantage of this opening and the opportunities it provided for increased

political involvement” (156). The second “myth” makes an equation between strong

publics (state-level politics) and the public sphere and thus ignores the existence of weak

33

publics or autonomous groups. In addition, it does not see that there are other reasons for

the decrease of women’s political participation in the official public sphere after 1991.

What could be said, at most, is that some feminists and some women rejected certain

ways of organizing.

Since forms of women's activism and political participation before and after

transition did not entirely correspond to Western expectations, it was possible to conclude

that women were – and are – politically silenced. The inability to recognize other than

Western forms of resistance is, in Verónica Schild's view, an ideological blind spot that

denies

any value to ways of living, the ideas, and ideals of those women who were active during the communist past (...). Surely, if women have never been dupes of oppressive capitalist regimes, as I strongly believe, but have been over and above agents – of collaboration, resistance, struggle, and so on – they have also never been the sheep of communist enclosures? (Hvala, 2007: online).

To conclude: I think it is possible to compare the ways in which masculinist ideas about

“public matters” of “common interest” excluded women's issues from the political

agenda in the East and West by paying attention to the above mentioned differences. The

latter have as much to do with a different framing of the private/public divide as with the

confusion arising from democratic “double speak” that demanded a radical rethinking of

feminist strategies after 1991. The strategic difficulties of feminists in Slovenia today can

be, in this sense, also compared to those of new feminists from early 1980s. In their case,

the official socialist discourse (or “double speak”) about the accomplished revolution

“limited and constrained the discursive range of possible political interventions”

(Bonfigioli, 2008: 49). Since feminism today is still not regarded as a legitimate political

position, Nancy Fraser's critique of the public sphere and her theory of counterpublics as

alternative sites and forms of public participation remains highly useful for my research.

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3.4. Theories of Feminist-Queer Counterpublics

In 1990, Nancy Fraser argued for the necessity of theorizing non-liberal, non-bourgeois

and competing public spheres that were excluded from Habermas’s 1962 work. Her

argument rested on the growing body of feminist and postcolonial revisionist

historiographies which, among other things, demonstrated that the members of

subordinated social groups “repeatedly found it advantageous to constitute alternative

publics” (Fraser, 1990: 67). Fraser’s main point was that “subaltern counterpublics”

contested the exclusionary norms of the bourgeois public sphere by elaborating

alternative styles of political behaviour and alternative norms of public speech. In these

parallel discursive sites, subordinated people could “invent and circulate

counterdiscourses, which in turn permitted them to formulate oppositional interpretations

of their identities, interests and needs” (67). Consequently they could enter official public

spheres on their own terms by representing themselves.

Fraser coined the expression “subaltern counterpublics” by combining and

reinterpreting two terms used by other theorist for similar purposes; “subaltern” was

taken from Gayatri C. Spivak’s influential essay Can the Subaltern Speak? (1988) and

was, as I intend to show below, misinterpreted. “Counterpublics” was adopted from Rita

Felski’s study Beyond Feminist Aesthetics (1989). For Felski, the concept of a feminist

counterpublic sphere provided a model for the analysis of diverse forms of artistic and

cultural activity by women in relation to the historical emergence of an influential

oppositional ideology (in the late 1960s and 1970s) which sought to challenge the

existing reality of gender subordination. This model enabled the situating of debate over

artistic forms in relation to the conflicting needs of different sections of the women’s

movement “rather than simply assigning abstract political value to particular techniques”

(Felski, 1989: 164). Both authors emphasized that it is important to recognize a variety of

tactics and spaces in which subordinated groups of people can articulate their needs and

interests as political and public. In Fraser’s view, these proliferations lead towards greater

democracy by lessening the chance of informal exclusion.

Questioning the legitimacy and efficacy of Habermas’s theorization, both authors

tried to conceptualize an alternative that would allow them to study the status and effects

of the women’s movement “as a force for change in the public realm” (Felski, 1989:

35

164). Felski claimed that feminist as well as other oppositional forces within the society

of late capitalism no longer appeal to an ideal of universality but are directed towards “an

affirmation of specificity” (166) in relation to gender, race, ethnicity, age, sexual

preference and other axes of difference. Because of her focus on politics of recognition,

Felski stipulated the multiple and heterogeneous nature of counterpublics but also

claimed that they are united by a common concern for “new forms of social and political

relations in which (….) mutuality, discussion, and concern with concrete needs

predominate” (166). By implicitly expressing her belief that counterpublics cannot form a

single revolutionary movement, she criticized the leftist revolutionary rhetoric of the late

1960s which – like the bourgeois public sphere – tended to suppress internal differences

within the movement for the sake of its external efficiency.

On the other hand, when focusing on the equally heterogeneous feminist

movement, Felski insisted that a common identity of all women, based on a “shared

experience of gender-based oppression” (166) was not only necessary but demanded that

“distinctions of class may be temporarily suspended, though not ignored within this new

domain” (166). Supposedly, this was possible because shared experiences worked to

“equalize” all participants within it. It is worth noticing that for Felski, feminist

counterpublics consisted of women, who experienced oppression, rather than feminists

who politicized that experience through their fight against cultural values, political orders

and economic systems that perpetuated oppression. She insisted that “some form of

appeal to collective identity and solidarity” (166) was a necessary precondition for the

emergence and effectiveness of an oppositional movement since

feminist theorists who reject any notion of a unifying identity as a repressive fiction in favor of stressing on absolute difference fail to show how such diversity and fragmentation can be reconciled with goal-oriented political struggles based upon common interests (168-9).

Felski was well aware that all feminist counterpublics inevitably have to deal with the

conflicting need to affirm and at the same time criticize the idea of a unified (not

necessarily essentialist) women’s collective identity. Yet, because of her reliance on

politics of recoginition, she failed to notice that a “unifying identity” on one hand and

36

“absolute difference” on the other do not need to be the only available positions within

feminist counterpublics.

Because of social stratification, feminist counterpublics in the West carry a “dual

function”. According to Felski’s theory, the “internal function” is to generate “a gender-

specific identity grounded in a consciousness of community and solidarity among

women” (168). In Fraser’s terms, women-only and feminist counterpublics function as

“spaces of withdrawal or regroupment” (Fraser, 1990: 68). For both theorists, an equally

important and related function is “external”. It comes into play when members of

feminist counterpublics seek to “convince society as a whole of the validity of feminist

claims, challenging existing structures of authority through political activity and

theoretical critique” (Felski, 1989: 168). In this sense, Nancy Fraser sees counterpublics

as “bases and training grounds for agitational activities directed towards wider publics”

and adds that it is “precisely in the dialectic between these two functions that their

emancipatory potential resides” (Fraser, 1990: 68).

In my thesis, I examine how this dialectic “resolves itself” in the case of Rdeče

zore. I largely rely on Fraser’s theory since it is preoccupied with the possibility of self-

representation in conditions of social inequality as viewed from both the internal and

external perspective. In her opinion, the expression of conflicting views within (as well as

between) political groups which strive for political recognition is an advantage rather

than disadvantage since the concept of a public sphere presupposes a plurality of

perspectives among those who participate in it. I agree that it is less likely that the most

often expressed opinion will appropriate or silence all other voices within the group if the

former is challenged by an opposition. I also agree that conflicts help to sustain

egalitarian relations within the group and strengthen its internal function. However, I am

ambivalent as to whether internal disagreements can increase the groups’ external

efficiency since a group can become so troubled by its inner conflicts that eventually all

energy is spent on that. Often, what follows is either disintegration or further

fragmentation.

Knowing how vulnerable grassroots groups can be, I argue that, in Felski’s terms,

“some form of appeal to collective identity and solidarity” has to prevail if a group wants

to communicate with other counterpublics. In addition, there is always a disparity

37

between a counterpublic’s inner and external status; between its self-understanding as a

representiative forum for feminists that is usually conflictual, and the picture the group

wants to give to the public. In its external function, it will have to claim unity and

consensus in order to be “taken seriously” – to be able to communicate with other

(counter)publics. For Fraser, this communication is vital as she claims that the public

orientation of oppositional spheres allows people’s participation in more than one sphere,

which makes both “intercultural and interpublic discussions possible” (Fraser, 1990: 70).

Because the concept of counterpublics assumes an orientation towards wider publics it –

in the long run – also works against separatism: no matter how limited they are in their

numbers or outreach, members of counterpublics see themselves as part of a potentially

wider public. That is why counterpublics – as viewed by Fraser – are not separatist

enclaves by definition even if they might be “involuntarily enclaved” (67).

In order to challenge those theories that claim democracy can function in

conditions of social inequality, Fraser initially spoke of “subaltern counterpublics”.

Gayatri Spivak’s terminology was seen as appropriate for discussing the conditions in

which self-representation of subordinated groups was still possible. However, I do not

think that Fraser’s use of the term was in accordance with Spivak’s. I suspect this is also

the reason why Nancy Fraser’s newer essays no longer employ that category but speak of

counterpublics.

While Fraser claimed that subaltern counterpublics can represent themselves even

if they are often “silenced, encouraged to keep their wants inchoate, and heard to say

‘yes’ when what they have said is ‘no’” (64), Spivak’s view was more pessimistic. She

did not think that subalterns can ever speak on their own terms. In fact, when Spivak

wrote of subaltern subjects, she did not refer to individuals, organized in groups, but to

subjects who have no community, who “cannot speak” since there is nobody to listen and

nobody to recognize their acts of resistance as such. Spivak did speculate about the

possibility of self-representation in a hypothetical situation in which a subaltern woman

no longer needed to speak the standardized “text of female exploitation” and the

manipulation of her agency by either other subalterns or feminists from hegemonic

culture was no longer an option. However, in order to make that possible, the

understanding of what counts as resistance would have to be radically changed and

38

expanded. Spivak’s essay did not claim that this was possible in the present economic

and political order.

Similarly, public participation is not merely about being able to state propositions

that are “neutral” or understandable to all other (counter)publics. For Fraser,

“participation means being able to speak ‘in one’s own voice’, thereby simultaneously

constructing and expressing one’s cultural identity through idiom and style” (69). Since

no public sphere is neutral or universal, in the sense that it can accommodate any kind of

expression, it favours dominant, generally recognizable forms of expression. Fraser

believed that counterpublics have the power to articulate an issue in their own way – or in

dialogue with other counterpublics – and insist on it until it is recognized as an issue of

general concern. She mentioned the example of “domestic violence” or “date rape” as

terms that have entered the list of general concerns and legislature because of feminist

efforts that originally started in weak counterpublics that possessed only opinion-making

power. This example confirms that Fraser was indeed speaking of organized feminist and

women’s publics in the West, not about women who would fit Spivak’s definition of

subalterns as “subjects of exploitation” who “cannot know and speak the text of female

exploitation even if the absurdity of the nonrepresenting intellectual making space for her

[them] to speak is achieved” (Spivak, 1988: 84). Because my thesis is preoccupied with

feminist-queer organizing in Slovenia where counterpublic organizing is possible and

indeed taking place, I have refrained from using the term “subaltern” as well.

I have relied more on Fraser’s and Felski’s idea about the necessity of

proliferating forms of political expression in ways that can accommodate a plurality of

subordinated groups. Specifically, my case study of Rdeče zore focuses on the tactical

significance of the festival’s cultural activism because the institutionalized understanding

of political participation and public matters of general concern in Slovenia continues to

exclude feminist, queer and lesbian issues as personal, private and apolitical. I am not

interested in “assigning abstract political value to particular techniques” (Felski, 1989:

164) but in theorizing about Rdeče zore as a counterpublic space with both an internal

and external function on the basis of its founders’, organizers’ and volunteers’ experience

and perception of the festival.

39

In the following two chapters, I will outline the recent history of grassroots or

DIY feminist-queer initiatives in former Yugoslavia and Slovenia in an attempt to map

this discursive and physical space from an innovative point of view: from the perspective

of feminist political theory that takes into account counterpublics’ internal and external

function. Since several of my questions can be – and will be – examined from the

“inside” as well as from the “outside”, my research provides a new insight into the recent

history of feminist counterpublics in Ljubljana. Too often, the local debate revolves

around the immediate effects of feminist interventions into the official public sphere.

These accounts obscure feminist counterpublics’ internal function and, so I believe, self-

consciously fall into an ideological trap by measuring their own political visibility with

masculinist measures. The latter define relevant forms of political and public

participation in ways that have historically excluded (and continue to exclude) so-called

“private” and “women’s” as well as “lesbian” and “queer” issues from the public sphere.

In this sense, my research argues for the necessity of expanding the notions of political

and public beyond those prevalent in official public sphere in Slovenia. My work can be

seen as an internal critique of the latter and as a contribution to the diversification of

public feminist discourses. Furthermore, my focus on festivals as contact zones that allow

and stimulate transculturation of ideas rather than their simple translation, offers an

important contribution to the debates about discursive colonization, prevalent in current

feminist postsocialist theory.

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4. Genealogy of Autonomous Women’s and Feminist Groups in Ljubljana

According to feminist historians (Šelih & Antić Gaber, 2007; Petrović, 2009), the

women’s movement in Ljubljana began in the late 19th century, under the rule of the

Austro-Hungarian Empire (1861-1918). Here the first self-organized women’s

associations appeared as part of the growing civil society, a vast network of

philanthropic, civic, professional, sports and cultural associations. Groups like Društvo

slovenskih učiteljic (Association of Slovene Woman Teachers, founded in 1898) and

Splošno žensko društvo (General Women's Association, founded in 1901) initially

organized educational, artistic, socializing and sports events for women. With the

increase of liberal and left-wing “panslavic” calls for independence of South Slavs,

women’s associations began encouraging women’s political mobilization and

participation, demanding equal pay and the right to vote within the political claim for

national independence (Jeraj, 2000a; Budna Kodrič & Serše, 2003). Similarly, in the

Kingdom of Yugoslavia (1918-1941), women’s groups were part of the movement for

political equality and democracy while simultaneously supporting the nation-state-

building process.3 The history of these feminist precedents excedes the scope of my

thesis; I mention them in order to suggest that neither state feminism nor new feminism

in former Yugoslavia appeared “out of the blue”.

4. 1. State Feminism

Due to the discouragement of “separatist” women’s organizing in Socialist Federal

Republic of Yugoslavia (1946-1991), the first autonomous women’s groups appeared

only in the late 1970s and 1980s, after two decades of relative economic prosperity and a

more liberal federal Slovene communist leadership. Under exceptional circumstances

during the Second World War, the party decided to establish a special women’s 3 From a contemporary point of view, this is a paradox, yet one that was inevitable since “democracy as a form of political government and citizenship as an individual status can only be established within a certain political space: the state” (Jalušič, 1998: 52).

41

organization called Antifašistična fronta žensk (AFŽ, Antifascist Women’s Front) despite

its belief that “the women’s question” was already “solved” as part of the “proletarian

revolution”. At first, AFŽ’s purpose was to draw women into the National Liberation

Struggle. After the war, AFŽ helped in rebuilding the state and resolving social issues; it

promoted employment and education of women and their participation in governing and

political bodies. It also dealt with maternal and children issues since, according to Boris

Kidrič, the first president of Slovene federal government in 1945, a socialist woman was

supposed to be “socially sensitive, loyal to the socialist regime, educated, employed, and

politically active, a responsible mother, and an equal partner to her husband” (Jeraj,

2003b: 290). Women shouldered a threefold burden (as workers, housewives, and

mothers), thus it is not surprising that after the war, women’s participation in different

political organizations rapidly decreased. And yet, at the time, AFŽ proved to be an

enormously empowering organization with an estimated two million members

(Bonfiglioli, 2008: 35). However, its fate is highly instructive. In 1953, the Communist

Party leadership decided to disband it since, in their view,

any separation of women into their own political organization might hinder, rather than encourage their integration into social and political life; it might harm the actual realization of their equality. (…) After all, our women already gained their position in the international women’s movement (Jeraj, 2003b: 176).

In other words, AFŽ became “too big” and had to be disbanded while it was still possible

to control it. In this way, domesticity could remain central to the definition of socialist

femininity which was officially constructed in relation to working as “caring-for-others”.

Feminist historian and ethnologist Lydia Sklevicky studied the vast AFŽ archives and

showed that in socialism, women could not become politically and socially visible

subjects because emancipatory values (such as political equality, education, collective

child care and the right to work) were inscribed into the unchallenged and unchanged

patriarchical value system (Sklevicky, 1996). The new social order – and its political

paradigms – relied on a “false universalism”, making an open critique of “the remains of

bourgeois patriarchal mentality” highly “undesirable” (Jeraj, 2003b: 176). After all, “the

women’s question” was officially already solved. For state feminists, the generation of

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women who had fought for the system and reached an institutional position, this position

was both legitimate and progressive (Bonfiglioli, 2008: 47).

4.2. New Feminism

A new understanding of women as autonomous (individual and collective) political

subjects was shaped and expressed much later, in the late 1970s, by a new generation of

(mostly) academic feminists residing in the urban centres of former Yugoslavia:

Belgrade, Zagreb and Ljubljana. New feminism, a term used both by its proponents and

opponents, appeared as part of the growing social and art movement. The “liberated

territory” of Ljubljana was, like it is today, the only place in Slovenia that had its own

non-institutional artistic and intellectual production. It consisted of the peace, ecological,

spirituality (“new age”), lesbian and gay movement combined with an extremely engaged

music, fine art, and performance scene to establish a diverse, wide-ranging network of

people. Contrary to common accounts that speak of a heterogeneous yet united alliance,

Vlasta Jalušič believes that women’s activities should be treated as a separate

phenomenon due to their specificity (contrary to other groups, feminists were

collaborating with groups from other Yugoslavian republics) and due to the “latent

uneasiness and discomfort with feminism among Slovene alternative circles” (Jalušič,

1998: 114). The latter can be observed to this day.

In general, the movement was protesting against “outdated communist symbolism

and strove for conceptual and ideological freedom, civil control over military forces and

society, and respect for human rights. Likewise, they (…) called for a critical

confrontation with the perplexing and contradictory Yugoslav reality” (Luthar, 2008:

473). Feminist groups specifically reacted to the fact that, despite progressive legal

protection of women’s social and reproductive rights, given legal rights (including a

liberal abortion law from 1977) did not guarantee women’s equal position. They also

reacted to a general depolitization – people’s withdrawal into private life and widespread

cynicism – understood as a consequence of socialist institutions’ “double speak”.

The common denominator of all political positions within new feminism was a

feminist Marxist critique of state feminist policies. For some feminists in Slovenia, the

decisive “coming out” event was the 1976 academic conference in Portorož about “the

43

social position of women and development of family in self-managed socialist society”

(Rener, 1996: 59). Even though the conference was organized by the Slovene and

Croatian Marxist Centre of the Communist Alliance, and thus does not count as an

autonomous feminist event, the opinions expressed (mainly by the members of the

newly-founded Žene i društvo4 (Women and Society) association from Zagreb), were

upsetting the Communist Party ideologues due to their insistence on the necessity of

women’s autonomous political organizing.5

Similarly, the organizers of the 1978 Belgrade conference Drugarica žena: žensko

pitanje – novi pristup?6 questioned the “contradictions of self-management (…) and the

inequalities of women in society (…) as something that goes against socialism”

(Bonfiglioli, 2008: 57). Their critique did not dismiss “the legal and material

achievements brought by socialism” (56) since the “enemy” was patriarchy, not

socialism. From today’s point of view, this conference marks the beginning of feminist

autonomous organizing in former Yugoslavia. At the time, it was not always understood

as such since autonomy and self-organization were synonymous with self-management

even if, paradoxically, self-management was also part of the official “double speak” in

which hierarchical and state-imposed organizational structures were presented as civil

society or the expression of “people’s will”. This disempowering (and, for Western

feminists, highly confusing) position might be one of the reasons why the first

autonomous groups in Ljubljana appeared in the sphere of culture and arts, rather than

politics. On one hand, this contributed to the widening of political space for issues

previously considered private or “taboo”, such as (homo)sexuality, domestic violence and

4 Other sources claim that association Žene i društvo was founded in 1979. Of course, this does not exclude the possibility that its future founders were present at the 1976 Portorož conference (Barada, no date; Bonfiglioli, 2008). 5 Stipe Šuvar reacted with an essay entitled “Feminism as Conservativism”, where he, ironically and unaware of contemporary Western feminist critiques of universal subject of women, defended a “progressive” and “anti-essentialist” stand by saying that new feminist positions are doomed because they do not recognise the diversity of women’s class, racial and national positions within the unified subject of women. Of course, his critique stemmed from an entirely different ideological background, namely the refusal to recognise the need for women’s autonomous political organizing in Yugoslavia (Rener, 1996: 60). 6 Comrade Woman: The Woman’s Question – A New Approach? was an independent feminist international meeting, organized by Yugoslav academic feminists who had “no previous experiences of feminist autonomous political practices (even if they have travelled and lived in France, Italy, the US, and experienced feminist movements outside of their country)” (Bonfiglioli, 2008: 57).

44

lower wages received by female workers. On the other, it meant that state-level politics

would stay in the domain of men. Yet, as Vlasta Jalušič argues, the basic interest of new

feminist groups was not their inclusion into traditional politics but the building of a

“space for a separate identity, consciousness-raising, a women-only space for sharing the

experience of, above all, patriarchal repression” (Jalušič, 1998: 113).

4.3. New Social Movements

Historian Oto Luthar attributes the appearance of wide-spread social movements in the

late 1970s and 1980s to the gradual changes of the social opportunity structure in the mid

1960s. The emergence of a middle class with a “specific internal differentiation and

enough available economic and cultural capital (qualifications, tastes, morals) to be spent

on ‘market services’” (Luthar, 2008: 469) allowed for a new generation of artists to pave

the way for the local version of music, fashion and sexual revolution in which “jeans,

rock‘n’roll, and miniskirts could only become a viable fashion statement once jazz,

Jacques Brel, Bergman’s treatment of free love, and ‘existentialist black’ turtlenecks

became part of the everyday lifestyle” (478).

Feminist journalist Tanja Lesničar Pučko distinguishes two generation-based

oppositional views on social change within the movement, both of which criticized the

authoritarian regime. The “older generation” grounded its demands “in the pre-war

tradition of multi-party politics (…) and the belief that state sovereignty has to be based

on national grounds” (Lesničar Pučko, 2007: 81) – this was also the generation that

entered parliamentary politics in 1991. The other position was advocated by young

people who were born after the war, did not experience severe state repression, were not

afraid of it, and were significantly influenced by Western intellectual ideas, art and

popular culture, primarily rock and pop, and later punk.7 “The first current fought the

7 An additional stimulus for the rise of alternative movements was the aggressive attitude of the Slovenian political authorities and mainstream media towards punk rock and local punk bands, whose image and performances led pro-regime journalists to condemn them for flirting with Nazism. These absurd accusations culminated in the so-called Nazi Punk Affair, police maltreatment of punks and prison sentences for two punks who were charged with attempting to establish the Fourth Reich! Nevertheless, the Secretariat for Internal Affairs, responsible for monitoring these developments, determined in 1982 that these movements were not unconstitutional and that the first “proper” oppositional phenomenon was the appearance of Nova revja (the medium of the older generation) whose concept and contents were considered to advocate political pluralism (Luthar, 2008).

45

regime with political projects (via ZSMS, the League of the Socialist Youth of Slovenia)

while the second fought it with cultural and artistic initiatives” (81). By the end of the

1980s, in the light of the growing instability of the state, punk and several other

counterpublics (with the exception of feminism) became a tool for cultural elites to

articulate their discontent politically and often offered an opportunity to define and

promote the nationalist agenda. This politicization allowed for an institutionalization of

the alternative, which was, in Luthar’s opinion, able to develop and extend its discourse

to articulate views and demands within the field of the new political culture (Luthar,

2008). In my view, punk and several other oppositional fronts lost more than they gained:

the loss of autonomy also brought the loss of their critical sharpness and insight. In fact,

punk’s political co-optation can be compared to the consequences of its commercial

appropriation in the West.

4.3.1. New Feminist Autonomous Groups

The founders and members of new feminist autonomous groups belonged to the younger

generation of activists. Due to the border’s openness and relative access to feminist

literature, the impact of Western Women’s Studies was visible. Still, their own socialist

experience and networking within Yugoslavia allowed them to form critical opinions

about Western feminist ideas as well. These women were the first to explicitly position

themselves as feminists and the first to demand actual rather than formal equality. In

Tanja Lesničar Pučko’s words,

it was not about equal participation in mixed groups but about ‘doing it yourself’ – not because we would ‘hate’ men (…) but because we wanted to try and speak with our own voices, without men, that is, without their leadership or comments. (…) And we had a lot of fun (Lesničar Pučko, 2007: 82).

At the time a member of a women-only theatre group PPF, Tanja L. Pučko,

recalls that the mingling and organizing of feminist artists happened “very

spontaneously”. Moreover, because the movement was quite large and could

accommodate different forms of expression, women involved in artistic, political or

intellectual work “did not communicate much with each other” (82). She says, for

example, that most academic feminists did not consider artistic production to be a

46

relevant form of women’s activism, “probably because they did not understand the new

use of body; eroticism was still seen exclusively as subordination to the male gaze, not as

an attempt to subvert patterns, to be ironic, autoerotic, and so on” (82).8 Another example

is that the feminist and lesbian scene, while they were connected, fractioned at a very

early stage, certainly because of different needs but possibly also because the authorities

reacted in significantly different ways to heterosexual and lesbian-feminist activities. On

the other hand, Mojca Dobnikar claims that the rapidly spreading network of feminists

and lesbians did meet regularly and had the opportunity to get acquainted with each

others’ work since (until 1993) they had only two permanent public meeting places, Club

K4 and ŠKUC Gallery (Dobnikar, 2000, online).

In her essay about the importance of autonomous spaces for potential collective

action, Francesca Polletta claims that the existence of “network intersections” (Polletta,

1999: 1-2) is more important for generating mobilizing identities than (previously

existing and strong) personal ties between people within the network.

It is when we come into a long term relationship with people with whom we don’t associate regularly that the old roles we play can be set aside for a space in which we can develop ourselves more fully (…). Free Space is free because we do relate apart from our daily lives (7).

This position seemingly compromises the basic new or second-wave feminist premise

that the “personal is political”, especially when it is understood in the context of identity

politics’ increasing importance as well the influential Situationist ideals about “living

what you preach”. Yet, Andrejka Čufer of Ženska svetovalnica (Women’s Counselling

Service, founded in 1993) agrees that the primary function of women’s spaces is the

creation of the possibility to “abandon the roles (…) enforced by society” in order to

“find your identity as a woman” (Čufer, 1995: 34). While she speaks about feminist

spaces that offer therapeutic assistance to women (unacquainted with feminism), I believe

that the primary function of autonomous feminist and lesbian spaces was – and is – 8 Feminist academics might disagree. Rather than misunderstanding or underestimating the importance of artistic feminist activities, it seems they had other political priorities in mind, such as finding both non-institutional and academic spaces where they could publish, discuss and teach. The first Women’s Studies seminar within academia was available in 1985/86 as part of the Sociology program at the Faculty of Social Sciences in Ljubljana. Tanja Rener mentions methodological and epistemological concerns as well as historical research into local women’s history as their priority issues (Rener, 1996: 61). Yet, the variety of concerns and the consequent fragmentation of “the scene” is visible from this point of view as well.

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essentially the same. In safe (supportive of their feminist or/and lesbian identity) public

spaces it is possible to discuss new issues and receive emotional support. Cheryl Hercus’s

interview-based study of feminists’ strategies of dealing with negative responses to their

feminist identity, activism and consequent stress, demonstrated that “participation in

movement events provided much-needed emotional support and an outlet for deviant

emotions” (Hercus, 1999: 34). Be it anger or fun, the emotional support gained by

participating in women’s autonomous groups (“internal” view) is as important as its

issue-specific and publicly visible political, artistic or intellectual work (“external” view).

I discuss both dimensions, especially the often underestimated emotional aspect, in the

context of their relevance to Rdeče zore in the final chapter.

4.3.1.1. Claiming Space

The first and short-lived autonomous women’s group in Ljubljana (the Women’s Section

of the Sociologists’ Association) was formed in 1984 and strived to politicize “personal”

issues. It succeeded in functioning as the first consciousness raising group, and tried to

organize an “appropriate atmosphere for group work, socialization and solidarity among

women” (Jalušič, 1998: 114). Its members also stipulated the need for feminist

(interpretations of) scientific research and criticized essentialist understandings of the

subject of women. On March 8th 1985, the oppositional weekly Mladina published a

special and widely-circulated feminist issue edited by the Women’s Section. The first

women-only public event in 1985 (a discussion about female sexuality) was organized by

Feminist Group Lilit, the “activist part” of the Women’s Section (later, Lilit became part

of ŠKUC-Forum). In April, Lilit organized the first women-only party in K4. The party’s

invitation read: “This is how it goes: for the average and edgy, for the orthodox and

alternative, for femmes and butchies – but only and solely for women” (Velikonja,

2004b: 11). Reportedly, around two hundred women attended the party. In the press, this

“separatist” gesture was received with hostility9 although the Communist Party leadership

9 Since hostile reactions to women-only events are common to this day, and remain characteristic for (heterosexual) men and women (even those participating in progressive movements) it is worth mentioning the entertaining 1987 “Broomstick Affair” that took place in Klub mariborskih študentov (Maribor Students’ Club) in Ljubljana. When asked to leave an all-woman party, one of the male students refused to do so. Instead, he called the woman “butch”. She took a broom, broke it in two pieces and was about to hit him when she was stopped by other women (Velikonja, 2004b: 15).

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never intervened. In general, the authorities tolerated feminist events even if they

occasionally complained that new feminists neglected Marxist theory “to their own

disadvantage” (Dobnikar, 2000: online).

The same year, LL (Lesbian Lilit or Ljubljana’s Lesbians) group was formed

within Lilit. LL cooperated with both Lilit and Magnus, a mixed gay-lesbian group

founded in 1984. In the following four years, they organized around thirty discussions,

published several LGBT (maga)zines, translated and published texts (in 1987, Mladina

published a special lesbian issue) and organized parties and artistic events. The same

year, video artists who founded Disko FV and theatre FV 112/15 organized Magnus

Festival, the first gay and lesbian film festival (and public coming out) in Yugoslavia.

Their erotic video production chose non-heterosexual, “gender-bending, gay, lesbian and

transvestite” roles as a provocative and “conscious political positioning of sexuality”

(Gržinič, 2005: 219). Their “provocations” became controversial in 1987 when Magnus

was cancelled due to state pressure, probably originating from the outrage caused by their

“iconoclastic” announcement that Magnus Festival was going to take place on “Tito’s

birthday” (May 25th), celebrated all over Yugoslavia as the Day of Youth. The media

claimed that Magnus was an “international homosexual congress” in disguise and

consequently, and incredibly, the federal health inspection decided that “the congress

should be prohibited” since “the international meeting of this risk group could encourage

the spreading of AIDS” (Velikonja, 2004b: 15). The festival reappeared in 1988 as the

Lesbian and Gay Film Festival which continues to exist to this day.

Lesbian Lilit also “deserved” the attention of the state. In 1986, both Lilit and the

catholic press (the latter for its advocacy of women’s right not to work and dedicate their

time to motherhood and housework instead) were condemned as “excesses that do not

belong to a self-managed socialist society” (Dobnikar, 2000, online), even though no

legal repercussions followed. In 1987, in protest against army documents that proposed

obligatory military training for women, the feminist Lilit and the Peace Movement Work

Group organized a discussion about political violence, linking it to domestic violence and

stipulating women’s peace activism. The Yugoslav media interpreted this action as a

“Slovene attack” on the Yugoslav People’s Army and thus “showed one of the most

difficult problems (…) regarding ‘new social movements’ active in Slovenia: the fact that

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any step within the democratization process was described by its antagonists in national

(actually ethnic) terms” (Jalušič, 1998: 115).

Also in 1987, the first Yugoslav feminist meeting took place in Ljubljana,

welcoming participants from Ljubljana, Zagreb, Beograd, Skopje, Priština and Sarajevo.

“Radical”, “academic”, “lesbian”, “socialist” and other feminist participants focused on

lesbian literature, links between lesbian and feminist politics, announced the first

Yugoslavian lesbian festival (that never happened) and issued a statement that asserted

the legitimacy of feminism as a political movement, “which was partly the sign of their

difficult position in socialism as neither being directly forbidden nor encouraged and

supported” (115-16). The meeting also appealed to women to oppose population politics

of any kind. This gesture was important in the face of very intense and racist public

discussions about the “too high rate of Albanian population” in Kosova. They also spoke

about the necessity of organizing a network of SOS phone lines, counselling services and

safe houses for victims of domestic violence. The network was eventually organized on a

volunteer basis; the first SOS phone lines were introduced in 1988 (Ljubljana, Zagreb)

and 1989 (Belgrade). When the war broke out in Slovenia in 1991, then moved to Croatia

and finally spread all over Bosnia and Herzegovina, participating feminist groups were

also the first to provide help to female victims of war (Dobnikar, 2000, online).

4.3.1.2. Fragmentation and Networking

Networking activities continued throughout the late 1980s and early 1990s in the form of

women’s and lesbian international camps, organized by Lilit and SOS phone line in 1990,

and activities organized by Modra (Association for Research and Realisation of Women’s

Psychosocial Needs) and a new lesbian-feminist group Kasandra. One of the reasons why

these activities took place outside Ljubljana was the increasing lack of spaces where

women could meet, exchange experiences and receive emotional and intellectual support

for future work.

In 1990, the first feminist initiatives for women’s participation in (traditional)

politics were founded in Ljubljana (Ženske za politiko or Women for Politics) and Koper

(Iniziativa delle donne – Ženska iniciativa or Women’s Initiative). Both groups were

actively involved in the 1993 formation of the independent state-level Office for

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Women’s Politics (later renamed to Office for Equal Opportunities) which later (1996)

founded the contemporary art festival Mesto žensk (City of Women). These groups were

part of the larger movement for social change even though they never supported the

nationalist claims of the “older generation”. However, they did participate, alongside

hundreds of associations and thousands of individuals, in the 1989-90 protests against

military court processes against three condemned journalists of Mladina and one army

officer for revealing “military secrets” to the public. These protests culminated in the

1991 referendum on independence where 88 percent of the population voted for the

independent state of Slovenia. Women for Politics and Women’s Initiative from Koper

embraced national independence mainly as an opportunity for women’s increased

political participation and respect for their human rights – again, in the frame of the

nation-state, since citizenship (contrary to human rights) could not be framed

transnationally.

However, they were speaking against nationalisms and against war, and neither

non-governmental nor grassroots groups perceived the 1991 Yugoslav Army’s aggression

on Slovenia as a possible reason for stopping their Yugoslav networking – quite on the

contrary. Still, the last planned Yugoslav feminist meeting scheduled to take place in

1992 in Zagreb was boycotted by many groups after their realization that in the mean

time, the organizers had allied with conservative political parties and began supporting

(Croatian) nationalism. Those anti-war feminist groups and intellectuals who protested

against Croatian nationalism were demonized as “the betrayers of nation” and “feminist

witches”.10 While feminists in Slovenia were not affected by the war to the same extent,

they were nevertheless pacified as many groups’ focus shifted from political, artistic,

cultural, educational and preventive work to humanitarian and social work. In addition,

lack of funding, lack of meeting and work spaces, and feminists’ defensive policy (they

organized only in defence of already existing rights), decreased the number of existing

10 On December 11th 1992, Zagreb's popular weekly Globus accused Jelena Lovrić, Rada Iveković, Slavenka Drakulić, Vesna Kesić and Dubravka Ugrešić of “covering up the truth” because they had “analyzed wartime rapes in terms of gender instead of seeing rape as a consequence of Serbian aggression. They also linked it to the general position of women in war, and to the masculinization of wartime Croatian society” (Jalušič, 1998: 136). The weekly even published their private phone numbers in hope that nationalists would harass them. Most of them were forced to leave the country – or left in protest.

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initiatives and activities in the mid-1990s to the extent that they became even less visible

and effective in the traditional political arena (Jalušič, 2001).

A new chapter for autonomous feminist, lesbian and gay groups was opened by

the successful squatting of the former military area on Metelkova street on September 9th

1993. Its subsequent transformation into an autonomous cultural centre meant that many

different groups, joined in the Network for Metelkova, could finally settle their activities

and maintain their separate, yet intertwined scenes. Feminist groups within Metelkova

were joined under the umbrella name Metelkova Women’s Center. Some already existing

groups moved their activities there (Women’s Counselling Group, later Prenner club and

Modra), some came and left (SOS group), others were founded there (Kasandra) and

some joined only to disband soon afterwards (Luna, feminist Lilit). The alliance

organized many public events for women— from literary events and exhibitions to

discussions— especially in the first crucial six months after the squatting, despite the lack

of basic infrastructure such as water, electricity and heating. In the same building Lovci

(Hunters) and under the same conditions, LL, Magnus and Roza Club organized events

until 1996 when the owner of the buildings, Municipality of Ljubljana, finally renewed it

– and started charging a non-profit rent.

Today, Autonomous Cultural Center Metelkova mesto still hosts the lesbian club

Monokel and gay club Tiffany (in 2009, joined under the umbrella name and association

Cultural Center Q), both successors of LL and Magnus. The fact that lesbian and gay

groups survived throughout the years (contrary to women’s and feminist groups that

either ceased their activities, moved and/or transformed to non-governmental services or

institutions), is another sign that lesbian and feminist autonomous groups in postsocialist

Ljubljana faced a very different fate. Since feminist and lesbian groups from Metelkova,

especially Kasandra, were important for the initiation and organizing principles of Rdeče

zore festival, I later dedicate a special chapter to the Network for Metelkova and its

politics of space, supported by the Women’s Center.

This was also the period when the first feminist academic journal Delta was

established (1993) and the first Women’s Studies courses were introduced at the Faculty

of Social Sciences and the Faculty of Social Work due to the efforts of academic

activists. The activist roots of these academics can be recognized in the way that they

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encouraged their students’ participation in current political events11 and sometimes even

held lectures at the “demilitarized zone” of Metelkova.

In 1995, one of the few mid-1990s and explicitly feminist protests took place in

Ljubljana. On November 25th, as part of the activities organized on the International Days

for the Elimination of Violence against Women, groups from Women’s Centre

(Kasandra, Women’s Counselling Service, Modra and Prenner Club) carried out an

impressive graffiti action with slogans that spoke about domestic violence, rape, incest

and asymmetrical division of work. In the media, graffiti that spoke of sexual and body

rights were accused of animosity and separatism while lesbian graffiti like “No more fear

– Thelma and Louise”, “No more shame – Mojca and Metka”, “Women, let’s stop AIDS

and make love to each other” and “Lesbians for peace – peace for lesbians” were denied

both peace and equality by a prominent sociologist who claimed that “a heterosexual

relationship and homosexual sexuality (sic), after all, cannot be equal” (Tomc, 1996: 39).

While Gregor Tomc’s interpretation tried to discredit “such inconsistent standpoints”

(39), the article, at least in the eyes of lesbians and feminists, clearly discredited its

author.

I have argued elsewhere (Hvala, 2008) that protests, politically engaged graffiti,

and other means of street (art) expression “take the space nobody offered” (Fajt &

Velikonja, 2006: 23) and as such, open up the public space to communication that evades

the imperatives of economy and hegemonic ideas. Like protest, graffiti is a sporadic,

illegal, mostly anonymous and fleeting form of intervention in the dominant culture.

When read parallel to political events and, in this case, read in light of “official” feminist

11 Students took part in the preparations for the release of the anthology Abortus – pravica do izbire? (Abortus – the right to choose?), edited by Eva D. Bahovec. Reproductive rights of women were indirectly threatened already by the mid-1980s debates about the federal disparities in Yugoslav birth rates which “precisely encapsulated all the ethnonationalist fantasies that were connected to the traditional picture of women and the public/private split of women” (Jalušič, 1998: 118). Reproductive rights were seriously threatened in 1990 when the Catholic Church launched a large anti-abortion campaign. In fact, by 1991 it looked like abortion was going to be simply abolished from the first Slovene independent constitution. “In spite of perceptible differences in opinion, ideology, and structure among existing women’s groups (whether feminist or nonfeminist) they decided to start a common action” (ibid.). The anthology was published by Women for Politics, several discussions were organized, and the alliance decided to hold a large demonstration in front of the parliament despite the fear that very few women would actually show up. After all, this would be the first women’s demonstration in forty years. The protest was a huge success and abortion on demand was left as a legal constitutional solution. The story, however, was almost repeated in 2006, as I discuss later.

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history, it becomes the most accessible medium of resistance, remarkably resistant to

institutionalization and instrumentalization.

Contradictory interpretations of the famous graffiti “Goddammit, Ivan – make

that damn coffee yourself! – Mother Francka” from the 1995 feminist action indicate that

graffiti also resists straight-forward explanations. After all, it is not difficult to find

antifeminist meanings in a feminist graffiti once it is taken out of its context. For

example, from a feminist point of view, the graffiti parodying Ivan Cankar’s short story

Skodelica kave12 – which has been “nationalized” to serve the Slovenian literary

establishment long before 1991 – refuses the gendered division of work. In 1996, Gregor

Tomc commented that graffiti written by “Ljubljana's Amazons” dealt with passé issues

since “contemporary Slovenian family has overcome the traditional division of labour a

long time ago” (Tomc, 1996: 39), thus referring to the really passé state-socialist views

on feminism as superfluous.13 The above mentioned graffiti was also used on promotional

postcards of The Women’s Group within Združena lista (United List), a coalition that

later restructured into a centre-left political party. On May 7th 2004, journalist Agata

Tomažič also used the graffiti to support her arguments about the exaggerated use of

Cankar’s literary works in Slovenian primary and secondary schools. Gregor Tomc’s

reaction can be seen as a sign of postsocialist state when, on one hand, anti-feminist

sentiments became very visible and on the other, the legacy of new feminism (and to a

lesser extent also the legacy of the lesbian movement), has been fragmented, sucked into

ruling structures and partly developed within academia. This metaphorical exile from the 12 Ivan Cankar's famous autobiographical short story Cup of Coffee (1920) is about young Ivan who visits his poor mother and asks her for a cup of coffee, knowing that she cannot even afford to buy bread. To his surprize, his mother manages to find and prepare coffee for him. Then he refuses to drink it and tells her to stop bothering him. The narrator deeply regrets Ivan's reaction and speaks of his lasting feeling of guilt. In contemporary Slovenian culture, this relationship between an ungrateful, guilty son and a self-sacrificing, suffering mother is considered a stereotype and a paradigm, a consistent part of the “national character” and is subject of numerous interpretations, parodies and jokes in popular culture. In the mentioned graffiti, there is an interesting and perhaps deliberate displacement. Francka was not Cankar’s mother but the female protagonist of his 1902 symbolist and naturalist novel Na klancu, modelled after his mother’s life story and character. 13 In the same way, “a feminist graffiti written in Zagreb in the beginning of the eighties ‘Workers of the world, who is washing your socks?’ was erased the very next day because it supposedly insulted socialist morals” (Velikonja, 2004a: 125). Other sources claim that the same graffiti was written as part of the 1978 feminist meeting in Belgrade, mentioning that it “passed without a comment on the part of the official ideologues, and was applauded in the popular press” (Dević, 2008: online). Rather than dismissing either source, I would suggest that it is entirely possible that it was written on both occasions – and received both kinds of reaction.

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streets has renewed the need for feminist activism that not only defends already existing –

and vanishing – rights but also establishes sites of personal and political emancipation in

contexts where there is still no space for feminist, lesbian, queer, trans and other ideas

and bodies.

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5. The Postsocialist Condition

In order to understand why contemporary feminisms in Slovenia are seen as politically

invisible, I rewrote a genealogy of feminist, lesbian and women’s autonomous initiatives

in Ljubljana in the previous chapter. I paid attention to their interdependence with the

rapidly changing political and social reality of their time. I focused on autonomous

groups since they are the subject of my thesis and are often left out of written historical

accounts due to their informal, often temporary and undocumented nature. I relied on

newspaper clippings and recently published historical reviews, especially those that were

written by people who were themselves involved in social movements of 1980s. In this

chapter, I am going to focus on the general characteristics of “the postsocialist condition”

and those local political events that most evidently marked autonomous feminist

(re)actions and groups of the last ten years.

5.1. Discontinuity or Change?

In her genealogy of new feminism, political theorist Vlasta Jalušič claimed that “certain

feminist ideas and lifestyles have become part of our everyday life” yet “today feminist

groups in Slovenia can be counted on the fingers of one hand” (Jalušič, 2002: 89). Four

years later, journalist Valentina Plahuta Simčič wondered whether “there are any

feminists left at all” in her article about “contemporary Slovene feminism” (Plahuta

Simčič, 2006: 15). She interviewed two of the most prominent feminist intellectuals in

Slovenia, anthropologist Svetlana Slapšak and philosopher Eva D. Bahovec – and me.14

Both academics refused the presupposition about the seeming absence of feminist

14 While I was invited to speak on behalf of Rdeče zore festival, the context – a full page article about Slovene feminism published in one of the (at the time) most widely read dailies (Delo) – clearly positioned me as a representative voice of the new or young generation of local feminists. The article was accompanied by a photograph of several female Slovene Army soldiers jumping out of the back of a truck. By reducing our transnational feminist claims to a national context, the journalist (and/or the editor) depoliticized our statements and appropriated their disruptive potential for nation-state-building and militant goals.

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thought in contemporary official public sphere by claiming, similarly to Vlasta Jalušič,

that feminist views have “spread throughout the social body” (15). To support their

claims, Eva D. Bahovec listed an array of associations and institutions that have

incorporated feminist ideas into their work.

Feminists are present at universities, institutions; there is very lively publishing activity, with many small presses releasing feminist works (*cf, Sophia, ŠKUC’s Vizibilija, Lambda and Aleph editions, Krtina, Analecta, Studia Humanitatis,…); there is Delta magazine; Radio Študent is doing an excellent job when it comes to feminist issues; an active part of feminist scene consists of women’s groups (SOS phones, Association Ključ); the number of cultural and artistic projects with women’s or feminist themes (festivals like City of Women and Rdeče zore) is growing” (Plahuta Simčič, 2006: 15).

Focusing primarily on groups formed in the 1980s and institutionalized in mid-1990s, her

account did not include the full spectrum of feminist activities in Ljubljana. She did not

mention (and might not be aware of) those grassroots activities that evade her implicit

criteria, largely because they are politically marginalized and organized by a younger

generation of activists, artists and social sciences students who, in turn, might not be

aware of their local feminist predecessors and institutionalized contemporaries – or are

not in accord with their political strategies. I do believe that this lack of communication

has less to do with generational differences than it is related to the differences in their

structural position and the tactics they chose to use in the new, postsocialist economic

and political constellation.

Rather than seeking inspiration from local feminist groups of the 1980s or local

feminist knowledge production of the 1990s and the last decade, the new generation of

feminists tends to, among other sources, rely on “do-it-yourself” (DIY) politics. DIY

feminism is an umbrella term fusing many different types of feminism. Drawing on

genealogies of punk cultures, grassroots movements, and the technologies of late

capitalism, this movement meshes lifestyle politics with counter-cultural networking. It

takes as its focus everyday acts of resistance. In her article about DIY feminist networks

in Europe, Red Chidgey claims that “DIY feminism disrupts beliefs that feminism and

social change are no longer on the agenda of young people” (Chidgey, 2009a: online).

She refers to both Western and Eastern-European contexts and writes that the roots of

contemporary DIY feminisms can be traced to the so-called post-feminist milieu,

constituting a grassroots, micro-political or counterpublic feminist response to consumer

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capitalism and state authority. “Drawing on the cultural currency of prefigurative politics

– of living the change you want to see in the world” (ibid.), or indeed on the legacy of

Situationism, these ideas circulate through the “affective economies of passion, pleasure,

friendships, and community-building” (ibid.). As Belgium zine-maker Nina Nijsten

states: DIY feminism is about everyone doing feminism ourselves and making changes, however small they may seem at first sight. It means not waiting for others, for “professionals” or politicians, to make the world more women-friendly and to solve problems related to sexism (Chidgey & Zobl, 2009: online).

In Chidgey’s view, DIY feminist actions take many forms, but commonly include

producing activist media and films, squatting buildings to create counterpublic spaces,

creating guerrilla or street art, holding discussion groups, facilitating workshops, moving

politics into music and performance, skill-sharing, organizing street demos and protests,

and exploring self-sufficiency. From my own perspective, DIY feminism allows for an

even more profound proliferation of tactical approaches to re-envisioning and

transforming society – one that most certainly seems ineffective and invisible when

viewed exclusively from the point of view of feminist-queer counterpublics’ external

function. However, by paying attention to their internal aspect, it becomes possible to

speak about individual acts of resistance and the invisible day and night dreaming that

expands the mental space as equally legitimate acts of resistance. All these tactics can be

accommodated within DIY queer-feminism and its European network. As the organizers

agreed, Rdeče zore festival is definitely part of that transnational network. “On the

international level, the network has already been weaved. The fest is great because it

enabled a space, an entry point into that network”, said Daša Tepina and immediately

noted the irony of the situation in which Rdeče zore festivals are more connected

internationally than locally. “On the local level, the problem remains”, she said: We are unable to organize ourselves to the point where we could come up with a visible practice that would make sense so that we would not lock ourselves back into the margins. (…) First, you need a strong base from where you can support people and projects. On the international level, the solidarity network is important. On the local level, you can of course expect solidarity from others but you cannot expect that somebody else is going to work instead of you locally. That’s the problem (….); first, you need something to root your connections in. I think it is of high importance to work on a local infrastructure, be it theory or action-orientated, in order to be able to react to

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different types of problems, to join certain initiatives, and generally become more visible in society.

The fact that the temporary nature of the festival is very much connected to the issue of

discontinuity and the general absence of a feminist-queer counterpublic in Ljubljana, is

going to be discussed in the final chapter. At this point, I want to stipulate Red Chidgey’s

view that DIY feminist interventions in Europe are generally “often temporary or

ephemeral”, where “creating autonomous zones such as festivals and gatherings are an

integral part of DIY feminism”. In the same way, anti-capitalist tendencies are inherently

bound up in these actions: “self/collective produced culture, politics, entertainment, and

work are held as ideals, and non-profit voluntary or activist labour is the movement’s

lifeblood” (Chidgey, 2009a: online).

In addition to DIY politics and ideals, feminist-queer counterpublics in Ljubljana

have also been influenced by the variety of ideas that can be found under the increasingly

popular tag of “queer politics” and the activist practices of creative resistance, revived by

the “anti-globalization” movements for social justice of the new millennium. And while

these new feminist and/or queer initiatives have indeed “dared and managed to walk into

the political reality of the late 1990s on their own terms – by politicizing new issues and

creating political spaces from below” (Zadnikar, 2004: 15), it is worth noticing that

feminists from the 1980s fought in the name of the same principles. Since the latter

continue to be intellectually, artistically and (sometimes) politically active, the reasons

for a very noticeable generational discontinuity – and the general perception about

feminism’s invisibility today – have to be sought elsewhere.

As such, I will analyze two main and interconnected conditions of this

discontinuity. First, the rise of new conservatism (mainly in the form of ethnocentrism,

right-wing historical revisionism and antifeminism) in postsocialist Slovenia and second,

the institutionalization of 1980s feminist groups, especially the introduction of Gender

Studies and their effect on young feminists’ perception of feminism as an academic

discipline that has little or nothing to do with reality. I hope the following chapter will

clearly demonstrate that I am not interested in making a judgement about the present-day

manifestations of feminist-queer counterpublics from the perspective of feminist

movements of the past. My main interest is to analyze and understand the political, social

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and cultural changes that have characterized the postsocialist condition in Slovenia – as

well as contemporary and local feminist-queer responses to it.

5. 2. Neoconservatism and Ethnocentrism

Twenty years ago, when the Berlin Wall “fell”, prophets of a new, global, postmodernist

era were proclaiming the end of ideology and history. They were quite right, as intense

neoconservative and neoliberal revisions of the past in “the West” and “East”15 indeed

swept away the memory of political alternatives and with it, the ability to imagine them.

In the same way, belief in the possibility of collective political resistance was largely

replaced by individualism and “moral apathy” (Braidotti, 2005: 170). “Post-communist

transition”, or rather, “Western capitalism-restoration” were two faces of the same

process and since “the Wall fell on both sides and not merely one” (Iveković, no date: 1),

neoliberalism indeed became the sole deterministic master narrative on both sides of the

discursive and shifting border between East and West. It is therefore not surprising that

today, despite their significantly different histories, left-wing intellectuals, activists and

artists – including feminists – on “both fronts” are calling for politics of alliance and

solidarity, and are looking for tactical ways to fight old ethnocentrisms, nationalisms, and

racisms in their new, yet recognizable and highly gendered, disguises.

As feminist and postcolonial theorists (Iveković, 1993; Braidotti & Griffin, 2002)

have argued, nationalist discourses frequently appropriate women as the symbolic bearers

of nationalist identity. While this appropriation can take (and has historically taken) many

different forms, one example can be observed in both Western and Eastern-European

countries every time new “fertility-raising” policies are introduced as the single

corrective mechanism for declining birth rates on the literally “old continent”. Various

“baby-bonus” policies that have been recently introduced by governments of Germany,

Russia, Italy, and Poland, to name just a few, have relied heavily on the simultaneous

promotion of mothering as the most rewarding “career choice”. In this political climate

15 In the following chapter, I use categories “West” and “East” not in an explanatory but a descriptive sense. I use them to denote the discursive and shifting border between “them” and “us” rather than to define a geopolitical space and border. Expressions such as “the Balkans” and “Slovenia” are similarly used to designate “the East” – unless their meaning is specified by the context. I do not use quotation marks in the text but nevertheless acknowledge the restraining difficulties that enter theory together with the discourse about “the East/West divide”.

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even neoliberal feminists who measure women's emancipation by their individual

financial success can be seen as “progressive” even though their agenda is clearly based

on the same moral and political grounds.

“Neoconservative liberal individualism” is “profoundly ethnocentric” and as such,

“takes the form of contradictory and racist positions” (Braidotti, 2005: 171) in which “our

women” are seen as “emancipated (…), Western, Christian, mostly white and raised in

the tradition of secular Enlightenment” (ibid.), while “their women” are seen as

“backwards” and belonging to that other world, “non-Western, non-Christian, mostly not

white (…), alien to the Enlightenment tradition” (ibid.). Even though women from

postsocialist countries, as seen through Western eyes, most often belong to the othered

side of the binary, their bodies in Eastern-European nationalist imaginary personify the

(edge of that) same, Western and “civilized” territory. While this contradiction confirms

that the East/West divide is shifting and is, as such, located in discourse rather than

geopolitical space, it also shows how orientalist (or, in case of the Balkans, balkanist)

discourse is mirrored in postsocialist countries of South-Eastern Europe. For example,

through these countries’ strict migration policies and fertility-raising strategies which,

because of their complete separation suggest that “our” women and “our” children indeed

define the border between “us” and “them”. Ironically yet expectedly, in this case “they”

are located on the Eastern and Southern border of South-Eastern Europe, not in the West.

The Non-Alignment Movement with its anti-colonialist and anti-racist policy on

one hand and the state-socialist ideology of “brotherhood and unity” in former

Yugoslavia on the other “managed to neutralize such traditional dichotomies as

East/West and their nesting variants (Europe/Asia, Europe/Balkans, Christian/Muslim)”,

however, “the same categories of difference turned into sharp oppositions as soon as the

neutralizing framework was destroyed” (Bakić-Hayden, 1995: 931). Along with it, the

war also destroyed multicultural communities of people that transcended these

dichotomies. Local theoretical attempts to understand this drastic turn introduced

“ethnicity” and “race” as descriptive categories which were previously a “no-go” area or

considered unnecessary since racism in Yugoslavia was officially “defunct” – in the same

way “the women’s question” was supposedly “solved”. This, in addition to the specific

“coloring” of the whiteness debate in Western Europe that “obscured the intermittently

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flaring race relations in the European countries” (Griffin & Braidotti, 2002: 225), is the

reason why in Slovenia, for example, the dominant media discourse still claims that there

cannot be any racism in the country since “black people don't live here”. While the

invisibility of black people is per se an indicator of racism, the argument becomes even

more absurd – and dangerous – when one considers the hatred targeting so-called non-

Slovenes (Serbs, Croats, Bosnians, Montenegrins, Macedonians, and Albanians as a

discursively homogeneous group or “object of projected otherness” that stands in

opposition to ethnic Slovenes), Romani people, migrants from other capitalist peripheries

– and people who are discriminated on the base of their religious and class affiliation,

political persuasion, physical ability, and, “of course”, sexual orientation and gender

identity.

I have deliberately diminished important differences that exist between both

contexts even though I do not consent to “the populist conviction that the era of

accelerated globalisation is not an appropriate time for stipulating distinctions between

East and West” (Gržinić, 2005: 60) – a conviction that Marina Gržinić locates primarily

in postsocialist lands’ desire to “become European” by calling it “a symptom of an

ideological blind spot” (ibid.), also known as “eurosis”. Cultural theorist Mitja Velikonja

uses this term to describe new ethnocentrisms that “delegitimize all alternatives to

existing discourses and practices of Euro-Atlantic integration” (Jeffs, 2007: 28). When

read in reverse, eurosis reveals that “European identity is based on ethnic, national and

racial criteria, and as such, serves the legitimization of various (violent) processes of

inclusion and exclusion” (ibid.). I have stipulated similarities in order to suggest, as many

before me have done, that the neoliberal context urges for a cross-border dialog and

alliances between left-wing intellectuals, activists and artists from East and West. In this

sense, the intense networking between women’s, feminist and/or queer festivals,

collectives and associations from the region of former Yugoslavia is politically

provocative per se.

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5.3. Historical Revisionism

Post-transitional revisionist histories in Slovenia have diminished the role of antifascist

struggles during WWII, erased almost five decades of Yugoslav socialism and with it,

also the traces of women’s political participation and organizing in both periods.

Paradoxically, these “new histories” encourage historical amnesia. They coincide with

the rise of conservative morals, neoliberal market economy and right-wing politics. The

latter have radically cut students’, workers’ and pensioners’ rights and systematically

discriminate against the poor, the elderly, migrants, ethnic minorities, the disabled and

especially women belonging to those social groups.

Those who are disturbed by historical amnesia presuppose that historical

consciousness is crucial for understanding – or illuminating – present possibilities.

However, knowing that histories written after 1991 often reinterpret past events in the

light of historians’ present political affiliations, feminist revisions should be wary. If they

rely on sources that legitimate the present, “chosen”16 political order, they are in danger

of advocating an ideological, rather than methodological location. While the latter

understands that different locations and political views inevitably produce different

interpretations of the past, and that “dialectical truth” is to be found in their conflicting

intersections, the former equate history with dominant discourse in order to show that

there are no imaginable alternatives to present-day status quo. In this discourse, “the

present is a deaf echo of past cataclysms” (Močnik, 2008: 52).

Anarchist organizers of protests against neofascism that took place on April 27 th

2009 in Ljubljana managed to created a temporary and highly heterogeneous alliance of

many (reportedly, around 800 people attended) exactly because they spoke about new

fascism in the context of revisionist politics and governments that tolerate it. Tactically

speaking, they could not have picked a better occasion. Until 1992, April 27th was a

national holiday, commemorating the Liberation Front (the ideologically varied

antifascist coalition during WWII), also known as the Day of Antifascist Struggle. In

1992, and despite protests, it was renamed to the Day of Struggle against the Occupator.

Even though “the occupator” has not been defined, it was quite clear (especially because

16 Note how grammar can serve political interests. Supposedly, capitalist economy was “chosen” by the people while the Berlin Wall “fell” all by itself.

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many street names related to the socialist past were being renamed at the same time) that

the authorities had “overwritten” the antifascist victory with the 1991 declaration of

Slovenian independence, and thus implicitly equated fascists with communists.

In 2006, a symbolic cultural action opposing falsifications of memory and history

was organized by Rdeče zore festival. On March 8th, the festival opened with a repertoire

of revolutionary partisan songs sung by twenty-two members of the Women’s Choir of

the Pensioner’s Association from Idrija. Earlier that year, the choir was banned from

performing at an antifascist commemoration in Trieste (Italy) since the mayor thought

that the advertisements for the event were too reminiscent of “communist propaganda”.

Rdeče zore’s event was a response to the mayor’s decision and an attempt at

“maintaining the connection with Slovenian feminist tradition” (Bašin, 2006:15). The

event was organized in ACC Metelkova mesto and succeeded in doing something hardly

imaginable: despite Metelkova’s media-induced stigmatization, it managed to bring

together three generations of antifascists and feminists: from teenage anarchist punks and

queers to the generation of their parents which participated in social movements of the

1980s and the generation of their parents which supported or fought within the WWII

Liberation Front. The oldest people in the audience were two men who volunteered for

the Popular Front in the Spanish Civil War. The emotional impact of this event was

enormous as the packed venue (around 300 people attended) literally embodied the

historical continuity of antifascism in a time when the dominant discourse does

everything in its power to silence it. It showed that autonomous cultural initiatives like

Rdeče zore and spaces like Metelkova can function as contact zones for counterpublics

whose participation in the official public sphere is limited or – when it does happen –

most often misinterpreted.

Other feminist actions have directly intervened into the official public sphere by

subverting strategies used by the state for its revisionist purposes. In the night from

March 8th to 9th 2007, several activist groups renamed around fifty streets in Ljubljana.

Similarly to feminists who renamed streets in Zagreb, Sarajevo (both in 2006) and Kutina

(2007), the anonymous alliance in Ljubljana based its action on the statistical fact that the

great majority of streets are named after men – and the feminist fact that women’s history

needs to be written by women since nobody else is going to do it for them. New names

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paid homage to The International Women’s Day, Simone de Beauvoir, women artists

(Ivana Kobilica, Duša Počkaj, Ela Peroci), pop icons (Lydia Lunch, Queen Latifah),

political activists (Sisters Štebi, women who fought in Spanish Civil War), women

protagonists of feminist novels and children’s literature, events from feminist history and

motherhood (Street of Your and My Mum). In November 2007, a similar action was

carried out in Maribor where the street-renaming intervention by Vstaja Lezbosov

(Lesbian Insurrection) invented the names Square of Lesbian Revolution (nr. 69!),

Lesbian Path, and Road to the Lesbian, which were left on display for several weeks.

However, Path to the Lesbian Peak and Square of Lesbian Brigades disappeared

immediately: probably because they renamed the seats of The Roman Catholic Diocese

and Archdiocese.

These symbolic actions were accompanied by other, more demanding political

campaigns that reacted to an immediate threat. The 2006 feminist mobilization of many

groups and individuals in support of women’s reproductive rights was successful because

it paralleled “nation-building” demographic policies with policies of violent inclusion of

some and exclusion of other people by the Schengen regime. They claimed that both

practices are legitimated by the “discursive colonization” (Mohanty, 1997: 49)17 of the

past. In this way, feminists succeeded in forming a varied and large coalition despite the

fact that today feminism in Slovenia is not perceived as a legitimate political position.

17 Chandra T. Mohanty used the term “discursive colonization” to criticize those academic discourses that “codify relationship to the Other in implicitly hierarchical terms” (Mohanty, 1997: 50). While she addressed certain Western feminist writings about “third-world women”, the point was not to reproduce “culturalist argument about ethnocentrism” but to “show how ethnocentric universalism is produced in certain analyses” (52), including those written by “third-world” scholars who observe their own culture “through Western eyes” – or by Slovene historians who equate “Slovene” history with hegemonic discourse, and inevitably “other” or “erase” those historic subjects that might question their truth. In Milica Bakić-Hayden’s terms, this type of analysis is “nesting orientalisms” (Bakić-Hayden, 1995: 922).

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5.3.1. Antifeminism

Revisionist discourse insists on the image of a “grey and boring” state feminism of the

past as the only possible feminism today. Revisionism in its “antipolitical and

antifeminist” form, as defined by Vlasta Jalušič, can be observed in the media reactions

to all contemporary feminist claims that do not correspond to its stereotypical

representation. For example, when “feminists try to disrupt, disprove or shatter (…)

traditional unified political subjects and insist on a different form of political agency that

counters collectivist subjects with politics of inclusion or tries to speak (…) from an

individual position” (Močnik, 2000: 40) – or, for that matter, also when it promotes

collective action.

Since antifeminist sentiments mostly target symbolic manifestations of feminist

politics, such as the International Women’s Day, feminist protests against revisionism

have frequently called for a redefinition of meanings attached to March 8th. For example,

in 2009, celebrating the 100th anniversary of the first International Women’s Day, Rdeče

zore festival organized a discussion about its significance today. The organizers pointed

out several issues that call for a reincorporation of political and economic theory – as

well as demands for social justice – into contemporary feminisms:

politics of memory, (…) overlooked international engagement of women, (…) the problematic worsening of working conditions for women (part-time jobs, wage disparity, the equalization of retirement age) and some fundamental women’s issues: discrimination, reproductive rights, violence, prostitution, sexist media representations, etc. (Rdeče zore, 2009a, online).

In short, they stipulated the need for continuity with those elements of socialist feminism

that are applicable to the contemporary postsocialist context.

Mainstream media discourse about feminism in Slovenia is dominated by

ignorance and contempt. A 2008 survey (Kavčič, 2008a: online) showed that “Slovene

intelligentsia” – in fact, all the interviewees were popular entertainment figures – equates

feminism with “femi-fascism” (Miša Molk) and “something like clericalism” (Marko

Crnkovič). Humorist Tone Fornezzi publicly attacked feminists as “unfucked women”.

Another interviewee, ex model and TV host Jerca Legan said that feminists lost support

because they wanted to “persuade women to abandon their femininity” (ibid.). In an

earlier survey, (Kavčič, 2008b, online) none of the interviewees objected to having

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“homosexual neighbours” (unfortunately, they were not asked how they felt about

feminist neighbours). Rather than pointing out their acceptance of lesbians and gays, their

statements point to the visibility of politically engaged lesbians and gays who, contrary to

feminists, have spoken publicly from a lesbian or gay position long enough that

homophobia became publicly unacceptable. That does not mean that nobody today

supports women’s rights or criticizes structural, gender-based asymmetry. The point is

that those who do, refuse to speak from a feminist position for pragmatic reasons. Rather

than fighting antifeminist prejudices openly (and risking that their position – and possibly

their career – will be dismissed as soon as it is identified with feminism), they try to

maintain legitimacy by supporting feminist critiques “in disguise”.

In 1999, Ljubljana-based festival City of Women organized a discussion about

antifeminism in former Yugoslavia and other postsocialist states. Vlasta Jalušič’s

explanation differed from the widely circulated opinion that women refuse to identify

with feminism because of its supposed “unfemininity”, usually connected to claims about

the ineffectiveness of contemporary feminist interventions in the public sphere.18 Jalušič

argued that while this is not the only possible opinion, it is the prevailing one and as such,

it should be taken into consideration in spite of all other possible interpretations. By

moving the debate on antifeminism to the level of representations also in relation to the

pragmatic refusal of feminist women and men to be publicly identified as such, she

outlined the possibility that many intellectuals, activists and artists prefer to use negative

self-presentations that allow them to speak in opposition to “what feminism supposedly

represents” (Močnik, 2000: 65). While feminism never was one, and it is more precise to

see it as a “heterogeneity of voices” (Haraway, 1997) or a “rizomatic network” (Braidotti

in Močnik, 2000) of often contradictory ideas, united by their antiauthoritarianism and

“longing for change” (hooks, 2000), the essential question for those who want to counter

“boring and grey” representations of feminism in Slovenia is: which feminisms really

18 Lacanian philosopher Rebata Salecl (1994) claimed that feminists are ineffective because a “serious movement” that would be comparable to its Western manifestations did not exist in socialism and does not exist in postsocialism. Of course, it is highly questionable whether an “effective” feminist movement exists in the West. Assuming that Salecl’s “serious movement” refers to post-1968 feminist and lesbian movement in the West, it is possible to conclude that due to the prevalence of cultural feminism in the 1980s and feminism’s gradual institutionalization in the 1990s, a “serious” and “effective” Western feminist movement belongs to the realm of psychoanalytic desire, rather than social reality (see Salecl, 1994).

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became obsolete? Or: which feminisms allow us to think and act in the postsocialist

context?

5.4. Institutionalization and Discursive Colonization

Lesbian activist and poet Nataša Sukič claimed that in the neoconservative setting,

feminists in Slovenia were late to react to “the rise of the Church, the rise of the Right,

the rise of hate speech” and the “need for normality” (Kuhar, 2007: 11). In Svetlana

Slapšak’s words, feminism was also late to react to “an incredible wave of patriarchical

sentiments and sexism” (Plahuta Simčič, 2006: 15). Suzana Tratnik has critiqued

feminists of the 1990s for their inability to address consumerism and “pop values, pop

identities (…), apolitical standpoints” (Kuhar, 2007: 11) and commented that “the state

does not need professional lesbians and gays” (11) when she was asked why the lesbian

movement was not institutionalized to the same extent. Her answer paid attention to the

importance of distinguishing between lesbian and heterosexual feminist politics even

when they are united by a strong alliance. This might also be the reason why the lesbian

movement in Slovenia continued its work without any major interruptions in the 1990s

and the reason why the new generation of politically engaged lesbians regularly

frequented the “streetwise school” of activism by writing its own “graffiti textbook”

(Hvala, 2008: 75), rather than attending the newly introduced academic programs in

Gender Studies and Gay & Lesbian Studies. In fact, “in the late nineties, when the level

of homophobia in Slovenia rose and the educative tools against intolerance were entirely

insufficient, a library wall in Maribor was sprayed with a graffiti asking ‘Where are all

the lesbian books?’”(Velikonja, 2004a: 128).

While the introduction of feminist academic curricula opened a new, formal

channel for transgenerational (re)production of feminist knowledge, it also produced (in

the absence of a vibrant autonomous feminist movement) a limited view on feminism as

an academic discipline that has little or nothing to do with reality – and is therefore of no

practical use. Several of my interviewees confirmed this. For example, when asked in

what way, if at all, her involvement with Rdeče zore festival influenced her

understanding of feminism, Tanja Škander replied:

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I'm gonna give big credit to Rdeče zore now since I really thought feminism was some sort of skeleton. Something that doesn’t want to… something that is happening on the level of struggle for political rights and something that happens in the government, in that Office for Equal Opportunities or what’s the name now… It definitely influenced my understanding of feminism. In the sense that feminism is something that lives, something with a potential, something that should be continued through other forms, so, actual political activism that lives on the street, that is present and not necessarily written but realized through action. (…) This might sound naïve, but feminism was mostly something I read about. I was scolded as a feminist already in primary school, so feminism was not something I could apply to life. Because it was rooted in a certain form, and with Rdeče zore, this palette became visible. That feminism can be expressed in different ways: through music, visual arts, political action, like renaming streets, similar stuff. This is the biggest contribution of Rdeče zore for me personally.

On the other hand, two volunteers who joined the festival organization team in 2009,

Danaja Grešak and Anja Kocman, confirmed that the spheres are not entirely separate.

Danaja was drawn to the festival because she was “interested in feminism”. Her

introduction to feminism was academic. After attending Milica Antić-Gaber’s courses at

the Faculty of Arts (Sociology of Gender, Gender and Discourse), she replied to Rdeče

zore’s call for volunteers together with three friends who were also interested in

feminism. For Anja, the decisive role was played by her interest in Gay & Lesbian

Studies and her interest in techniques of cultural organization. It is interesting to note that

despite her participation in Gay & Lesbian Studies, Anja said that before joining Rdeče

zore, she had “no clue” about feminism.

Slađana Mitrović, a visual artist and organizer with a feminist academic

background, replied that even though her views were not changed by the festival, the fact

that her video was shown at the festival “demanded a certain reconsideration of my work.

Like: ‘How are you going to define your themes within the frame of feminism?’ (…) By

calling itself a feminist festival, Rdeče zore has had a strong effect. Not only on other

people, also on me.” Ana Jereb, another co-organizer trained in feminist theory, perceives

Rdeče zore “as a place of practice where you can make happen your own views or

discuss them further. The festival was not where the ideas came from, they came from

literature,” she said in reference to feminist and queer theory. And yet, she continued,

“when it came to new perspectives, new searches, Rdeče zore played a decisive role”.

Is it an exaggeration to claim that the predominance of British, American and

French sources used in Gender Studies departments – or, in other words, a mild form of

discursive colonization (Mohanty, 1997: 49) – is producing young educated feminists

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who can legitimately conclude that the only available feminist genealogies are Western

despite the documented and rich history of local women’s and feminist movements?

Discursive colonization would most certainly not be possible or at least not as strong if

local feminist history and contemporary feminist public interventions were more visible.

Again, this problem is related to the “ideologically induced amnesia, the loss of historic

memory due to a persistent embargo on the research and publishing about pre-war

feminism in Slovenia” (Rener, 1996: 60). Lidija Radojević, one of the interviewees and

herself a young researcher of political economy and feminist theory, said that most of the

literature used in Gender Studies courses in Slovenia originates from the U.S. and Great

Britain “because we are in transition, we are being ideologically interpolated into a new

system”. Immediately afterwards, she pointed out the problem lying at the heart of this

“conceptual import”:

feminism forgot about a lot of things when it focused on identity politics exclusively; it forgot about the social element that was once already there. To connect queer and feminist politics with that – that’s the essence! This is how you touch the deepest roots of chauvinism.

The prevalence of identity politics or politics of recognition in postsocialist

feminist theory has also been criticized by American philosopher and critical theorist

Nancy Fraser. Like Rada Iveković, she argues that “the postsocialist condition”

adequately describes both the East and West since they are interrelated discursive

categories and material contexts. They are connected by

an absence of any credible overarching emancipatory project despite the proliferation of fronts of struggle; a general decoupling of the cultural politics of recognition from the social politics of redistribution; and a decentring of claims for equality in the face of aggressive marketization and sharply rising material inequality (Naples, 2004: 1103-4).

Fraser claims that “the turn to recognition” of cultural differences in feminism turned into

“a tragic historical irony” because it appeared in the least appropriate moment: “it

dovetailed all too neatly with a hegemonic neoliberalism that wants nothing more than to

repress all memory of social egalitarianism” (1111). Her call for a postsocialism that

“incorporates, rather than repudiates, the best of socialism” and a radical democracy that

“combine[s] the struggle for an antiessentialist multiculturalism with the struggle for

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social equality” (1104) is echoed in Lidija’s statement. In the Slovene context, the

historic irony is even greater since new feminist theory was preoccupied with Marxist

theory of social justice, yet today, instead of using this as a possible starting point for

revisions and development of a feminist theory that is relevant for the present condition,

that legacy has been either discarded (by academic feminism) or is used in antifeminist

bashing to delegitimate contemporary feminist claims.

5.4.1. Over-genderization

In Biljana Kašić's words, “over-genderization” (Kašić, 2004: 484) is another problematic

aspect of identity politics’ import. She claimed that during the 1990s feminists from the

South-East (scholars, grassroots activists and artists) accepted the use of “gender” as a

concept and as a basic Western assumption, a convention which was never “deeply

explored or examined from the inside out”, and thus turned into a “free-floating signifier

marking an epistemological time-lag” (480). In her view, rather than contributing to the

analysis of poignant local issues, gender mainstreaming obscured them since gender

politics introduced a specific set of feminist preoccupations that had little or nothing to do

with the political reality of a disintegrating country on the brink of war.

A practical consequence of accepting gender-exclusive perspectives in the period

of intensifying ethnic and religious conflicts – and eventually of war – were feminist

analyses that failed to see the ways in which women were (re)appropriated by nationalist

and religious discourses. How else could “patriotic” feminists from Croatia and Serbia

claim that mass rape was an ethnically-specific genocidal tactic, used only by “the other”

aggressor? In addition, “the divisions among Yugoslav feminists on the basis of national

identification and/or ideological orientation affected Western interpretations of gender-

specific violence in Yugoslav wars” (Batinić, 2001: 18). In the United States, “the

representation of mass rapes in the feminist press was highly conditioned by (...) feminist

debates on rape and pornography” (18) since authors like Catharine MacKinnon

appropriated this context-specific debate for their own anti-porn and sex-repressive

version of liberal feminism by literally claiming that “with this war, pornography

emerges as a tool of genocide” (16). Coupled with the lack of intersectional analyses,

“radical feminist narratives of rape coincided with nationalist narratives of the ethnic self

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and other” (18) and revealed “the pervasiveness of orientalist patterns in representing the

non-Western world, to which some feminist approaches remain susceptible” (1).

The 1991-95 wars reinforced the hundred-year-old balkanist representation of

former Yugoslavia as a “powder keg” where violence and “ethnic hatred” are the norm.

While Western media represented the Balkans as its rediscovered “exotic” and

“irrational” Other, Western feminism represented Yugoslav feminists

as dealing with violence as a “natural” or almost an “essentialized” issue for them. As such, most invitations and demands for “expertise” or testimonies from Western feminists, in addition to financial support, were centred on issues of violence (Kašić, 2004: 483).

Specifically, they supported local (chapters of international) NGOs and academic

feminists who dealt with the issue of gender-based and ethnic violence. On the other

hand, the socio-political climate surrounding ethnocentric conflicts had a profound

influence on shaping women’s political subjectivity and their activism which was forced

to deal with the issue of violence. Since ethnocentric appropriations of women’s bodies

are resurfacing in both West and East, these studies gained a relevance that goes beyond

the territory of former Yugoslavia. Still, if Gender Studies students today have the

impression that feminists from former Yugoslavia are studying exclusively violence and

nationalism, their impression is almost correct. In fact, while it proves that discursive

colonization has material consequences, it also proves that such colonization is only

possible if there is no discourse to counter it.

5.5. Possibility of Transnational Dialogue

Despite asymmetrical conditions of work and power relations between academic

feminists from the West and East, my sources demonstrate the continuous effort at

dialogue that has been made “on both sides”. For example, Lidija Radojević was

surprised to find out that international solidarity has a very long history indeed. Reading

Jelena Petrović’s PhD dissertation (2009) about Yugoslav feminists in the interwar

(1918-1941) period, she learned that

in the period of Kingdom of Yugoslavia (…) we had an unimaginably dynamic scene – Macedonian women were petitioning for the release of Rosa Luxemburg! There were liberal, communist, Christian-socialist, even conservative feminists. That was a hundred

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years ago and today, nothing’s left of it. That is why I think education is so fundamental. We are still sensitive to this amnesia whereas the West has been living in the present for quite a while now. We went through a more drastic change and we are still bothered by the fact that certain things have been forgotten, also because women here had had enormous gains that women in the West could only dream of. (…) In the 70s, we had our own theories, our own practice, our own typology of feminism. We have to preserve this tradition. It was not brought by the West.

Lesbian and feminist grassroots initiatives have indeed stipulated the importance of

nourishing the memory of autonomous feminist groups as they implicitly criticize both

feminist academic and neoconservative appropriations of history. In this way, Rdeče

zore’s intense transnational networking and educative program could be interpreted as an

implicit protest against discursive colonization; as an advocacy of creative

transculturation of ideas.

Theories of unidirectional transfer of ideas (from the West to the East) are indeed

challenged by the concept of transculturation, understood as a complex process of co-

presence, interaction, change and circulation of feminist ideas and practices. Elsewhere I

have compared the similarities between economic (neoliberalism, »crisis«) and political

situations (ethnocentrism, revisionism, cultural relativism) in the East and West (Hvala,

2009) in order to suggest that it makes sense to address these issues relationally. In my

article “Postsocialist Feminisms between Two Fires,” I discuss examples of revisionism,

antifeminism and demographic policies and suggest that feminists cannot theorize about

these links unless they accept intersectionality (as their method), demand the

redistribution of wealth (as their policy) and think about ways to start some “roaring

fires” (as their tactic). In Slovenia, unidirectional transfer of knowledge, coupled with

appropriations of memory, have been criticized in academia. Feminist and critical

theorists such as Nikolai Jeffs and Svetlana Slapšak have called for the necessity of

situating local knowledge production on the “world's intellectual market” from the point

of view of a “colonized subject, the non-Western subject, who has been instructed by

Western feminisms about what feminism is and what is happening to the colonized

subjects” (STA, 2002: online). Their claims resonate with Biljana Kašić’s hope that the

recent “tendency to focus on internal socialist history from a feminist perspective” would

“help not only to create theoretical explanations that link women’s benefits in the

socialist period to socialist failures” (Kašić, 2004: 480) but would also enable a more

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productive dialog between feminists from the East and West. Moreover, it would help

feminists recognize the commonalities between all regions that are equally peripheral to

the centres of power: for start, to quote political theorist Veronica Schild, the “political

dangers of forgetting this real history, and the responsibilities that intellectuals, including

feminist scholars, must of necessity bear for this price of forgetting (Hvala, 2007: online).

What follows is my attempt at a genealogic revision of recent autonomous

feminist actions in Ljubljana that tries to discuss their internal function in relation to (the

extent and limits of) their mobilizing power, that is, the ways in which they try to enter

official public sphere and claim counterpublic spaces of their own (in short, their external

function).

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6. Contemporary Feminist-Queer Counterpublics in Ljubljana

In her 2007 review of non-institutional feminist history, journalist Tanja Lesničar Pučko

noted that the 1980s movement was “characterized by a critical – and humorous –

attitude towards the hegemonic discourse of Yugoslavian politics and aesthetics”

(Lesničar Pučko, 2007: 82). She claimed that women’s and feminist autonomous groups

from the 1980s “established a kind of network that, to a certain extent, in this way or that,

still exists and (perhaps?) still carries a latent mobilizing power, an informal potential for

solidarity” (83). Her hesitation is well grounded. In fact, if I were to exaggerate, it would

seem that in the last two decades, feminist points of view have become part of “every-day

life” or “the social body” so completely that they have been entirely normalized and thus

became invisible. Feminists’ actual ability to mobilize people today is restrained to

politically similar counterpublics that exist within what is still jokingly known as the

“liberated territory” of Ljubljana.

6.1. Allying in Defense of Reproductive Rights

In 2006, when the reproductive rights of women were threatened again, it became

quite clear that it would be necessary to fight in more visible ways. And while prominent

feminist scholars like Svetlana Slapšak urged that “the situation is ripe for feminist

activism” (Plahuta Simčič, 2006: 15), a graffiti from 1991 reappeared with renewed

urgency: “Women against nation – for abortion rights” it called, signed by the feminist

symbol and a clenched fist. Another graffiti ironically remarked that in 2006, “A foetus

has more rights than a woman”. These actions and the less successful protests against the

discrimination of lesbians, single and disabled women in 2000, were the two occasions

when the (limits of the) mobilizing potential of feminist initiatives in Slovenia were most

visible. The protests also shed some light on the existing transgenerational feminist

connections.

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In a country where lesbians and gays can “register” their same sex partnership but

do not have access to the legal rights provided by the institution of marriage,19

reproductive rights still concern heterosexual women predominately. However, in 2000

when the newly elected right-wing government attempted to implement a legislation that

would make artificial insemination available only to heterosexual couples who were

married or cohabiting, this serious violation of women’s reproductive choices faced

severe opposition from a wide array of feminist, lesbian, women’s and other progressive

groups. Later that year, liberally-oriented political parties tried to introduce an

amendment that would make medically-assisted artificial insemination formally

accessible to single, disabled and lesbian women. However, the right-wing parliamentary

parties used the opportunity of installing a public referendum about the issue. The right of

single women to get artificially inseminated was put under the final decision of the voting

majority in the summer of 2001 – and lost. To this day, artificial insemination remains

inaccessible to lesbians, single and disabled women in Slovenia.

Four years later, on March 8th 2005, an anonymous letter entitled “Do you

remember March 8th?” claimed that the 2005 governmental proposal for positive

demographic growth used hate speech and discriminatory measures. The letter criticized

the Minister of Labour, Family and Social Affairs Janez Drobnič who

sent women back to the kitchen by suggesting that the recently fired female textile workers ‘who are skilled cooks and domestic labourers’ could use their skills on the labour market as well. (…) Member of Parliament, Pavel Rupar, suggested that the state should lessen its financial support for safe houses because they undermine the idea of family as a traditionally safe environment. (…) All these statements are violent and put pressure on all residents of Slovenia.

The letter was handed out by a small activist group that staged a burlesque portrayal of

patriarchal family roles in Park Zvezda and ridiculed the minister personally by calling

itself the Janez Drobnič Folklore Group.

On November 15th 2006, the same minister proposed a “fertility raising strategy”

which, among many other discriminatory suggestions, limited access to abortion. The

19 That is about to change. In July 2009, the court held that the first Registration of Same Sex Partnerships Act proposed in November 2006 was based on unequal and discriminatory standards between same sex and opposite sex couples and therefore unconstitutional. On March 2nd 2010, after intense public debates, legal complaints and protests, the revised and indiscriminatory version of the act successfully passed the first parliamentary reading and voting.

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strategy proposed a 400 € fee for (previously free) abortion procedures, thus ensuring that

abortion would become inaccessible for a large number of poor and young women. The

strategy was, like the successfully opposed proposition from 1991, trying to

instrumentalize women for its own “nation-building” goals. Furthermore, the new

legislation used catholic discourse by equating the beginning of life with conception.

“Streetwise” feminists responded with graffiti: “A fetus has more rights than a woman”,

“Let’s abort Drobnič!”, “I’d rather be a test-tube baby than Drobnič’s child” and a slogan

which connected the discriminatory proposal about artificial insemination from 2000 with

the same type of demographic policy by sarcastically offering the perfect solution: “To

raise fertility – inseminate single women and lesbians”.

Already on November 17th 2006, the ad hoc Feminist Initiative in Support of

Abortion Rights entered ministry bureaus early in the morning and awaited the

employees with a statement objecting the proposed strategy:

The state reduces women to irrational beings who are unable to decide for themselves (…) and whose primary function is reproduction. (…) We strongly oppose the proposed strategy and ask how is it possible that Slovene government is systematically violating and abolishing human rights. Who is going to be next?

The activists used posters and banners to surround the bureaus and publicly expose it as a

violator of women’s rights. The slogans (“Women = birth machines”, “Defend abortion

rights – tomorrow it is going to be too late”, “Yesterday migrants and Erased citizens,

today Roma people and women; who is next?”) placed discriminatory policies against

women in the context of institutionalized violence against many other marginalized

groups of people. On November 30th, the initiative co-organized the first public

discussion about the proposed strategy together with the Peace Institute and Rdeče zore

festival. Because of increasing public pressure,20 the unconstitutional strategy was

eventually abandoned and the responsible Minister was forced to resign.

20 Public letters demanding Minister Drobnič’s immediate leave were written by The Peace Institute, an impromptu protest group of women signed as ‘Outraged’, another group signed as ‘Concerned Citizens’, autonomous Feminist Initiative, association Vita Activa, Equal Opportunity Group of the Liberal Democratic Party, the Progressive Party, academic political group Liberal Academy, The Institute for Parenthood and Family, the Non-Governmental Organizations Alliance, the Women’s forum and the Deputy group of Social Democrats, and the thirty-two intellectuals who co-authored and signed the Public Initiative for the Formation of a Comprehensive National Strategy (Vita Activa, 2006: online).

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6.2. The “Streetwise” Textbook: Street Actions and Graffiti

The first feminist street actions of the new millennium in Ljubljana were inspired by the

informal network of groups and individuals that began its political activities after world-

wide protests against the World Trade Organisation meeting in Seattle in 1999. In

response to biased reports in the Slovenian media that addressed the protesters as

“criminals”, a group of protesters walked the streets of Ljubljana in November 1999 and

carried banners claiming that “We are the criminals!” The movement gained further

experience with

smaller actions and performances (in Interspar, a group of women activists ‘advertised’ Heidersil; a new washing powder that cleans historic stains and contains ‘adolfils’), with solidarity and group actions (for example, on the International Day of Disabled Persons), with constant resistance to police harassment in ACC Metelkova mesto, by participating in Prague protests and with raising attention to state violence (Zadnikar, 2004:15).

In order to coordinate the network, UZI (Urad za intervencije or Bureau of

Interventions) was founded. The bureau was a fictional organization with fictional

headquarters, leadership and members; it consisted of a series of meetings where

individual activists and self-organized groups learnt how to communicate and organize in

anti-authoritarian ways. Women and feminists who took part in these meetings politicized

gender and sexuality in relation to many other issues, including violations of women’s

sexual autonomy and reproductive choices, poverty and the discriminatory labor market,

invisibility of marginalized and victimized people, privatization of public spaces and

right-wing reinterpretations of recent history. They expressed their identity and politics

through relatively explicit feminist terminology and mainly used street protest as their

tactic.

On March 8th 2001, Ženska sekcija Urada za intervencije (Women’s Section of

Bureau of Interventions), consisting of two small activist groups, temporarily squatted

cosmetics and women’s clothing department stores in the centre of Ljubljana. They

addressed the general commercialization of life and the repressive nature of private

spaces reserved exclusively for consumption. They danced among the bewildered

customers and shop assistants, and spread out somewhat confusing flyers (depicting a

Barbie doll with a mobile phone) that read:

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The International Women’s Day might make you worry about exactly what it is that makes you a woman. Is it your man? Your child? (…) The contents of your shopping bag? Your high heels? (…) The way you hold your cigarette? All of this is important. (It really doesn’t matter.) You are important.

When security staff threatened them with police intervention, the groups continued the

action in front of the stores – on public grounds. One group read the manifesto

AlieNation: The Map of Despair written by the U.S. collective CrimethInc., demanding

the creation of public spaces where “we can let our bodies and minds run free” as

opposed to

control that is exerted over us automatically by the spaces we live and move in. We go through certain rituals in our lives—work, ‘leisure’, consumption, submission—because the world we live in is designed for these alone. (…) All the spaces we travel in have pre-set meanings, and all it takes to keep us going through the same motions is to keep us moving along the same paths (CrimethInc. Ex-workers’ Collective, 2001: online).

The second group read excerpts from Virginia Woolf’s A Room of One’s Own. On the

same day, Nada Hass (“nada” means “nothing” in Spanish and “hass” means “hate” in

German), an improvised all-female activist choir, performed at Klub Gromka in ACC

Metelkova mesto. Dressed up as cleaners and housekeepers, they sang: “Let’s set things

straight with our past, let’s wipe away the borders, let’s make our relationships work and

wipe away the violence…” (Ozmec, 2001: 14). Nada Hass was also a fictional public

relations personality invented in order to “avoid exposure of individual activists and

avoid media production of ‘leaders’ (…) Nada Hass did many phone interviews but never

appeared on television. Many were disturbed by Nada’s combination of playfulness,

irony, performance and political issues” (Zadnikar, 2004:16).

The oppositional knowledge listed in this metaphorical feminist-queer textbook is

site-specific as it can only exist and renew itself on the streets. It cannot be transferred to

another medium – the least of all into a textbook since graffiti and street actions are

primarily physical and anonymous acts of resistance. Their reclaiming of public spaces

has the potential of diverting attention from the violence of advertisement to unprofitable

yet crucial issues. Street actions and graffiti also create the possibility of encounters in

urban settings which have been, in absence of “sustainable planning”, deprived of public

meeting places. Individual slogans and actions addressed specific issues, and activists

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sought the comfort of the night and anonymity exactly because they wanted to avoid

confrontations with the law and possibly also confrontations with their political

opponents. The undeniable and irreplaceable element of this type of street activism is the

experience of physical vulnerability and exposure which, paradoxically, strengthens the

activists.

From a feminist perspective this type of exposure has additional meanings

inscribed: through it, women do not only reclaim the streets but also their bodies, their

knowledge and history. And they have no choice: they must be rebellious as long as they

are oppressed. Or, to rephrase the point: the actions and alliances described in this

chapter, these counterpublics-in-progress, suggest that small feminist, lesbian, queer or

women’s groups can come up with tactical and constructive critique. They suggest that

one of the many places where we can start rethinking and practicing feminism in relation

to struggles for social justice is – the street.

6.3. (In)visibility of Potential Counterpublics

These examples demonstrate that feminist-queer ideas in Slovenia have indeed “spread

throughout the social body”. Yet, it could be easily argued that feminist political

initiatives are, when viewed only from the perspective of their external function, often

ineffective due to their rare and provisional nature. Even though collaborations between

academic, non-governmental and grassroots groups exist today, they are very vulnerable

because they form only in response to particular cases of discrimination or hatred and

usually disband when the immediate threat is over – or when specialized political groups

take over the case. This defensive position is one of the reasons for feminists’ perceived

political/public invisibility. However, as mentioned, the temporary and provisional nature

of cooperative actions reflects other problems that are specific for feminists from

postsocialist countries even though they partly coincide with problems of Western

feminisms: the reluctance to identify and be recognized as feminists due to general

antifeminism and the stigmatization of feminism as a separatist and misandrist ideology;

the reluctance to actively participate in collectively and voluntarily-run political, cultural

and artistic non-profit projects due to the increasing value attributed to individualism and

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consumerism; and the general lack of solidarity, reflected also in feminist and women’s

groups reluctance to seek potential allies in other minorities’ groups – and vice versa.

Of course, this reasoning is based on an implicit idea of how feminist organizing

should be structured. Its insistence on collective organizing is reductive and hinders one’s

ability to recognize individual forms of feminist-queer activism that without doubt exist. I

argue that in the current political circumstance, collective and autonomous organizing

makes tactical sense since it has the ability to open up new counterpublic spaces where

feminist issues can be discussed and strategies of action can be planned. Both Nancy

Fraser’s theorization of counterpublics and Mary Pratt’s concept of a “contact zone”

(1992) – as the site where feminists and queers can meet, interact, negotiate and

cooperate – allows me to expand the notion of physical space to a discursive one; to the

study of the many alliances and co-operations that can be formed between individuals

and groups on a local, regional and international scale. I believe that as long as these

public spaces cannot be taken for granted, the need for collective feminist action remains

important.

I also believe that the relative invisibility of feminist initiatives in Slovenia today

is the reason why a feminist and lesbian “oppositional imagined community” with “the

potential to build alliances and collaborations across divisive boundaries” (Mohanty,

1991: 196) of identity in non-hierarchical ways and with the desire to resist persistent and

systemic forms of domination is, at this stage, still very vulnerable and loose. In fact, the

term “community” suggests the kind of permanence of activities and alliances that cannot

be seen in Ljubljana. Nevertheless, the existing groups, initiatives and alliances are

important agents of both continuity and change within the very fragmented feminist-

queer map of Ljubljana.

Mohanty’s political rather than essentialist definition of community recognizes

the possibility of strategic and temporary cultural-political alliances that define women's,

feminist and queer festivals both as physical and discursive points of convergence or

counterpublics for people who wish to define their own forms of cultural-political

participation and resistance. Writer and lesbian activist Suzana Tratnik, who collaborated

with Rdeče zore from 2000 to 2007 (as part of lesbian Club Monokel), claims that the

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festival’s declared politics of space (re)claiming were – and remain – very “real” and

important: Because of Rdeče zore, people started talking about feminism or, actually, feminisms again. For a long time, this was not the case, especially after Ženski center [Metelkova Women’s Center] died away. (…) Because the feminist scene from the 1980s partitioned and got specialized – some focused on violence against women, others on Women’s Studies, etc. – there were no events, no public spaces, no gatherings. And that was missing.

Yet, as other interviewees suggested, the successful creation of a counterpublic feminist-

queer space is only the first step on the long way to achieve the kind of network

intersections, horizontal solidarity and continuity necessary for establishing a feminist-

queer counterpublic. At most, they would refer to the present state of affairs as a “local

scene” which is limited to Ljubljana.

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7. Feminist and Queer Festival Rdeče zore: A Case Study

This chapter is focused on several aspects of Rdeče zore which need to be discussed in

order to contextualize my focus on the festival as a (potential) counterpublic. The first

part addresses the reasons why its founders decided to organize a women’s festival in

2000. The following part explains the festivals’ title references and relates them to the

self-defined and desired aims of the organizers. Since the concept of the festival changes

over the years, I pay attention to several rearticulations of Rdeče zore’s general idea,

most obviously represented in the change of terminology used to describe the festival. I

also link the conceptual development from a “women’s” to a “feminist and queer”

festival to Rdeče zore’s growing international network of allies and co-workers. The

ways in which this shift influenced the organizers’ understanding of Rdeče zore as a

(potential) counterpublic is discussed in the chapter about ACC Metelkova mesto and its

cultural politics of spatial justice. Internationally, the perceived political significance of

the festival is discussed in relation to the characteristics of Ladyfests in Western Europe

and women’s, feminist and queer festivals in the region of former Yugoslavia. Since the

festival is embedded in the local and international context simultaneously, I discuss both

frames of reference in the same chapter. The final chapter, based on excerpts taken from

my interviews with Rdeče zore organizers, co-organizers and volunteers discusses all

issues mentioned above from the perspective of feminist political theory. Specifically, I

reconsider Nancy Fraser’s claim that the emancipatory potential of feminist-queer

counterpublics is to be found in the dialectics of their internal and external function from

the perspective of Rdeče zore festival as it was experienced and perceived by my

seventeen interviewees – and myself.

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7.1. The Launch

According to Nataša Serec (KUD Mreža), one of the few founding organizers still

involved in Rdeče zore, she and Dragana Rajković (at the time a member of lesbian-

feminist group Kasandra) came up with the idea of organizing a festival after several

discussions in which they

realized that in Metelkova – that was before 2000 – all key positions were occupied by girls, women (…), and we, the women in Metelkova, were working in solidarity with each other. We were prepared to work for free and were dedicated, willing to keep this place since, at the time, its fate was still very uncertain. (…) On the other hand, we noticed that when the journalists came and there was an opportunity to boast with our efforts, men appeared first, our colleagues, who were more keen on this kind of exposure than we were. Ok, it was also our own fault since we never wanted to put ourselves in the forefront, like a kind of funk or something. (…) Well, in order to abandon our invisibility we came to the idea of a festival that would give us the possibility to show and affirm our abilities as organizers, as Metelkova activists, and also as artists. This was the basic idea that got us started.

The first edition of Rdeče zore involved women organizers, artists and activists from

ACC Metelkova mesto even though, according to Nataša, they wanted to reach a wider

audience and step out of the activist-squatter fortress of Metelkova. In her words, the

basic idea was to “bring feminist issues into public space, to discuss them”. Promotional

leaflets from 2000 list two more groups that were involved in the organization of the first

Rdeče zore: lesbian club Monokel (ŠKUC-LL) and the now defunct Women's Centre,

both located in Metelkova. Many women played several roles at once. For example,

sculptress Urša Toman participated both as an artist and organizer. Similarly, Urška

Merc, at the time a member of the Women's Centre, remembers that she “simply helped”

with whatever work had to be done. She adds that being part of the Women’s Centre

“went hand in hand” with participating in the festival, thus suggesting that the festival

was organized as a joint effort of all women in Metelkova who wanted to “abandon their

invisibility”.

Jadranka Ljubičič (curator of Alkatraz Gallery, member of association KUD

Mreža and another Rdeče zore organizer who has been part of the team since 2000)

stipulated that the “spark that gave birth to the festival” would not have happened without

“the important presence of a group of lesbian activists who contributed a different kind of

program to Metelkova”. She continued to say that it was difficult to create a space where

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women artists, activists and organizers could learn to work with each other – and deal

with the conflicts arising from their first joint effort – in an environment that was

politically progressive yet not necessarily supportive of their initiative:

It was crucial that the fest and the pre-fest preparations were organized by a team of people who hung out together (…). As an organizer, you developed some sort of sensitivity (…), you became more, let’s put it this way, tolerant towards certain things within the team while earlier you… you did not have this experience, you did not know how to react, how to turn it into something useful.

In other words, bringing “feminist issues into public space” presupposed the creation of a

functioning collective of women organizers, activists and artists who, at least at the very

beginning, were not necessarily comfortable with the idea of working in gender-specific

groups due to their unpopularity. Like the City of Women festival team before it, the

Rdeče zore group had to counter the “fact that remained more or less hidden for long

decades: that rock (and later punk) was predominantly male and that, in addition, those

rockers were as sexist as the daddies they were opposing; that for women’s production,

being part of that culture was as hard as surviving in the mainstream culture (Lesničar

Pučko, 2007: 83).

None of my interviewees spoke directly about the reasons why they chose the

festival format as the most suitable for their purposes. However, when asked what they

found most memorable about the festival, the large majority spoke about festive

sociability or “the great feeling”, “incredible atmosphere”, “group energy”, “a

carnivalesque feeling that anything is possible” and “great conversations” that gave them

“brain food” for future work, therefore indirectly confirming that they chose to organize a

festival (rather than a series of discussions or workshops, for example) because it created

a highly interactive public space that was supportive of their feminist or/and lesbian

identity – and fun! Once Rdeče zore’s internal function was fulfilled, it also became

possible to discuss, create and present feminist art, activism and theory in a public

setting.

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7. 2. Title References

The title “Rdeče zore” was chosen by Dragana Rajković and Nataša Serec following one

of their discussions about women’s activism, the strategic use of political violence and

the militant women’s group Rote Zora from Germany. Rote Zora detonated their first

bomb in 1974 at the Federal Constitutional Court in Karlsruhe the day after it confirmed

the infamous “Paragraph 218” which limited access to abortion. In Rote Zora’s view,

state repression of women’s fundamental right to self-determination demanded a radical

political opposition which they carried out through a politics of property damage. Oliver

Ressler, the director of art video Rote Zora (2000) shown at Rdeče zore festival in 2003,

interviewed Rote Zora member Corinna Kawaters who said that it was their principle to

avoid injuring anyone. In Oliver Tolmein’s words, they were an “armed group who,

however, battled often enough with the typewriter” (Ressler, 2000: online). The group

collaborated with Revolutionäre Zellen and fought against atomic, genetic and

reproductive technologies, targeting companies such as Bayer, Siemens, Schering and

Nixdorf as well as research institutes and the property owned by traffickers of women.

The group took its name from red-haired Zora, the penniless heroine of the youth

novel Die rote Zora und ihre Bande (1941) where Croatian children orphaned by the war

realize that they can only defy social injustice by sticking together. The novel was written

by an exiled German writer of Jewish descent called Kurt Kläber under the pseudonym

Kurt Held. Kurt was a political immigrant of the Nazi era. As a communist, he had to

oblige the rule of creative silence even during his Swiss exile. After Stalin's deal with

Hitler, Kurt abandoned communism as a betrayed ideology but kept his anarchist ideals.

Red-haired Zora and her company of orphaned misfits personify those very ideals. The

guerrilla group Rote Zora chose this name because

it seems to be a male privilege to build gangs or to act outside the law. Yet particularly because girls and women are strangled by thousands of personal and political chains this should make us masses of ‘bandits’ fighting for our freedom, our dignity, and our humanity. Law and order are fundamentally against us, even if we have hardly achieved any rights and have to fight for them daily. Radical women's struggles and loyalty to the law – there is no way they go together! (Star, 2002: 101).

Rdeče zore festival never advocated or used political violence. However, in their

explanation of the festival’s name, the organizers made explicit links to both the guerrilla

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group and Kläber’s novel. On their website, they wrote that they support Rote Zora’s

belief that “the struggle for women's rights is undone, that it goes hand in hand with

struggles for social justice, and that we cannot be contended with reformist politics”

(Rdeče zore, 2010: online).

A literal translation of “die rote Zora” from German to English would read as “the

red Zora”. In Slovene, “zora” also means “dawn” (“zore” is the plural version), which is

why the festival organizers chose to translate the name to English as Red Dawns, not as

Red Zora. By preferring the figurative meaning to the literal translation, the festival title

acquires an additional dimension, one that leaves space for those interpretations that are

not connected to already existing references.21 In Slovene, the festival title can be

associated with a socialist (“red”) future (“dawn”) or “the promise of a better tomorrow –

for everyone” (Rdeče zore, 2003: online). The imagery used to promote the festival on

posters, leaflets, T-shirts and other merchandize changes between festival editions, but

relies on red and black as their representative colors – colors that are traditionally

associated with anarcho-syndicalism.

The first Rdeče zore poster from 2000 depicted three smashed kaki fruits

(persimmons), and a spoon on a white round plate. The picture was taken from a bird’s-

eye view and had a fluid quality similar to (menstrual) blood. The outlines of the image

were reminiscent of the woman symbol that was also reproduced underneath the image,

defining Rdeče zore as a “festival of ♀ production”. The historization or retrospective

conceptualization of the first festival edition is evident from the disparity between the

oral and written history of Rdeče zore. When interviewed, both Jadranka Ljubičič and

Nataša Serec said that the initial idea was to support “young and emerging women artists

from Metelkova”. While women artists stationed in ACC Metelkova mesto could be

generally described as “young” and “emerging” it would be an exaggeration to say that

these artists, following the festival’s self-description, were “expressing their creativity in

self-organized ways, capturing the do-it-yourself ethic of constructive rebellion against

capitalist consumption of our voices” (ibid.). In 2000, the festival did not – and could not

21 It is also interesting to note that Die rote Zora und ihre Bande was never translated to Slovene and consequently very few people in Slovenia know about it. More people know the depoliticized television series from 1979 and the 2008 film version. However, the main reference for people familiar with the history of radical left-wing activism in Germany remains the urban guerrilla group Rote Zora.

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– include only politically challenging artists. On the contrary, Nataša Serec commented

that ten years ago, women musicians and other artists were generally hard to find, “that is

why we, despite our wishes, hosted women artists regardless of the concepts they stood

for. We also couldn’t afford to choose those artists that dealt with specific issues. The

first five years were really difficult.” However, the history of the festival, written

retrospectively, does capture the counterpublic aspect of the first festival edition well by

claiming that Rdeče zore’s declared goal was to “celebrate our lives and redefine public

space in order to make it accessible for the creativity and socializing of women on our

own terms: in a non-hierarchical, non-exploitative and anti-capitalistic manner” (Rdeče

zore, 2010: online).

7.3. A History of Rearticulations

The concept of the festival has shifted over the years despite the organizer’s insistence

that “this is a festival without a concept” since “concepts are expensive. And spoiled – it's

so difficult to please them!” (Rdeče zore, 2005: online). This half-joking statement from

2005 was explained by Rdeče zore co-organizer and designer Anna Ehrlemark after the

ninth festival edition in an article entitled “What’s Wrong with Rdeče zore?” She began

by mentioning composer, activist and organizer Reni Hofmüller (Austria), one of Rdeče

zore’s 2008 guests who spoke at the presentation of the New Feminism: Queer and

Networking Conditions anthology.

She said that we should think history (including the present) like a patchwork of mutually excluding truths. ‘Cyberfeminism simply does not exist. And yet, there is no doubt that something that could be called cyberfeminism exists.’ Festivals like ours always face the risk that some visitors and participants are going to wish to find something that would resemble a manifesto, a position which would be able to merge our efforts into a unified resolution. There is no such thing. A lot of work, time and space were given to artists, activists, theoreticians and audience members who have something to say (…) beause we are convinced that they are important (…). And that’s the trick: they concern you whether you like it or not. Disagreements are there to stay since any other position on our side would be forcing our interpretation to everybody else. And, of course, we don’t agree with that (Ehrlemark, 2008: 25).

Rdeče zore’s collectively-signed introductory texts read as manifestoes that frequently

address the playfulness of festive sociability. The conceptual changes or rearticulations of

the festival’s general idea can be observed in those same texts; in the terminology that

was used at different points in time to describe the program. The shift from a “women’s”

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to a “feminist and queer” festival was, in Nataša Serec’s view, “a natural development”

related to the organizers’s personal growth or the process of becoming feminists: “We did

not call ourselves ‘a feminist festival’ until we knew what it means – and learnt how to

explain to others what we mean by it. We didn’t do it because that’s what our scene is

about – we don't have a scene”. Her implict and somewhat generalized comparison

refered to

what sometimes happens with women’s festivals or especially with anarcho-feminist festivals, also with Ladyfests; that since they have a scene, for example, a feminist anti-fascist scene, they always come up with the same old slogans. (…) If they would call their festivals ‘feminist’ – I’m not sure if they would know why they did it. But there, in larger European cities, things are different because they have strong scenes.

Ironically, Rdeče zore’s conceptual development from a “women’s” to a “feminist and

queer” festival was encouraged by their gradual inclusion in the international network of

similar initiatives in Western Europe and the region of former Yugoslavia. Another

paradox is that while the organizers claimed that their festival was “marginal (…) even

though we’re talking Paris and (…) even Amsterdam and Prule!” (Rdeče zore, 2005:

online), Rdeče zore’s local visibility and popularity gradually grew beyond Metelkova’s

walls. They managed to reach a wider audience and gain recognition in Slovene

independent and, surprisingly, also mainstream media, thus becoming a local reference

point for contemporary art and activism from a feminist and/or queer point of view. At

the same time, the statement about their supposed “marginality” has to be read in relation

to the festival’s professional “big sister”, International Contemporary Art Festival City of

Women.

Until 2006, the organizers called Rdeče zore “a women's pocket festival” which

supports the “creativity, work and socializing” of “female artists and activists” who

question stereotypical representations of femininity and masculinity (Rdeče zore, 2006:

online). They insisted on promoting “women’s art” and “women’s organizing” until the

seventh edition when Rdeče zore became an “international feminist and queer festival”

or “celebration” which aimed to support those artistic and activist “deviations from

heteronormative ‘destiny’” that oppose “every-day hatred, disrespect and exploitation of

people in any neoliberal society.”(Rdeče zore, 2007: online). The seventh festival edition

of Rdeče zore in 2006 was the first to use more explicit imagery. Instead of reusing the

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black and red image of a back trouser pocket (“pocket festival”) designed by

Phant&Puntza, the new graphic designer, Anna Ehrlemark, used Igor Hofbauer’s drawing

of a large rat biting into a Barbie doll. While the rat was adopted from ACC Metelkova

mesto’s logo, the Barbie doll was the first image to highlight the difference between

stereotypical and desired representations of femininity, thus finally moving away from

the – theoretically and practically – controversial subject of “women”. In the same way,

the 2006 introductory text was the first to invite “women, men and others” to join the

festival, the first to make an explicit link to the history of International Women’s Day, the

first to oppose “right-wing falsifications of history” and the first to make a tribute to

Rdeče zore’s local feminist and antifascist predecessors. The same text framed their

understanding of feminism and queer politics within a politics of recognition but also

tried to link them to the demand for redistribution of wealth:

Red Dawns is a queer festival that dares to ignore expectations, habits, concepts and roles which ‘fatally’ define us as either women or men (…). We urge you, our political allies, to rethink sexualities and genders in the context of your every-day fights for social justice (Rdeče zore, 2006: online).

The introduction to the eigth festival edition in 2007 repeated this political agenda. This

time, the promotional materials depicted a bird-woman-pilot flapping her wings in front

of the rising sun. The image can be read as a new contribution to Rdeče zore’s “red

thread” that can be traced at least to 2005 when the organizers self-ironically affirmed the

utopian nature of their calls for “space, the possibility and the power to create the

conditions worthy of (...) our imagination” by quoting “the cry of an unknown song by a

band no longer in existence: ‘When we move it's a movement!’” (Rdeče zore, 2005:

online). In 2008, the introductory text was more specific, related to the program content

and the international feminist-queer network it became part of. The text addressed the

desire to “enable connections between art and activism, activism and theory, theory and

art”; the hope that practical skills and knowledge gained at the festival would continue to

circulate after the festival; the hope that friendships made at Rdeče zore would last; and

the willingness to

poke the sores that hurt; those caused by the personified fist of patriarchal, falogocentric and heteronormative (in short, too common) violence against women, children and men who are not ‘manly enough’ (Rdeče zore: 2008: online).

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The 2008 festival edition was supported financially by EYFA, an organization

based in Amsterdam which connected Amsterdam (Eclectic Tech Carnival), Graz

([prologue]) and Ljubljana (KUD Mreža) with a project entitled Trilogy: Women

Crossing Communities. This project questioned the conditions of work for European

women who advocate, employ and develop contemporary theory, art and activism as

community-building practices. While the Graz-based symposium, exhibition and journal

[prologue] III focused on performative strategies of resistance and Rdeče zore dealt with

local feminist and queer politics in art, the main concern of nomadic Eclectic Tech

Carnival was women's use and development of information technologies in art and

activism. EYFA's financial support made it possible for female cybernauts, artists,

activists and theoreticians from an array of European countries to meet repeatedly and in

person. As such, it provided the necessary material conditions for the development of

creative transnational collaborations. Similarily, the 2008 Rdeče zore program focused on

different techniques of knowledge production and exchange:

so that, when the caravan of artists, activists, and theoreticians is going to leave town, we won’t be left with unforgettable memories and broken hearts alone, but with something more… palpable. For instance, with the open code programming knowledge of the The GenderChangers collective, the auto-repair skills offered by Ksenija Glavač, the burn-out prevention techniques taught by Belgrade’s Women at Work, and the viewpoints of no less than sixty feminists who confront global capitalism in the book New Feminisms: Queer and Networking Conditions (Rdeče zore, 2008: online).

Commenting on the mechanisms of exclusion that limit transnational mobility of people

and free exchange of knowledge, the organizers added that

no doubt, we will also be left with another girl in love from this or that other, starless Europe. She will try hard to persuade Slovenian authorities that it’s not the country she fell in love with, but that she’s prepared to do a lot (marry, register, whatever they want) to stay with the woman, man, the beloved and wonderful being of her choice (ibid.)

The ninth Rdeče zore festival was a profuse event, organized by KUD Mreža and ten

local co-organizing groups, assisted by two EYFA members and fifteen volunteers. The

fifty workshop moderators, feminist theoreticians, historians, writers, storytellers,

performers, visual artists, dancers, comedians, musicians, and other participants were

joined by fifteen Trilogy artists, journalists, media activists and philosophers who made a

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considerable contribution to Rdeče zore’s program. The festival celebrated creativity and

work-in-process rather than the production of objects as a motivating approach to

collaborative work and active audience participation. Noha Ramadan's workshop Body as

the Site of Action and the resulting street action was, in this sense, most memorable.22

Rdeče zore therefore opened possibilities and offered an inclusive environment

for exercising the right of women to expression, to show, perform, disseminate, and share

their ideas, problems, creativity and care. Participants met each other, saw each other's

work and ideas, and discussed future co-operations. The audience was exposed to new

art, contemporary feminist politics and moreover, had the possibility to join the

workshops, discussions, and street action. The strong feeling of solidarity was stipulated

by the willingness of guests and volunteers to help each other in creating this unique

transnational community of female artists, activists and theoreticians. On the tenth

anniversary in 2009, the organizers described the festival as one that deals with “the

inevitable contradictions that arise from the desire to politicize art and aestheticize

politics” (Rdeče zore, 2009: online). In accord with their tradition of combining

pragmatic calls for a festive counterpublic with a desire for structural change, the

organizers invited the audience to join Rdeče zore’s “utopian dance on the slippery edge

of a most certainly real world of binaries...” (ibid.)

22 “Noha spoke about the necessity of moving beyond activism based on slogans and banners as they tend to petrify subject positions instead of trying to subvert the accepted logic and status quo. At the workshop, Noha showed examples of actions based on what she calls ‘the revolutionary need to liberate our bodies in public spaces’. She claimed that by transgressing the borders of what is perceived as acceptable behavior, we carry the potential to recognize moments of freedom and expand them to other contexts. The subsequent street action consisted of an unusually large number of affectionate same-sex couples who kept strolling across the city center bridge Tromostovje. Couples gradually began to exaggerate their body moves and stipulated the actions’ disturbing nature by walking too slow, walking backwards, lying on the street, kissing passionately... If the moment of freedom is really limited to your own perception, I would say that the culminating point of the action was its conclusion: the participants went to the sexist advertisement for women's underwear behind Hotel Union and took off their underwear in front of it. You have to try it sometime – the feeling is great!” (Ehrlemark, 2008: 25)

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7.4. Queering Rdeče zore

What – or whom – exactly did the festival queer once it changed its title description from

a “women’s festival” to a “feminist-queer festival”? Since most of the organizers are

young, left-wing, middle class, educated and ethnically Slovene straight women, this

change could suggest they were trying to open up the festive space – and themselves – to

a variety of other positions, most obviously lesbian and gay ones. Since Rdeče zore

started in 2000 as a co-operation between feminist and lesbian (feminist) groups, the

change – in this case – merely suggests an adjustment of terminology to the festival’s

reality in which lesbian and straight women (and recently, gay and straight men) co-

operate with each other. Suzana Tratnik, who collaborated with Rdeče zore from 2000 to

2007 as part of club Monokel, confirmed this. When asked whether she thinks the festival

has lived up to its declared “queer politics”, she said: “My feeling is that the festival was

queer before it started calling itself that, for example, we had trans quests earlier, so I

think the title ‘queer’ is completely appropriate. It’s not like you can measure it in

percentage”.

While most of my interviewees recognized the fact that queer theory and activism

developed within the (North American) gay and lesbian scene as a critical response to

assimilational tendencies of conservative and liberal activists who struggled for public

recognition on heteronormative terms, they also agreed that today queer politics can no

longer be equated solely with the struggle for the recognition of lesbian, gay, bisexual,

transsexual and other marginal sexual positions on their terms. Commenting on Mojca

Pišek’s article about “queer (non)identity”, published in a major weekly newspaper

(Pišek, 2009), Ana Jereb said that the aricle was “misleading” because it reduced the

thematic scope of queer theory and activism to gender identity, thus ignoring the wider

social context that could suggest that marginal gender and sexual positions are in a

structurally similar position to other marginal subjectivities: “In this way, people will get

the idea that queer is only about gays and lesbians. I think this equation misses the point.

It’s not about who you sleep with.” For Ana Jereb, queer politcs are about

the opening of wild possibilities. Because the term is so wide, so undefined, and so problematic – and I’m not saying that feminism isn’t like that – it offers many possibilities for our future views, different perspectives, for our self-critique: ‘Why do I

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think this way? Let’s turn it around; we are having a good time, but…’ It is the opportunity for self-critique, for permanent self-examinations.

Due to the terms’ scope, the “queering” element can be understood in several other ways.

For example, as an attempt to deconstruct, explode or abolish the institution of gender. In

theory, the queering of ethnically bounded women’s and feminist counterpublics should

enable the entry and acommodation of racialized subjects as well. When gendered,

racialized and other “marked” subjects enter the official public sphere, they are highly

visible. They mark it in a way that shows “that the white male body is the norm” (Puwar,

2004: 8). They do not have the right to occupy that space and are often perceived as

“aliens”, “invaders” or “trespassers” (1). When Nirmal Puwar wrote about the entry of

women and racialized subjects to the official public sphere, her book on political theory,

Space invaders: race, gender and bodies out of place (2004), clearly borrowed its title

from science fiction, thus suggesting that the new terms of coexistence are by no means

easy: “this is an encounter that causes disruption, necessitates negotiation and invites

complicity” (1). This type of queer politics would be closer to anarcho-syndicalism than

to lesbian and gay struggles for legal equality and public recognition.

However, a quick look at the ways in which the term “queer” is commony used

in Western Europe – and Slovenia – can problematize the above assertion by pointing out

that the commodification of queer politics is – in practice – often reduced to “an inner-

city clique discothèque”, as Anna Ehrlemark put it. And while in Ehrlemark’s view, “the

mission” of Rdeče zore is “to incorporate the queer concept into the mainstream

alternative culture [laughs], to make gay parties (…) feel more open”, for her, queer is

not – or shouldn’t be – only about partying. For Ana Jereb, queer politics are in danger of

being reduced to “the choice of clothes I’ll wear today, the things I’ll buy tomorrow (…),

narrowing everything to consumption”. On the other hand, Lidija Radojević’s article

about Rdeče zore, entitled “The Universalization of Struggle and Particular Obstacles, or

Between March 8th and A Thousand Tiny Sexes” (Radojević, 2007), addresses the danger

of understanding queer as an all-inclusive concept, a concept that can be stretched to

accommodate the needs of everyone who thinks of themselves as queer. For her, the

problem lies in the assumption that by “being queer”, you automatically become

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“subversive”, whereas in reality the proliferation of identity positions is – again – all too

easily reduced to appearances and lifestyle.

For Lidija, the introduction of a queer perspective to Rdeče zore’s program is

important because it “introduced a global trend and discourse to a local environment

where it is not known yet”. She continued to explain that

‘queer’ doesn’t have solid grounds. (…) All concepts are vague until they gain a solid foundation. Concepts can be tied into a local environment only when they are supported by a scene. By engaging with the concept, creating new practices, a new language – we don’t know how to translate the concept because we don’t have a scene. It takes time, work, and then the concept can grow by itself. Probably, it’s going to be different from the American version, for now, we are copy-pasting it, because it was developed there, but once it is planted in fertile grounds… I think it’s good that Rdeče zore grabbed it.

My objection to the use of the term queer in Rdeče zore’s title was, similarly to Jadranka

Ljubičič’s, that the festival lacks program items which addresss either coalition building

between different counterpublics or which address specific minority subjects, including

gays. Lidija replied by saying that

as a festival, you can't please everybody. You do what you are best at doing. The festival is open: it never refused to co-operate with anybody who wanted to do something or, it refused co-operation if the proposal was ideologically incompatible with the festival. Rdeče zore shouldn’t feel bad about not offering certain items to certain cultural consumers. It is the same with ‘queer’: what it means here is going to be defined by those people who engage with it. Until then, we can read other people’s literature.

Anna Ehrlemark agreed that

the definition of the festival is important from the pure definition point, that it says ‘feminist’ because that is what we aspire to. And we added ‘queer’ because of widening the scope (…). Queer is not so much connected to partying even if it’s such an applicable, such an extremely vague term. To me it does not only mean that we have an ambiguous sexuality – like we are sexual, not without any prefix – because that’s a way of seeing it that is only connected to sex, as in our porn program. For me it also means that you are including questions like (…) when we are talking about all the lonely male ‘gastarbajters’ [migrant workers] in Ljubljana. (…) It is the attempt to be as inclusive as possible, in a way also to be self-critical (…), a reminder to not conceive queerness in too narrow ways.

Rdeče zore’s anti-racist stand was also made explicit through many public statements and

program items, all of which linked the festivals’ struggle to the local antifascist women’s

organizing of the past and to contemporary antifascist groups. In 2010, Rdeče zore also

explicitly addressed the local – yet typically postsocialist – forms of exclusion which are

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based on ethnicity and class. The discussion “Politics of Identity and Mechanisms of

Exclusion: How to Fight against Intersecting Oppressions?” made explicit the

connections between diverse forms of discrimination. This discussion was organized in

co-operation with LesMigraS, an anti-violence and anti-discrimination group from

Berlin, and activists from the Ljubljana-based activist network Njetwork, based in Social

Center Rog. Njetwork is the only group that offers practical and legal help as well as

political support to male migrant workers in Slovenia. At the discussion, the question

‘Where are the female migrant workers in Slovenia?’ was posed but could not be replied.

The participants wondered whether the “queering” of their work in direction of

greater inclusiveness was going to demand new tactical approaches, possibly those that

move away from cultural activism. In addition, such queering is bound to produce

internal conflicts within the existing lesbian, gay and straight feminist alliances since

migrant women, mothers, women without papers and poor women in Slovenia face

completely different forms of discrimination and exclusion than the participants and

organizers of Rdeče zore. In fact, accusations of each others’ racism and sexism seem

inevitable in the long path to the kind of queering that would do justice to Rdeče zore’s

attempts to “redefine public space in order to make it accessible for creativity and

socializing (…) on our own terms: in a non-hierarchical, non-exploitative and anti-

capitalistic manner” (Rdeče zore, 2010: online).

The willingness to queer the festival’s agenda is visible from the organizers’

frequent attempts to redefine their political position. The 2009 festival introduction

stipulated that “rather than defining them once and for all, Red Dawns fest still prefers to

question the possible intersections between feminisms and queer politics” (Rdeče zore,

2009: online). In Anna Ehrlemark’s joking comment, this statement is a “blasphemy”

because Rdeče zore tries to “mix concepts which are not mixable”, because “nothing can

be both feminist and queer, both are like extremely wide and contradictionary concepts”.

And yet, according to Ehrlemark, the point of Rdeče zore is “not to create false

communities” but “about trying to raise the level of understanding or debate or conflict”:

Both in the local scene and with our foreign guests, we are always having internal conflicts between concepts where it becomes so obvious that queer is not the same thing in Amsterdam or Belgrade. (…) For me, these moments were always the best moments: when the internal conflicts started coming out under controlled circumstances, (…) when

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these idyllic feelings – ‘Oh, we are all from the same scene and we love each other!’ – start getting some cracks.

Similarly, visual artist and Rdeče zore co-organizer Slađana Mitrović said that for her,

the point is in the debates that resulted from my participation at the festival (…). It is essential that those debates happened. You have to start positioning youself within a defined context. I even think that reflection is worth more than the exhibition or performance itself.

For Urška Merc, another long-time Rdeče zore co-organizer and web mistress, the queer

dimension of the festival is important because “by introducing the term ‘queer’, the

discussions about which events can be included in the festival have changed, and that is

what keeps the festival going”. These statements demonstrate that the queering of Rdeče

zore also refers to a utopian dimension. In addition, questions like “Are you interested in

feminist struggles of the past – or those that are being fought right now? Do you think

about the future? Are you interested in the predictable and ‘real’ or that which you can

dream of?” (Rdeče zore, 2009: online) posed in the tenth festival introduction, speak

about a different understanding of history, one that “defies repeatability or generalization

and (…) welcomes the surprise of the future as it makes clear the specificities and

particularities, the events, of history” (Grosz, 2000: 1018).

This understanding is in direct contrast with the post-1968 tendencies in Europe

when declarations about “the death of utopia” and “the death of history” have changed

the meaning of utopia by increasing the feeling of its “impossibility and absurdity”

(Passerini, 2007: 297). In Memory and Utopia (2007), feminist historian Luisa Passerini

claims that in 1968, the “subjects of history were viewed as subjects of action and

knowledge as well as subjects of desire” (294). In other words, they were orientated

towards the future and demanded “the impossible” because they understood that “the

object of desire counts less that the state of desire” (295). In addition, the rise of

neoconservatism in Western Europe in the 1980s disqualified the very idea of a future,

different from the past and the present. In this setting, utopian imagination survived in the

form of a “nostalgia for resistance (…), orientated towards the past rather than the future,

a memory, rather than a source of hope” (299).

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7.5. Comparison with Ladyfests

The first Ladyfest took place in 2000 in Olympia, WA (U.S.). It grew out of the North

American riot grrrl movement of the 1990s which was mainly centered on music. Riot

grrrl bands such as Fifth Column, Bikini Kill, Bratmobile, Heavens to Betsy, The Third

Sex, Sleater-Kinney and lesbian queercore bands such as Team Dresch often addressed

issues such as rape, domestic abuse, sexuality and female empowerment. In addition to

maintaining a music scene, riot grrrl is also a subculture that became the flag-bearer of a

new type of DIY feminism. Ladyfest Olympia embraced a feminist agenda and labeled

itself a “nonprofit community-based event designed by and for women to showcase,

celebrate and encourage the artistic, organizational, and political work and talents of

women” (Chidgey, Reitsamer & Zobl, 2009: 6).

Since 2000, over two hundred Ladyfest events have taken place, spanning North

and South America, Europe, Asia and Australasia. The majority of local organizing teams

have adopted the organizational structure and the DIY politics of the first Ladyfest: they

are non-profit orientated, self-organized and self-financed. These festivals are organized

by volunteers, where the program of each festival edition is agreed upon by the

organizing collective. “Ladyfests typically blend workshops, dance parties, gigs,

exhibitions, film screenings, discussions, and participatory activities” (ibid.). They

advocate a variety of artistic and political forms of expression, often deliberately refusing

to separate art from politics. As such, they are “a popular vehicle for young feminists and

their peers to agitate, celebrate and inform, with proceeds donated to women's causes and

groups” (ibid.).

I find it interesting that the organizers of the first Ladyfest and the organizers of

Rdeče zore were not aware of each other’s existence, and were not necessarily inspired

by the same ideas, yet the outcomes of their efforts have been very similar – despite the

significant differences in political and social contexts in which they operated. In her

review of the tenth Rdeče zore festival that took place in 2009, “an aging riot

grrrl/Ladyfest veteran” from the UK, Red Chidgey, noticed “many common ideals”

shared by Rdeče zore and Ladyfests, especially “those emerging from the Women's

Liberation Movement of the 70s and 80s: creating autonomous spaces which are women-

led” (Chidgey, 2009b: online). Her review also described the differences between today's

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generation of feminist organizers and those who were active in the 1980s. She noticed “a

much more queer, or gender fluid, understanding of sex roles and embodiments” and the

embracing of “a whole host of multi-media technologies, events and performances”

(ibid.). She also noticed several differences between Rdeče zore and Ladyfests, mainly in

regard to the histories and political circumstances which influenced the organizers:

While Ladyfests count their ground zero as emerging from Riot Grrrl, Red Dawns embraces a cross-generational audience and legacy (….); the connection into a bigger movement of social struggle, encapsulated in memory through things like names, songs, images, and (…) that proud stance of supposedly old-fashioned notions like ‘solidarity’” (ibid.)

She added that in contrast to other “third-wave-esque events” such as Ladyfest, the 2009

edition of Rdeče zore “had all the fun and festiness of other queer-feminist festivals, but

with none of the historical amnensia” (ibid.). Lidija Radojević, a Rdeče zore co-

organizer, agrees that “the amnesia in the West is a hundred times bigger. The difference

is that here people notice it and are still bothered by it because the cut was so drastic.”

The Rdeče zore co-organizers who had participated in Ladyfests in Western

Europe noticed other similarities and differences. Urška Merc has lived in Amsterdam

since 2006. Admitting that her criticism might result from a completely different level of

involvement with Rdeče zore on one hand and Ladyfest Amsterdam on the other, she said

that

Rdeče zore cannot be compared to Ladyfests even though people circulate between them. That’s because Rdeče zore tried to do something more than a music-based festival (…). I often feel that there is nothing subversive happening at Ladyfests. I’ve been to several, and some people were knitting, there were concerts, and that was it.

Tanja Škander, who is based in Berlin and has co-organized both Rdeče zore and

Lad.i.y.fest Berlin, was less ciritical about Ladyfests. She did say that while both festivals

are interested in networking and “people who have been at Rdeče zore now come to

Berlin, even though they are from Holland or Croatia or Serbia”, she felt that at Rdeče

zore, “the people who already knew each other were more willing to include newcomers

in their network, to expand it”. In addition, she noticed a difference in the quality of

“relationships, debating culture and the level of fun you have during the organization

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process” which – for her – was more pleasurable at Rdeče zore. When I said that the

festival preparations in Ljubljana did not include many specific debates or productive

conflicts, and that if that were the case, our “debating culture” might turn out to be

disastrous, Tanja said that I might be right, yet in Ljubljana “the clash was never so

strong that it would (…) actually stop us from organizing an event” because we could not

agree on a consensus.

Of course, these particular differences cannot be generalized. I mention them in

order to point out the difficulty of comparing very similar events, like Ladyfests and

Rdeče zore, which are set in very particular subcultural, cultural and political contexts. In

this sense, the comparison with festivals from the region of former Yugoslavia would be

more appropriate. As I return to in my conclusion, I refrained from doing so because I

lacked the time and the resources to do it properly. The issue of international networking

with both Western and South-Eastern European feminist-queer initiatives is addressed in

the final chapter but discussed from another perspective, from the paradox of the

internationally successful and locally less successful networking of Rdeče zore festival.

7. 6. Metelkova’s Cultural Politics of Space

While structuralist approaches stipulate that oppositional culture cannot have mobilizing

effects without using and depending on already existing political opportunity, Bratko

Bibič’s account of the Network for Metelkova’s struggle for space makes a different

point, arguing that in this case, the oppositional culture created a political opportunity

that did not “automatically” follow political transformations of the late 1980s – even if it

did rest on an atmosphere of joy and the belief that great innovations were possible after

the collapse of the Iron Curtain in 1989. It was in that context that the “real utopia” of the

Metelkova barracks conversion acquired the status of a pilot project; part of a

comprehensive initiative to demilitarize both the city of Ljubljana and Slovenia. As such,

the history of ACC Metekova mesto suggests that “counterhegemonic ideas and identities

come neither from outside the system nor from some free-floating oppositional

consciousness, but from long standing community institutions” (Polletta, 1999: 1).

In ACC Metelkova mesto, the existence of a countercultural space was a result of

deliberate political mobilization; tactical political struggle that was inseparable from the

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“cultural challenge” it presented. Philosopher, researcher, musician and composer Bratko

Bibič was one of many active members of Network for Metelkova whose operations

united several hundred group and individual actors from heterogeneous fields of art,

culture and socially engaged movements. In Noise from Metelkova, Bibič wrote that

“artistic and (sub)cultural practices have been one of the pillars (…) and driving force of

the ongoing project of the Metelkova army barracks conversion in all the stages of the

process” (Bibič, 2003: 2). In his view, the artistic and cultural nature of the alliance was

understandable given the fact that their struggle for space, including the lack of working

facilities such as art studios, was one of the crucial arenas of the struggle for “real”, not

only imaginary or discursive “space for the alternatives”, representing freedom in art,

culture, and politics of the 1980s in Ljubljana. However, Metelkova as a “real space” also

carried a symbolic dimension since it was seen as one of the key social initiatives in the

process of democratization and pluralization of the (urban, political, cultural) public in

Slovenia; as a “touchstone” for the potential of the so-called “civil society” to “maintain

democracy” as Slovenia and Ljubljana entered the “transitional” 1990s.

By resorting to radical destruction implied in the demolition of the buildings on

Metelkova (which had by a previous political decision of both the town and state

authorities been allocated to the Network for Metelkova), the first postsocialist municipal

authorities opted for a brutal and antagonistic advancement of their narrow ideological,

political and, in terms of real-estate, speculative interests. This also forced the activists to

take more radical action. They counter-seized and actively used (in terms of program and

production) the partly demolished buildings and courtyards, and “rebuilt” the premises in

ways that resisted the authorities’ ruthless abuse of power. Eventually, Metelkova mesto

became a nightmare of the municipal authorities in Ljubljana. It acquired and never quite

shook off the reputation of being dangerous, because it has never been under any

(in)direct control of the structures of authority and capital, and because it still strives to

remain an autonomous field of urban artistic, cultural, social, counterpublic life and

production.

The women’s groups that took part in the Network for Metelkova and resided in

Metelkova since 1993 built on the legacy of new social movements from the late 70s and

80s. As I mentioned previously, the “liberated territory” of Ljubljana was, and still is,

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fought for and maintained with the means of non-institutional artistic production –

understood as a tactical political tool. The network intersections within Metekova mesto23

were crucial for generating mobilizing identities because they provided weakly-tied

individuals with the access to previously unavailable ideas. The counterhegemonic nature

of these ideas also enabled them to defy social conventions, including gender-based

asymmetries. The fight for Metekova provided the involved activists of both sexes with

the network, skills and solidarity that helped them organize around a variety of issues. As

can be observed from Jadranka’s and Nataša’s account, for women activists, Metekova

also provided the space for questioning the gap between their male friends and activists’

egalitarian ethos and their sexist behaviour.

Generally speaking, Metelkova provided both the physical and conceptual space

within which activists were able to penetrate the prevailing common nonsense that keeps

most people passive in the face of injustice – and is thus still crucial for the formation of

identities and interests that precede (and empower) mobilization. The aims and

organizing structure of Rdeče zore are impossible to understand without this wider frame

of reference. After all, Jadranka Ljubičič recalls that Rdeče zore’s organizational

structure and program policy were “crucially marked” by ACC Metekova’s politics of

space. Metelkova, as a free space, provided a kind of anchor for the insistence and

development of cultural challenges that exploded previously existing structural

arrangements of public spaces.

23 Metelkova today consists of four large buildings which hold around fifty art studios; a graphic studio; galleries; four music venues; practice spaces; a recording studio; cafes; dance clubs; a reading room with radical literature; an anarchist info shop; a public kitchen; a queer cultural center and a heavy-metal bar.

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7.7. Rdeče zore’s Internal and External Function

This chapter is focused on my interviewees’ reflection on Rdeče zore’s internal function

and the ways in which this intersects with the festival’s public outreach. My analysis of

Rdeče zore as a potential counterpublic space, fulfilling both its internal and external

function, is based on my observations as a festival co-organizer, a festival

participant/witness and a feminist scholar. In the research process, my views have been

significantly influenced by the opinions expressed by the seventeen festival organizers

and volunteers interviewed in July 2009. I approached them with a working definition of

the festival’s internal and external function, reflected in my questions.

When I conducted my interviews, however, I did not want to pose questions that

would immediately reveal my theoretical interests and presuppositions. This is why my

introductory question addressed the associations and moments most remembered by the

interviewees. By far the most frequently received answer referred to sociability as the

festival’s highlight. For instance, Tanja Škander spoke of the “incredible atmosphere, the

great feeling, interesting people, great conversations”, Lidija Radojević talked about “a

kind of carnevalesque feeling in the air; both aggressive and totally transformative (….),

a feeling that everything is possible”, and Nataša Serec spoke of “a unique, abnormally

good time” that felt like “another world” because “our energies merged in such a way

that everything was heart-felt”.

Other memorable elements of Rdeče zore mentioned were: the festival’s “courage

in daring to cross the line” (Lidija Radojević), “the intertwining of art and politics”

(Urška Merc, Slađana Mitrović, Ana Grobler), “social and political engagement” (Anja

Kocman, Danaja Grešak), “increased visibility for lesbians, especially butch women and

trans people in Metelkova” (Anja Kocman, Vesna Vravnik, Suzana Tratnik), “new views

on social relations and feminist issues, coming from experience rather than books” (Tanja

Škander, Ana Jereb), “brain food” or “ideas for future work” (Ana Jereb) and “the

international networking, the transnational character of the festival” (Anja Kocman,

Danaja Grešak, Alja Bebar). The interviewees also mentioned specific events – and

people – who made a lasting impression.24 This short review of their answers suggests

24 For instance, Noha Ramadan’s workshop Body as the Site of Action and the collectively planned street action that followed, the 2008 street-renaming action, Liad Kantorowitz's lecture on representations of

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that the internal function of the festival was indeed fulfilled: Rdeče zore managed to

create a public space in which it is possible to generate a feminist or/and queer identity,

grounded in a consciousness of community and solidarity.

7.7.1. Horizontal and Inclusive Organization Policy

My interviewees frequently associated the positive festive atmosphere with a horizontal,

DIY and inclusive organizational policy that was also reflected in Rdeče zore’s treatment

of its guests. Co-organizer and member of Metelkova’s [A] Infoshop Daša Tepina liked

that the participants are never excluded from the work process. Rdeče zore fest often creates situations in which the guests (…) can become involved if they want to. I think this is crucial; to include people in the process because that makes the festival homely and warm, and that makes it easy to meet new people. (…) That is why people feel good.

Mirjana Frank, who volunteered for the first time during the tenth edition in 2009, added

that contrary to professional or larger festivals where artists often leave immediately after

their performance since their schedules are busy, Rdeče zore guests stay for several days

and in this way get the chance to get involved with the festival and learn about the

circumstances in which it operates. Jasmina Jerant, Urška Merc and Lidija Radojević

agreed that communication was also easier because most of the guests were

accommodated in the organizers’ and volunteers’ flats, rather than hotels.

Daša and Mirjana spoke of the “easy-going atmosphere” as a consequence of

Rdeče zore’s horizontal organizational structure. According to Mirjana, most festivals

always have a part of the audience and part of the organizational team who think they are I-don’t-know-who, important. There’s always an elite. Here, my feeling was that that isn’t the case. I thought that was cool.

In Ana Jereb’s opinion, the organizing group nourishes openness and actively seeks new,

inexperienced volunteers who “learn by doing”: once they get acquainted with the

festival, they are encouraged to take more responsibilities. Contrary to professional and

certain NGO endeavours, Ana “never felt that this is an institution in the sense that once

certain rules would be established, we’d have to stick to them even if they would no

social and political taboos in Middle-Eastern pornography, Svetlana Makarovič’s “anti-feminist” festival opening speech, Moon’s and Sacha Wittam’s performance Easy Jet Set, etc.

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longer serve any purpose”. It was interesting to notice that volunteers who joined Rdeče

zore recently could not name reasons for the festival’s inclusiveness and egalitarian

ethos. In their view, it seemed to come from “thin air” and they took it for granted. Those

interviewees who participated in other – both professional and grassroots – organizational

teams before joining Rdeče zore agreed that this is a rare, if not exceptional, quality.

From the perspective of long-time organizers whose responsibilities are significantly

larger, these qualities have been reached in the course of years through a demanding

process in which innovation was both necessary and actively sought. Nataša Serec said

that

we invented our own approaches to design, the process of program selection, team-building, seeking and involving volunteers, and then the international aspect, how we now find ourselves connected to an international circle.

Jadranka Ljubičič stipulated the team’s ability to delegate responsibilities without

framing the organization process in hierarchical ways. Ana Jereb, who participated in the

organizational team sporadically, said that since the festival is “a changing construction,

it was sometimes hard to catch up”. Yet, she added, that means that “a lot depends on

your own initiative. It’s not like somebody will ‘pull your sleeve’, except when it comes

to things that really have to be done and have been previously delegated to you”. Daša

Tepina added that even though the festival has been happening for a long time and

became fairly known in the process, it deliberately stayed non-profitable, informal and

largely based on voluntary work. In her view, voluntary work is the precondition for an

inclusive and horizontal structure and “a crucial concept for venues such as Metelkova”.

Jasmina Jerant also appreciated the fact that “no one works because of money” but

because of a “strong and deep dedication to women’s issues”. She added that “there is a

lot of respect among all of the individuals in the team – respect for each other. And also, I

would say, a lot of honesty and sincerity”.

In Mirjana Frank’s words, Rdeče zore’s size and consequent marginality remains

both an advantage and disadvantage. The advantage is that

we – if I can say ‘we’ – don’t give a fuck about pleasing the taste of the masses since the festival program targets a very specific audience; the purpose is not to chase away certain people but to focus on specific interests. Of course, the disadvantage is that the festival’s influence is limited. However, others are doing that. We might not be effective but we

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have a certain depth, recognized by people who are interested in these issues. And they do bring their friends along…

The negative side of refusing to professionalize the festival is that, as Ana Jereb and

Nataša Serec claimed, the organizers inevitably shift from one role to the other, and while

the merging of roles (you are part organizer, part member of the audience, sometimes

performer or moderator) does not cause conflicts per se, it does mean that people who are

more experienced inevitably end up being overburdened and lacking time to enjoy the

festival. On the other hand, if the festival was professionalized, Ana Jereb said that she

would no longer want to collaborate: “it would lose its charm; (…) if you want to

separate all functions, you quickly end up having a hierarchical structure”. Jadranka sees

the value of the festival in its “evolution which took a direction opposite from the usual

development of festivals in Ljubljana”. Rdeče zore “did not buy into the pretentious wish

for megalomania but (…) stayed a pocket-size festival”.

7.7.2. Conceptual Openness

I discussed Rdeče zore’s conceptual openness in the chapter about its history and its

rearticulation of politics and aims. While this rearticulation rests on a conscious decision,

not everybody in the team agrees about its benefits. Those who do, like Slađana Mitrović,

claim that contrary to other feminist art programs that are “often very strict, directed, cast

in concrete”, Rdeče zore is “open both thematically and politically”. Slađana claimed that

the festival “allows everybody to create their space of action. Sexuality and pornography”

– two issues that dominated the 2009 festival program – “are in themselves very

controversial and often cause quite a stir even between feminists, yet Rdeče zore has

shown that this kind of openness is an advantage”. In the same way, Anna Ehrlemark

“doesn’t mind that the festival is not perfectly conceptualized”. However, she says that

sometimes it can be difficult to watch something that you think is really really stupid with lots of people around you who know that you are one of the organizers of this event (…) The festival is me while the program is not me. There are often things that don’t correspond to my… I mean, I don’t have a problem with it…

In this statement, Ehrlemark confirms that the open approach is something she supports

even thought she finds it troublesome sometimes in terms of personal and artistic taste.

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The perceived openness of the festival is also a practical consequence of working

on a very limited budget. The organizing team constantly reinvents its fund-raising

strategies and relies on an array of sources: public money, private donations, benefit

parties and merchandize sales. Having a limited budget also forces the organizers to

apply the DIY ethos to a large number of festival activities and replace the lack of

funding with skill-sharing, knowledge exchange and material exchange of goods with

their counterpublic allies. All these practices increase the participatory and egalitarian

feeling within the team. Another consequence of operating on a low budget is that people

within the organizational team fluctuate and the program depends on the aesthetic and

political preferences of each year’s collective. For Ana Jereb, this is an advantage: If you leave, you open space for somebody else. I really like this because this is how the festival can keep up with political changes and keep itself from closing into a type of group that ‘knows how things ought to be done’ or ‘knows which issues are relevant’.

Ana Jereb addressed an additional advantage of openness when she spoke about the

experience of being in the same space with people whose complicated gender identity can

reveal a whole new world to you. She said that “you do not even have to talk to them”: it

is enough to observe and witness their “performance” since it goes beyond any context

you knew before meeting them; “they open your horizons, your thoughts”. Daša Tepina

claimed that Rdeče zore is “one of the best festivals in Metelkova” exactly because it

creates the opportunity where you can socialize with new and very different people”. Of

course, the experience of difference can be shocking: there is the standard stereotypical

perception of Rdeče zore organizers as “lezzies” (her gay friends asked Anja Kocman

why she bothers to helps “them”); the shock Anja herself experienced when she met “a

woman with a mustache” for the first time; the discomfort heterosexual male audience

members feel at a feminist-queer festival and the patronizing and ridiculing attitude to the

organizers and guests that follows; even the discomfort felt by lesbians who usually don’t

frequent non-lesbian venues – all these examples speak about the local political

importance and controversy of Rdeče zore as a feminist-queer counterpublic. In fact, they

suggest that these conceptually separate functions cannot be separated in practice.

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7.7.3. A “Different” Metelkova

So far I have argued that autonomous counterspaces such as ACC Metelkova mesto are

necessary for creating local and international feminist-queer network intersections

available for generating mobilizing identities. I have also argued that a space which

allows “withdrawal or regroupment” (Fraser, 1990: 68) has to be safe: supportive of

feminist, lesbian, trans, boi, butch, queer, gay and other minority identities of people who

visited the festival. This kind of public space makes it possible to meet new people,

discuss issues, articulate one’s political position in clearer ways, gain emotional support

and inspiration for future work and discuss artistic or political co-operative projects. In

my view, this dimension of the festival was – and remains – as important as its issue-

specific and publicly visible political, artistic, educational and intellectual production, or,

in Nancy Fraser’s words, its external function.

I asked my interviewees in what ways their experience of Metelkova changes

during the festival. I wanted to see whether they perceived Rdeče zore as an event

organized primarily for themselves by themselves, or as an event that had the potential to

open Metelkova for new collaborations and create a welcoming atmosphere for women,

femininist, gender-variant people, sexual minorities and their allies. Most of my

interviewees agreed that Metelkova did “feel different” during the festival. Their answers

could be divided between those who spoke from an “internal” perspective of involved

festival participants and those that tried to look at Rdeče zore’s feminist-queer

intervention from the “external” perspective of people who normally frequent Metelkova

and those clubs based in Metelkova which do not participate in the organization. Urška

Merc paid attention to both perspectives. From the outside, Metelkova becomes “more

international and it becomes a platform for the exposure to different forms of art”. From

the inside,

Rdeče zore connects several venues, meaning that it connects several groups and associations. From this point of view, the festival functions as a coalition, as an inclusive initiative which asks what are the common interests and standpoints of different associations and individuals in Metelkova. I can imagine it also functions as a completely counterproductive force, even a separatist one, when viewed from the perspective of those groups who are there for the profit, who are apolitical or not interested in feminism.

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Nataša Serec, whose work place is in Metelkova, said that during the festival she does not

communicate with “people of Metelkova”. “Not that I ignore them,” she explains, “its

just that I am in our ‘film’ and that is all that matters. I don’t want to hang out with them

when all the foreign guests are here and they are soon going to leave”. She continued to

say that she is puzzled about the way people in Metelkova perceive the festival since

“they never say anything, never comment on it”. She does not even know how people

from those clubs which do co-operate with the festival feel about it.

Rdeče zore fest is limited to specific Metelkova venues: the lesbian club, the gay

club, the galleries Alkatraz and Mizzart, the anarchist infoshop, the Youth Handicapped

Depriviledged club, and the clubs Gromka and Menza pri koritu. That leaves out a

number of other clubs, run by women, or by collectives of men and women. They are

mostly music-orientated and have never expressed an interest in collaborating with Rdeče

zore. Ana Jereb feels that even the clubs that do co-operate

merely offer the space which could easily be offered to another organizer or an apolitical event. The feeling that we are doing this together because it is important (…), because it’s about ideas and not only about having a good time, is not there. Even if Rdeče zore fest is about what Metelkova is supposed to be about. When I think of the reasons why the festival started, that most of the work was done – and still is done – by women, this lack of interest bothers me. If the festival used to be a Metelkova festival, it no longer is.

Within Menza pri koritu, the main festival venue where Nataša Serec organizes events

throughout the year, she does feel the difference:

It’s a completely different energy, all of a sudden, all these girls are there, and they hang out with each other. The boys are pushed aside, because for those four or five days, the girls don’t find them as interesting [laughs]. (…) You feel the difference when this atmosphere is brutally destroyed, like this year [2009], on Friday night at the party, when girls were dancing in the middle of the dance floor and then people who didn’t come to the festival started pushing in, people who came because it was Friday night. There were so many of them that the girls were pushed aside. They left for the balcony and the energy changed immediately. After that, it was like it normally is.

Similarly, Anna Ehrlemark claims that there is a difference, that Rdeče zore “definitely

turns the place upside down for a few days”. She attributes the difference to the fact that

there are more lesbian women present at venues they normally do not frequent, and to

“this core group of the festival that is very supportive of each other, in the mood for

dancing with each other, giving each other compliments and talking to each other”. Lidija

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Radojević began to define “normality” by asking: “if Metelkova is really so liberal and

open as we claim it to be, why do you, at the regular parties (…), never see two women

kissing? Why do you see it exclusively during Rdeče zore?” In her opinon, the festival is

provocative because it points out the fact that alternative places such as Metelkova are

tied into the dominant, sexist and heteronormative culture. “Metelkova is a really

chauvinist place,” she said:

All these boys are so paternalistic. Because we are, to speak in quotation marks, their girlfriends, their friends, even these boys cannot step out of their chauvinism which completely dominates our culture at all levels: from the lowest (…) to the highest, academic level. Everyone falls for it, even the alternative scene, Metelkova, including our enlightened, cool friends.

When asked whether the difference she felt during the festival came from the temporary

absence of chauvinism, she corrected me and replied:

No, I never said that chauvinism is absent; I said that more women and more feminists are present. Because we are in majority and the themes discussed are feminist. The chauvinism stays the same – it’s in all the jokes that come out after the second beer.

From a lesbian point of view, the festival increases the safety of those clubs in Metelkova

which are not specifically lesbian, gay or queer even though, on a declarative level, they

support sexual minorities. Suzana Tratnik said that for her, as a lesbian who would

normally frequent Monokel or Tiffany, Rdeče zore is an opportunity to visit other venues.

The festival has only recently – and deliberately – started to include program items that

are interesting for a gay audience. Since the female ensemble of Rdeče zore did not feel

competent to organize a program for gays, it started to co-operate with the program

coordinator of Tiffany, Jernej Škof in 2009, and with queer film enthusiast Dare Pejić in

2010.

The festival is also an opportunity to discuss feminist and queer issues in public.

Most of my interviewees attributed that to the increased presence of foreign guests who

are less burdended with local and highly gendered codes of behavior, who are there

because they are interested in networking and feminist-queer politics. Jasmina Jerant and

Jadranka Ljubičič paid attention to the local audience and noticed a change in its

structure. Jasmina noticed “established Slovenian intellectuals, academics, journalists and

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even politicians” who “mostly came for the panel discussion and lectures”. Jadranka

observed that, in general, the festival manages to create its own audience: artists who are

part of the program, activist groups who either help with the festival or come to party,

and the people they bring along because they are interested in the program. “That

absolutely changes the face of Metelkova”, she says, “Since there are less people who

come solely because Metelkova is an open space”. Jadranka also noticed a change in the

gender structure of the audience, highlighting the presence of “men who recognized a

certain qualitiy, and are no longer afraid to come to the festival, even though they know

they are going to be in minority”.

7.7.3. Limitations of Rdeče zore

However, many inteviewees experience the annual festive event as a strategic mistake or

limitation since it fails to provide the kind of continuity that is, as they unanimously

agreed, necessary for building a counterpublic. Whether they used the paradoxical term

“temporary community” (Anna Ehrlemark, Jadranka Ljubičič), the term “crossroad” or

“meeting point” (Anja Bebar), “network” (Tanja Škander), “entry point” (Daša Tepina),

“scene” (Lidija Radojević) or “organism” (Ana Grobler), none of the terms seemed

appropriate since they only increased the feeling that there is a lack of the kind of

feminist-queer counterpublic that would be able to intervene into the official public arena

in effective or visible ways. While Tanja Škander said that “during those three, four days,

some sort of community (…), a certain chemistry is created” which should not be

underestimated since it makes people who “cross the limits of heteronormativity” feel

“less strange” or “relatively normal”, my other interviewees were clearly frustrated by the

festivals’ formal boundaries.

Nataša Serec’s estimation of the festival’s potential was perhaps the most realistic

since she perceives the wish for continuity and greater impact as a “great goal that might

be too ambitious”. In her view, organizing a series of monthly or even weekly events that

would gradually build a permanent audience and include new people in the organization

process would already be a success. Lidija agreed that

the festival's mission – and I salute the idea of organizing regular events throughout the year, the idea of continuity – is to work here yet maintain its international connections since Ljubljana, not to mention Slovenia, definitely needs that sort of help.

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For Daša, the fact that Rdeče zore was more successful in maintaining transnational

collaborations than it was in addressing the local community is a paradox that calls for

extensive work on a local infrastructure, be it theoretical or action-orientated “in order to

be able to react to different types of problems, to join certain initiatives, and generally

become more visible in society”. Ana Jereb agrees that the festival is more international

than local. Because of this, its span is limited to “circles of people who already know

each other or share similar backgrounds”. Jadranka added that “both Metelkova and the

festival share one basic problem: that continuity is understood as the endurance and

insistence of certain people within it, and not as the passing of knowledge and creative

energy to new people”.

Contrary to Jadranka’s statement, new volunteers stipulated the fact that Rdeče

zore was surprisingly easy to join, suggesting that the festival team pays attention to the

participatory chances of each new individual and notices the extent to which they can get

involved without hierarchically prescribing their role. “If we look at temporality as the

circulation of people and ideas”, Jadranka reflects, then “the term ‘temporary

community’ does adequately describe Rdeče zore”. In Anna’s view, work for community

is rewarding regardless of how “temporary” or “permanent” the community in question

is. Slađana added that Rdeče zore

continues to play an important role as an explicit point of artistic, political or philosophic identification with feminist or queer perspectives. (…) If you accept this frame of reference, you have to accept the consequences since people are going to associate you with it, and in that sense, I think that continuity is of essential importance. It is a deliberate move away from universality as well as an idea that brought us together. (…) The bottom line is that these alternative spaces are developing strong and critical perspective on society. They are marginal and fabulous.”

In Slađana's view, the internal and external function of feminist-queer spaces again

becomes inseparable. Urška Merc, who views the discussion from her distant yet

comparable Amsterdam experience, adds that Rdeče zore is as effective and visible as

other counterpublic arenas since “Ljubljana lacks a wider social community. (…)

Whether you consider animal rights groups or workers’ organizations, there is a lack of

consciousness that in a wider context, we are all struggling for the same goal”. Similarly,

Vesna Vravnik recalls that when she first got involved in “the scene”, she believed that

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“marginal groups would be strong enough to beat the majority if they would join hands”.

“And yet,” she added, “everyone wants to go their own way and leave their signature”. In

this context, Nancy Fraser’s writing on the “absence of any credible overarching

emancipatory project despite the proliferation of fronts of struggle” and “a general

decoupling of the cultural politics of recognition from the social politics of redistribution”

(Naples, 2004: 1103-4), as features characteristic of the postsocialist condition, most

definitely rings a bell.

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8. Conclusion

According to my interviewees, festival sociability was the most important aspect of

Rdeče zore’s internal function. It was enabled by the festival’s conceptual openness, by

its growing local and international network, and by its horizontal, participatory, and DIY

organizational policy. In this way, Rdeče zore managed to temporarily blur the

distinctions between predefined social roles (audience, participant, organizer) and

allowed identification with Rdeče zore as a feminist-queer counterpublic or “temporary

community”. The second important aspect of Rdeče zore’s internal function was the

generation of productive conflicts and discussions, encouraged by the issue-specific

festival program and the heterogenous structure of the audience.

The external function or public outreach of Rdeče zore is directed towards other

local counterpublics as well as wider publics. The debates about queering Rdeče zore

suggest the need for building coalitions with other local counterpublics by discussing

each other’s needs and aims, and testing a variety of strategies which enable co-

operation. The latter highlights a crucial tactical approach to poignant issues in the

postsocialist condition where collective struggle is discouraged by increasing

individualism and where, in spite of the proliferation of fronts of struggle, there is an

aching absence of any credible overarching emancipatory project. My interviewees’

desire for visibility of feminist and queer issues suggests that in order to reach wider

publics, the annual festival format needs to be enriched with other forms of public

participation which would take place on a more regular basis and possibly step outside

Metelkova’s borders. I thus conclude that Rdeče zore’s internal and external functions are

inseparable and intertwined to the point where prioritizing one above the other would be

counterproductive. However, my research shows that an internally functional

counterpublic in no way presupposes a successful outreach. On the other hand, that

outreach is not possible without a preexisting counterpublic discourse and space.

I addressed many questions and provided fewer anwers. For example, the public

outreach of Rdeče zore festival should have been studied also from the festival

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audience’s point of view. A qualitative opinion poll, conducted during the festival would

have provided the necessary insights and made it possible for me to define the target

audience more specifically (by gender, class, age, etc.). Due to several limitations (short

research period, MA paper-length restrictions) I also had to abandon a more specific

review of local mainstream media responses to Rdeče zore’s activities. In the future, I

hope I am going to get the opportunity to research these views on Rdeče zore’s external

function. In addition, I would like to stipultate the transnational dimension of the festival

by paying more attention to its co-operation with Ladyfests from Western Europe and

especially with the women’s, feminist and queer festivals of the last decade that took

place in the region of former Yugoslavia.

This spatial and temporal frame of reference remains relevant for several reasons.

First, these festivals exist in a geopolitical territory whose political and cultural imagined

community had been almost completely destroyed fifteen years ago. Second, there have

been very deliberate efforts made by the festivals to learn more about forgotten local

women’s and feminist histories – cultural, political, social, intellectual, artistic ones – in

an attempt to see the possibility of drawing a women’s, feminist or even queer

transgenerational genealogy. Third, due to the impact of “nation-state-building”

discourses that encouraged historical amnesia and supported negative media

representations of feminisms after 1991, contemporary DIY festivals from the region

define their politics primarily in relation – and opposition – to contemporary local

academic and “NGO-ized” feminisms, rather that their local activist (and often forgotten)

precedents. In the future, I want to study the differences and similarities between the

festivals from the region to see which feminist and queer agendas are advocated as forms

of “new”, “third wave” or simply “their own”, contemporary feminism. I was forced to

narrow my focus to Rdeče zore festival only. In spite of that, I do hope that some of the

originally planned comparative aspects, essential for a more distant, but no less subjective

insight into “what it is we’re doing”, remains visible to the extent that the reader can

draw some of her or his own conclusions about this transnational yet geopolitically-

bounded feminist-queer “scene”.

My thesis has argued for the necessity of proliferating forms of public

participation in ways that do not prioritize traditionally privileged tactics above emerging

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ones. In this way, the example of Rdeče zore demonstrates the necessity of expanding

notions of the political and public beyond those prevalent in mainstream media and the

official public sphere in Slovenia. As such, the festival and my thesis are a relevant

contribution to the diversification of counterpublic feminist-queer discourses and a

critique of hegemonic discourse in postsocialist Slovenia, especially since they have

already managed to exclude the majority of population from decision-making processes

and reduced politics to a spectacle.

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9. Povzetek v slovenščini / Summary in Slovene

Magistrsko delo “'Ko se premaknemo, nastane gibanje!' Festival Rdeče zore kot

feministično-queerovska kontrajavnost” [“'When We Move, It’s a Movement!' Rdeče

Zore Festival as a Feminist-Queer Counterpublic] obravnava Mednarodni feministični in

queer festival Rdeče zore, ki od leta 2000 poteka v Avtonomnem kulturnem centru

Metelkova mesto v Ljubljani, kot primer feministično-queerovske kontrajavnosti (v

nastajanju).

Severnoameriška literarna teoretičarka Rita Felski in politična filozofinja Nancy

Fraser sta pojem feministične kontrajavnosti začeli razvijati v začetku devetdesetih.

Čeprav sta izhajali iz različnih feminističnih tradicij, prva iz kulturnega, druga iz

marksističnega feminizma, in čeprav sta koncept razvijali neodvisno druga od druge, je

bilo njuno razumevanje funkcij, ki jih opravljajo kontrajavnosti, podobno – predvsem

zato, ker sta izhajali iz kritik javne sfere, koncepta, ki ga je leta 1962 razvil nemški

sociolog Jürgen Habermas. Obe teoretičarki sta razlikovali med »notranjo« in »zunanjo«

funkcijo ženskih in feminističnih kontrajavnosti. Rite Felski je zapisala, da je notranja

funkcija ženskih kontrajavnosti namenjena »utrjevanju specifične družbenospolne

identitete, ki izhaja iz zavesti o skupnosti in medsebojne solidarnosti žensk« (Felski,

1989:168). Nancy Fraser se je raje osredotočila na feministične kontrajavnosti in v njih

videla »prostor za umik ali regrupacijo« (Fraser, 1990: 68). Po prvi interpretaciji zunanjo

funkcijo zaznamuje »iskanju izraznih sredstev, ki bodo celotno družbo prepričala o

veljavnosti feminističnih zahtev in politično udejstvovanje ter teoretska kritika, ki bosta

izzvala obstoječe strukture moči« (Felski, 1989: 168). Nancy Fraser je feministične

kontrajavnosti v tem smislu opisala kot »baze in vadbene prostore za agitatorsko

dejavnost, ki cilja na širšo publiko«, pri tem pa dodala, da lahko emancipacijski potencial

obeh funkcij najdemo v njuni dialektiki, kar pomeni, da mora kontrajavnost, če naj bo

prepoznana kot taka, izpolnjevati obe funkciji.

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Pri proučevanju notranjega in zunanjega vidika festivala Rdeče zore sem se

uvodoma oprla na delo Nancy Fraser, njene izsledke pa soočila z mnenji sedemnajstih

soorganizatork in prostovoljk, ki so leta 2009 sodelovale pri pripravi desetega festivala

Rdeče zore. Zanimalo me je, če festival dojemajo kot čustveno in intelektualno

vzpodbuden javni prostor, v katerem se lahko družijo in razpravljajo o umetnosti, teoriji

in politiki, ob tem pa preizprašujejo tudi vsebine in načela, ki jih same zagovarjajo kot

»feministične« ali »queerovske«. Ali menijo, da v tem diskurzivnem in fizičnem prostoru

obstaja možnost za razmislek o strateških odzivih na aktualno družbeno problematiko in s

tem prostor za invencijo? Ali je v okviru festivala sploh mogoče razpirati javne diskusije

o temah, ki so bile dotlej nevidne za širšo javnost, ali pa je za festivala vendarle bistvena

»notranjost«?

Moja vprašanja so se nanašala tudi na pogoje, katerim je bilo v desetletni

zgodovini festivala treba zadostiti, da so Rdeče zore nadaljevale s svojim delom kljub

negotovim finančnim razmeram in šovinizmu (posmeh, obtožbe o separatizmu ipd.), na

katerega so organizatorice posebej v prvih letih delovanja pogosto naletele na Metelkovi,

a tudi v mainstream medijih. V tem sklopu sem posebej izpostavila vprašanje, ali je bilo

za uspešno delovanje v okviru festivala, ki je krepil prepričanja in podpiral identitetne

»izbire« (feministične, lezbične, queerovske ipd.) organizatork, udeleženk in publike,

potrebno vedno znova doseči konsenz o konceptu in ciljih Rdečih zor, ali pa je bilo

(so)delovanje mogoče tudi brez njega. Na ta način sem se posredno dotaknila dveh

vprašanj, ki se zastavljata sociologom družbenih gibanj: najprej, ali je pogoj za delovanje

samoorganiziranih in polično opredeljenih skupin občutek pripadnosti ali za to

zadostujeta medsebojna solidarnost in zavest o skupnem cilju. In drugič, ali je uspešno

delovanje prav takšnih skupin pogojeno z obstojem fzičnih »prostorov svobode«

(Polletta, 1999) oziroma, kot pravimo v Ljubljani, »osvobojenih ozemelj«.

Na potrebo po sočasnem raziskovanju notranje in zunanje razsežnosti festivala me

je opozorila Gayatri Spivak, ki pravi, da je vsak ugovor ali upor obsojen na propad, če ni

vpet v skupnost, v kateri je najprej prepoznan kot tak (Spivak, 1988). Z zunanjega vidika

me je zato zanimal festivalov domet na treh ravneh: najprej, katere vsebine in kateri

načini predstavljanja festivalskega programa so bili intelektualno, umetniško in politično

vidni za širšo javnost, ki ni del feministične in queerovske »scene« v Sloveniji. Zatem,

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kdo spada v lokalno solidarnostno mrežo Rdečih zor, s katerimi kontrajavnostmi je

festival v preteklosti že sodeloval in s kom organizatorke niso imele stikov kljub politični

sorodnosti. V zvezi s tem me je zanimalo, kako intervjuvanke ocenjujejo svojo vpetost v

AKC Metelkova mesto, ki velja za eno najvidnejših križišč med različnimi

kontrajavnostmi v Sloveniji. Ker Rdeče zore sodelujejo tudi s sorodnimi festivali s

področja nekdanje Jugoslavije in zahodne Evrope, sem polje zanimanja razširila na

proučevanje tistih organizacijskih potez in vsebin, ki so pripomogle k festivalovi

vpletenost v »mednarodno sestavljanko sodobnih feminizmov, grajenih 'od spodaj

navzgor'« (Halberstam, 2005: 170); torej v mrežo pobud, ki po mnenju zahodnoevropskih

teoretičark predstavljajo poseben tok znotraj sodobnega feminizma »tretjega vala«

(Pilcher & Whelehan, 2004; Chidgey, Reitsamer & Zobl, 2009).

Magistrsko delo sestoji iz uvoda, v katerem predstavljam razloge, ki so me

napeljali k študiju tega primera, osnovna izhodišča, iz katerih sem izhajala pri zasnovi

same naloge, in sklop vprašanj, na katera sem v toku raziskave skušala odgovoriti (glej

zgoraj). Uvodu sledi poglavje z metodološkimi pojasnili. V njem sem v skladu s

feministično teorijo umeščene védnosti (Harding, 1991; Haraway, 1997) najprej

opredelila svoje stališče, ki izhaja iz prepleta treh različnih umeščenosti v raziskovalni

predmet: o Rdečih zorah sem pisala z vidika feministične teoretičarke, z vidika

soorganizatorke festivala in z vidika udeleženke ali priče, ki od leta 2002 budno spremlja

festivalsko dogajanje. V nadaljevanju poglavja sem orisala splošne značilnosti

sociološkega raziskovalnega dela, ki črpa iz ustnih virov (poleti 2009 sem opravila

sedemnajst kvalitativnih ustnih intervjujev s soorganizatorkami in prostovoljkami, ki

snujejo Rdeče zore) in opozorila na posebnosti, ki izhajajo iz moje specifične umestitve v

raziskovalni predmet. V sklepnem delu sem svoj pristop oprla na novi historicizem in

Foucaultovo (1998) razumevanje genealoške metode raziskovanja, ki je še posebej

primerna za zgodovinjenje marginaliziranih družbenih pobud, skupin in gibanj, kamor

festival Rdeče zore (vred z ostalimi sodobnimi neodvisnimi feminističnimi in

queerovskimi iniciativami v Sloveniji) nedvomno spada.

V nadaljevanju sem obravnavala teoretske vire, iz katerih sem črpala v procesu

raziskovanja, začenši s kulturno geografijo in materialističnimi pogledi na družbeno rabo

in opomenjanje javnih prostorov, pri čemer sem se oprla na Henrija Lefebvra (1974) in

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novejše delo Edwarda Soje (2009) o prostorski pravičnosti. Izhajala sem tudi iz

sociologije družbenih gibanj, kulturnega aktivizma in prostorov svobode (Polletta, 1999;

Hercus, 1999), saj se sociologinje, ki se ukvarjajo z javnimi prostori, v katerih se

oblikujejo kulturno-umetniške oblike aktivizma, posvečajo prav vprašanju

intersubjektivnega preoblikovanja identitete, ki ni nujno kolektivna, a je, kot trdijo,

bistvena za delovanje feministično-queerovske kontrajavnosti. V nadaljevanju sem

razložila, zakaj sem se pri geopolitični in zgodovinski kontekstualizaciji festivala

zadržala pri posocialističnih študijah in v tem okviru preverjala uporabnost pojmov, ki

izhajajo iz postkolonialnih študij, na primer koncepta »diskurzivne kolonizacije«

(Mohanty, 1997; Kašić, 2004), »potujočih idej« (Said, 2002) in »transkulturacije idej«

(Pratt, 2002; Cerwonka, 2008).

Kot primer pojma, ki se je na svoji krožni poti med Zahodom in Vzhodom

spreminjal in pomembno zaznamoval dojemanje javne sfere na področju nekdanje

Jugoslavije, navajam »civilno družbo« in njeno specifično lokalno zgodovino, ki vpliva

na možnost konceptualizacije festivala Rdeče zore kot feministično-queerovske

kontrajavnosti. Sledi podpoglavje o najpomembnejšem teoretskem vplivu na moje

raziskovalno delo: feministični politični teoriji, ki je s pomočjo kritik koncepta “javne

sfere” (Jürgena Habermasa) izoblikovala koncept “kontrajavnosti” (Felski, 1989; Fraser,

1990 in 2008). Teoretski okvir naloge sem sklenila z natančnejšim orisom obstoječih

konceptualizacij feministično-queerovskih kontrajavnostih (v nastajanju).

Moje približevanje festivalu se je pričelo z umestitvijo Rdečih zor v geopolitični

kontekst (»posocialistično stanje«), nadaljevalo v poglavju o zgodovini avtonomnih

ženskih in feminističnih skupin v Ljubljani (od konca sedemdesetih do začetka

devetdesetih let) in poglavju o sodobnih feminističnih, lezbičnih in queerovskih pobudah

(zadnjega desetletja), končalo pa se je z umestitvijo Rdečih zor v mednarodno mrežo

sorodnih festivalov in Metelkovo mesto kot osrednje festivalsko prizorišče. Rdečim

zoram sem se najbolj približala z obravnavo notranje funkcije festivala, saj sem se pri

preverjanju njenih učinkov oprla na mnenja organizatork. Ker so bile do svojega dela

zelo kritične, sama pa sem poudarila tako dosežke kot pomanjkljivosti Rdečih zor, je

naslovni citat »Ko se premaknemo, nastane gibanje!« v študiji zaživel v vsej svoji

samoironični dvoumnosti. Ni odveč pripomniti, da je glasbena zasedba Orchid, citirana v

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naslovu (po spletni objavi v uvodnem besedilu Rdečih zor iz leta 2005), razpadla kmalu

po objavi albuma Dance Tonight, Revolution Tomorrow (1999), na katerem je bila

objavljena pesem Snow Delay at the Frankfurt School.25

V poglavju Genealogija avtonomnih ženskih in feminističnih skupin v Ljubljani

sem dokumentirano zgodovino ženskih, feminističnih in lezbičnih samoorganiziranih

skupin »novega vala« v Ljubljani (od poznih sedemsesetih do začetka devetdesetih)

reinterpretirala z vidika tistih akterk, ki so sodelovale v gibanju in svoje poglede nanj

objavile po letu 2000. Posebej sem bila pozorna na primerjalne poglede na vznik »novega

feminizma« v Jugoslaviji in, natančneje, v Ljubljani: zanimale so me primerjave s

sočasnimi feminizmi v zahodni Evropi in ZDA ter primerjave z značilnostmi tistih

lokalnih feminističnih skupin in pobud, ki so vzniknile po letu 1991. Ker so primerjave s

skupinami iz zadnjega desetletja redke in zaradi spremenjenih političnih razmer ter

drugačnih feminističnih in queerovskih izhodišč težje, sem ta korak v magistrski nalogi

tvegala s precejšnjo previdnostjo.

Začela sem s kratkim pregledom obstoječih periodizacij politične zgodovine

žensk, ki prvi val feminizma umeščajo v pozno 19. stoletje, ko so se v Ljubljani začela

ustanavljati prva ženska društva (Šelih & Antić Gaber, 2007; Petrović, 2009).

Emancipacijske prakse žensk iz obdobja med obema svetovnima vojnama in med drugo

svetovno vojno sem zgolj omenila, dlje pa sem se zadržala pri državnem feminizmu iz

obdobja SFRJ, saj je vznik novega feminizma mogoče razmeti kot kritičen odgovor na

univerzalistično politiko državnega feminizma (Sklevicky, 1996; Jeraj, 2003b;

Bonfiglioli, 2008). Novo razumevanje žensk kot avtonomnih političnih subjektov se je

izoblikovalo v beograjskih, zagrebških in ljubljanskih akademskih feminističnih krogih.

V študiji sem ga vpela v širše družbeno gibanje iz osemdesetih, vendar nisem vztrajala

pri predstavi o raznoliki, a enotni mreži skupin, saj so bile nove ljubljanske feministične

skupine v specifičnem položaju: v nasprotju z ostalimi skupinami so sodelovale s

sorodnimi iniciativami iz drugih republik SFRJ, v alternativnih krogih v Sloveniji pa so s

25 Celotno besedilo se glasi: »Like anywhere else, there are no coincidences, probability makes for accomplices and change creates meaning.« When we move it's a movement! (»Tako kot drugod, tudi tu ni naključij, verjetnost ustvarja sokrivce, sprememba pa ustvari pomen«. Ko se premaknemo, nastane gibanje!) Citat naj bi izhajal s situacionističnega plakata ali grafita, ki se je pojavil v Parizu maja 1968, zasedba Orhid pa je zaključno poanto »takrat se izoblikujeta sreča in beda« nadomestila z naslovnim vzklikom.

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svojimi stališči sprožale »nelagodje« (Jalušič, 1998: 114), ki je, kot so zatrjevale

organizatorke Rdečih zor, opazno še danes.

Poglavje sem zaključila s pregledom ženskih, feminističnih in lezbičnih skupin, ki

so v Ljubljani (so)delovale med leti 1984 in 1995. Zanimale so me njihove utemeljitve

zahteve po avtonomnih prostorih, pa tudi javni prostori, v katerih so delovale in se

srečevale. Obravnavala sem vsebinske razlike med ženskimi, feminističnimi in

lezbičnimi skupinami ter izpostavila primer feministično-lezbične naveze Kasandra, ki je

deloma odgovorna za nastanek festivala Rdeče zore, zaradi združevanja feministične

politike z lezbično pa bi jo retroaktivno lahko opredelila kot eno redkih »proto-

queerovskih« skupin v Ljubljani. V sklepnem delu poglavja sem splošno sprejeto tezo o

razdrobitvi in nevidnosti feminističnih skupin v začetku devetdesetih let (Jalušič, 2002;

Plahuta Simčič, 2006) umestila v kontekst političnih in ekonomskih sprememb, ki so

zaznamovale prehod iz socialistično-samoupravnega sistema v demokratično-

neoliberalno gospo(dar)stvo.

V poglavju o »posocialističnem stanju« (Naples, 2004; Iveković, brez letnice)

sem podrobneje obravnavala posledice družbenoekonomske »tranzicije«, ki so vplivale

na družbene predstave o diskontinuiteti, depolitizaciji in nevidnosti feminizma v

Sloveniji po letu 1991. Analizirala sem novi konzervativizem, etnocentrični

univerzalizem, zgodovinski revizionizem in antifeminizem, saj so od feministk zahtevali

premislek o tem, v okviru katerih feminizmov je dandanes sploh mogoče misliti in

delovati. Poudarila sem, da z vidika avtoric mlajše generacije, tistih, ki so se s

feminizmom prvič srečale na fakultetah in v popularni kulturi, a ne poznajo zgodovine

lokalnih feminističnih skupin, med očitnejše razloge za depolitizacijo sodobnih

feminizmov v Sloveniji spadata institucionalizacija in kanonizacija izbranih feminizmov,

še bolj pa prenašanje predstav o tem, kaj je feminizem pomenil v socializmu, v sedanjost.

V nadaljevanju sem obravnavala tako imenovano »NGO-izacijo« ali institucionalizacijo

mnogih feminističnih skupin in prevlado angloameriškega kulturnega feminizma v

sodobnih Ženskih študijah. Pri tem sem se oprla na koncept »diskurzivne kolonizacije«,

saj dopušča možnost, da produkcija feministične védnosti, ki ne upošteva lokalne

feministične tradicije, temveč izhaja iz teorij, razvitih v (in za) drugačne razmere, lahko

služi kot orodje za uničevanje kolektivnega spomina (Kašić, 2004; Hvala, 2007).

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Poglavje o posocialističnem stanju sem zaključila z razmislekom o možnosti

»transkulturacije« (Cerwonka, 2008) »potujočih idej« (Said, 2002) v razmerah strukturne

neenakosti med Zahodom in Vzhodom. Predlagala sem, da je zaradi podobnosti med

ekonomskimi (neoliberalizem) in političnimi razmerami (etnocentrizem, revizionizem,

kulturni relativizem) Vzhod in Zahod danes smiselno misliti skupaj. V poglavju o

sodobnih feminističnih in queerovskih kontrajavnostih v Ljubljani sem možnost za

čeznacionalni dialog podprla z navajanjem »globalnih« virov, ki so vplivali na

opredeljevanje in delovanje sodobnih kontrajavnosti. Pisala sem o vplivu prakse »naredi-

sama«, popularizaciji queer teorije in o aktivističnih praksah »ustvarjalnega upora«, ki jih

je konec devetdesetih ponovno obudilo tako imenovano protiglobalistično gibanje za

socialno pravičnost.

Trditev, da so feministične, lezbične in queerovske pobude v Ljubljani po letu

2000 v novo politično realnost vstopile »lastnoročno«, v javnem prostoru načele nova

vprašanja in začele ustvarjati nove kontrajavne prostore sem podprla s primeri javnih

debat, uličnih akcij, intervencij, protestov, peticij in umetniških projektov zadnjega

desetletja. Ker njihova zgodovina še ni napisana, sem se oprla na vrsto virov: spletne

izjave skupin, njihove letake in zasebne arhive, časopisne izrezke, redke akademske

študije in izjave mojih intervjujvank. Posebej sem bila pozorna na strategije, s katerimi so

feministične, lezbične in queerovske skupine vstopale v širšo javnost, saj svojega dela

nisem hotela utemeljiti na predpostavki o že prepoznanih oblikah delovanja. Dopustila

sem možnost, da obstajajo kolektivne in individualne oblike delovanja, ki taktično segajo

po izraznih sredstvih, ki veljajo za nelegitimna. Poglavje o festivalu Rdeče zore sem

posvetila pomenu kulturnega aktivizma, ki nasprotuje ustaljenim predstavam o dopustnih

oblikah politične participacije, saj slednje telesa žensk in feministične, queerovske ter

lezbične vsebine pogosto izključijo kot osebne, zasebne in apolitične. Pri tem me ni

zanimalo »pripisovanje abstraktne politične vrednosti konkretnim načinom delovanja«

(Felski, 1989: 164), temveč raziskovanje novih in specifičnih izraznih sredstev ali tehnik

delovanja v specifičnih kontekstih.

V nadaljevanju sem pisala o sodelovanju med različnimi skupinami, saj je bilo za

odzive na aktualno problematiko značilno sklepanje začasnih navez, ki so bodisi učvrstile

bodisi zrahljale medsebojne vezi med različnimi skupinami. V poglavju o festivalu Rdeče

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zore sem raziskala možnost, da je Metelkova glavna »stična točka« (Pratt, 1992), kjer se

posameznice in skupine srečujejo, pogajajo in sodelujejo. Koncept stične točke v

navezavi na kulturno geografijo in feministično politično teorijo dopušča prepoznavanje

vezi med diskurzivnimi in fizičnimi prostori srečevanj, ki so, kot se je izkazalo v toku

raziskave, bistveni za obstoj in delovanje feminističnih in queerovskih kontrajavnosti.

V sklepnem poglavju magistrske naloge sem tezo o prepletanju notranje in

zunanje funkcije feministično-queerovskih kontrajavnosti preverila na primeru Rdečih

zor, pri čemer sem politično teorijo soočila z izkušnjami in mnenji snovalk festivala.

Poglavje sem začela z zgodovinjenjem Rdečih zor in raziskovanjem razlogov, zakaj so se

članice KUD Mreža in skupine Kasandra leta 2000 odločile, da bodo organizirale

»metelkovski« festival »ženske produkcije« prav 8. marca. Zatem sem razložila pomene,

ki jih je mogoče razbrati iz imena »Rdeče zore«. Navezala sem jih na kulturne reference

(roman Die rote Zora und ihre Bande (1941) Kurta Helda in militantna ženska skupina

Rote Zora iz sedemdesetih), vizualno podobo festivala in cilje, opredeljene v vsakoletnih

uvodnih besedilih. Konceptualna zasnova Rdečih zor se je spreminjala iz leta v leto in

posvetila sem se pomembnejšim vsebinskim zasukom, ki so se najbolj očitno odražali v

terminologiji, s katero so organizatorke opredeljevale svoje delo. Obenem sem poudarila,

da so organizatorke vztrajno zatrjevale, da gre za festival »brez koncepta«. »Koncepti so

dragi. In razvajeni – kako težko jim je ustreči!«, so na svoji spletni strani zapisale leta

2005. Ker so v nadaljevanju omenile, da gre za »skromen« in »obroben« festival, sem

predlagala, da je navedene izjave treba brati (tudi) v odnosu do njegove profesionalne

»starejše sestre«, Mednarodnega festivala sodobnih umetnosti Mesto žensk.

Konceptualna prehoda od »ženskega« k »feminističnemu« in kasneje

»feminističnemu in queer« festivalu sem postavila ob bok vse večji vpetosti Rdečih zor v

mednarodno mrežo neodvisnih, naredi-sama festivalov. Organizacijska sodelovanja in

programske izmenjave so posebej izrazito vplivale na vpeljavo pojma »queer«, ki sem

mu zaradi njegove dvoumnosti in razprtosti za vrsto interpretacij namenila posebno

podpoglavje. Razširjena festivalska mreža (Ladyfesti iz zahodne Evrope in ženski,

feministični in queerovski festivali iz področja nekdanje Jugoslavije) je vplivala tudi na

način, kako so organizatorke Rdečih zor ocenile domet svojega dela in jim s tem dala

možnost, da svojo lokalno umestitev vidijo z mednarodne perspektive. Ker so Rdeče zore

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v mednarodni in lokalni prostor vpletene sočasno, sem internacionalizacijo festivala

povezala s kulturno politiko osvajanja javnih prostorov, ki se je izoblikovala v dolgem

boju za Metelkovo – na Metelkovi. Prav srečanje mednarodne in lokalne plati je

povzročilo, da so organizatorke v desetih letih delovanja postale bolj kritične do

»metelkovskih praks«. Te zaznamuje odsotnost trajnejših vezi med različnimi, a

sorodnimi skupinami in, kot so poudarile intervjuvanke, »šovinizem«. V podpoglavju o

»drugačni« Metelkovi sem zato poudarila »zmedo«, ki jo med festivalskim tednom na

Metelkovi povzroči večja prisotnost žensk, lezbijk in queer oseb – in izpostavljanje

feminističnih ter queerovskih vsebin.

V sklepnem poglavju sem, kot rečeno, naslovila uvodoma zastavljena

raziskovalna vprašanja. Ker so organizatorke kot najpomembnejši del festivala

izpostavile druženje in »karnevalsko« festivalsko vzdušje, sem obravnavo notranje

funkcije Rdečih zor posvetila iskanju razlogov, zakaj so Rdeče zore delovale tako

vključevalno. Ugotovila sem, da sta bila za to odgovorna horizontalna, torej

nehierarhična organizacijska strategija, in zagovor avtonomnega delovanja, ki je

praktično slonelo na »učenju prek dela« ali pristopu »naredi-sam/a«. To dvoje je

omogočilo aktivno vključevanje novih prostovoljk, tujih udeleženk in lokalnih

obiskovalk v organizacijsko delo pred in med festivalom. Medtem ko so nove

prostovoljke poudarjale občutek »enakosti«, so dolgoletne soorganizatorke omenjale

predvsem pomen javne festivalske kuhinje (ki je na samem prizorišču) in dejstvo, da se

večina tujih udeleženk s festivalsko ekipo zbliža že zato, ker na festivalu ostane več dni,

ker se festivala ne udeleži zaradi honorarjev, temveč zaradi istovetenja s cilji festivala in

ker je nameščena v zasebna stanovanja podpornic festivala, ne v hotelske sobe. Kot drugo

pomembno lastnost so organizatorke izpostavile »nekonceptualno« zasnovo festivala

oziroma njegovo razprtost za širok spekter feminističnih in queerovskih perspektiv.

Menile so, da za spoznavanje novih ljudi in sprožanje »zanimivih debat« s sodelavkami

in festivalskimi gostjami (iz Slovenije in tujine) niso potrebovale zagotovila o tem, da že

s svojo prisotnostjo na »feminističnem in queer« dogodku vse pripadajo isti

kontrajavnosti. To ohlapno, a vendar eksplicitno oznako so razumele kot vzpodbudo za

razmislek o tem, s katerim feminizmom in katero queerovsko politiko se sploh lahko

istovetijo. Občutek enakosti in inkluzivnosti torej ni zahteval zamišljene kohezivnosti.

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Zunanjo funkcijo festivala sem naslovila v podpoglavju o omejitvah festivala

Rdeče zore. Čeprav so intervjuvanke izpostavile kar nekaj dogodkov, ki so presegli

kontrajavni okvir (npr. ulične akcije, delavnice in okrogle mize), so predvsem dolgoletne

soorganizatorke opozarjale, da je za vidnost v širši javnosti festivalska forma nezadostna.

Pogrešale so kontinuirano delo in sodelovanje z drugimi sorodnimi skupinami, ki bi, tako

so menile, dejansko lahko ustvaril zametke bolj vplivne feministično-queerovske »scene«

ali kontrajavnosti. Zaključile so, da je v tem trenutku mogoče govoriti o »začasni

skupnosti« ali kontrajavnosti »v nastajanju«, ki je notranji funkciji zadostila, zunanji pa

ne povsem.

V zaključku magistrskega dela “'Ko se premaknemo, nastane gibanje!' Festival

Rdeče zore kot feministično-queerovska kontrajavnost” sem sklenila, da se notranja in

zunanja funkcija festivala Rdeče zore prepletata, vendar uspešno izpolnjevanje notranje

funkcije še ne zagotavlja izpolnjevanja zunanje. Obratno ne velja, saj se je izkazalo, da je

obstoj čustveno in intelektualno vzpodbudnih javnosti in prostorov, kjer se udeleženke

lahko družijo, razpravljajo in načrtujejo bodoče akcije, predpogoj za vstopanje in vidnost

v širši javnosti. Festival Rdeče zore se je v desetem letu obstoja (leta 2009) znašel v

precepu, saj je po eni strani dosegel, da se je, kot je povedala Suzana Tratnik, dolgoletna

soorganizatorka Rdečih zor, »spet začelo govoriti o feminizmu oziroma, drugače, o

feminizmih«, po drugi strani pa so mnoge druge organizatorke izrazile željo, da bi javne

debate o feminističnih in queerovskih temah dvignile na novo raven s pomočjo drugačnih

oblik delovanja. Te bi po mnenju Ane Jereb morale vključevati več pedagoškega dela, po

mnenju Daše Tepina pa okrepiti sodelovanje s politično sorodnimi in avtonomnimi

lokalnimi skupinami. Skratka, zaključila sem, da je festival s svojim vztrajanjem pri

politizaciji tem, ki v širši javnosti in mainstream medijih veljajo za zasebne, in s poskusi

vpeljevanja novih oblik javnega delovanja, ki jim dominantni diskurz odreka legitimnost,

deloma izpolnil tudi svojo zunanjo funkcijo, četudi je domet Rdečih zor v tem trenutku

(brez možnosti zgodovinske distance) le težko merljiv.

V magistrskem delu sem zaradi časovnih omejitev, pa tudi zaradi predpisanega

obsega same naloge, morala izpustiti dva pomembna vidika, ki bi dodatno osvetlila

zunanjo funkcijo Rdečih zor: nisem se ukvarjala z medijskimi odzivi na dejavnosti

Rdečih zor niti z odzivom lokalne publike (ki bi bil preverljiv z anketo, opravljeno v

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festivalskem času). Izpustila sem tudi podrobnejšo analizo sodelovanj, ki so Rdeče zore

močno povezala s sorodnimi festivali iz zahodne Evrope in področja nekdanje

Jugoslavije, čeprav prav ta izrazito protinacionalistična gesta razpira vrsto vprašanj o

tem, kdo danes pravzaprav spada v širšo javnost in čigavega glasu v njej ne moremo

slišati. Tako je moja magistrska naloga zastavila veliko vprašanj in ponudila le peščico

odgovorov. Ker gre za enega redkih poskusov aplikacije teorij o kontrajavnostih na

lokalen, feministično-queerovski primer, pa sem prepričana, da naloga predstavlja

pomemben prispevek k zagovoru njihove specifične vidnosti in s tem h kritiki

hegemonega političnega in medijskega diskurza, ki sta v posocialistični Sloveniji večino

ljudi izrinila iz procesov odločanja, skrčila pojmovanje javnega dobrega, politiko pa

zbanalizirala na njeno spektakelsko funkcijo.

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10. Appendices

Appendix 1: Interview Questions

During the interview, these general questions were adjusted to each interviewee’s level of

involvement with the festival – and according to her answers.

1) Please, introduce yourself. Mention your age, education, status and areas of interest.

2) What are your first associations about Rdeče zore? What was, for you, the most

memorable aspect of the past festival editions?

3) When did you get involved with the festival? What has drawn you to it in the first

place?

4) In what ways were you involved? What did you do?

5) Has this experience influenced your views on collective organizational work?

6) During the festival, you often changed your role: you were the organizer, part of the

audience, sometimes even the performer or moderator of a certain event. In your

view, were these roles compatible or conflicting?

7) What situations during the festival were most appropriate, in your view, for

exchanging ideas and discussing feminist and queer issues, either those stipulated in

the program or other ones? Was that possible at all?

8) Which situations were most appropriate for networking: meeting new people,

exchanging contacts, suggesting new collaborations or exchanges, etc.?

9) Since you frequent other events in ACC Metelkova mesto as well, did you notice that

during the festival there was any kind of noticeable difference in the general

atmosphere? If yes, what was different?

10) The festival organizers have tried to advocate a policy of alliances with other similar

local initiatives. Do you feel that these collaborations were successful?

11) How – if at all – has your involvement with Rdeče zore influenced your

understanding of feminism?

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12) In your estimate, has the festival lived up to its declared “feminist” and “queer”

politics?

13) The final and highly suggestive question: do you think that it is possible to speak of

Rdeče zore as a community, even if a temporary one? Is that on an international or

local level?

Appendix 2: Alphabetical List of Interviews with Short Biographies

The biographies summarize the seventeen interviewees’ self-presentations as expressed

in my interview sessions. I have asked them to mention their age, education, field of work

and areas of interest.

Alja Bebar (23) is a student of Sociology of Culture, Comparative Literature and

Journalism. She is interested in culture, critical media theory and the organization of

feminist cultural events. Rdeče zore volunteer since 2009.

Anna Ehrlemark (28) is working on her BA in Serbian, Croatian and Bosnian Studies.

Her education includes “some Slovenian, a tiny bit of Ethnology, a little bit of Swedish,

two years of Creative Writing School and quite a lot of self-learning” in the field of

illustration, design, web programming and comics. Since 2005, she has been volunteering

for Rdeče zore as a designer, web master, program co-selector and coordinator.

Occasionally, she exhibits her comics and moderates workshops. Currently, she lives in

Stockholm.

Mirjana Frank (25) is a Culturology graduate, currently studying Sociology (MA

program Sexism as a Contemporary Tradition) and working as an assistant to disabled

people. She is interested in art, especially music and theatre. Co-organizer of cultural

events in youth club MC Postojna and Rdeče zore volunteer since 2009.

Danaja Grešak (23) is studying Sociology of Culture and English Language. Her

interests include feminism, music, photography and ecology. Occasionally, she works as

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a music journalist and DJ. Co-organizer of cultural events in youth club MC Postojna and

Rdeče zore volunteer since 2009.

Ana Grobler (32) is a painter who graduated in Design in 2008 with a MA thesis on

feminist art in Slovenia. She continues to study Video at BA level. She runs art

workshops for children, participates in the SCCA Video Archive group, and is interested

in feminist art. After her first artistic participation at Rdeče zore in 2008, she has

continued to collaborate with the visual program organization group.

Jasmina Jerant (28) finished her graduate studies in Philosophy and Political Science.

She has worked for community radio Radio Študent in the field of art and humanities.

She ran the only feminist radio show in Slovenia. Lately, she has been writing for the

daily newspaper Dnevnik. She is interested in human rights, domestic violence and sex

trafficking. Since 2007, she has co-organized Rdeče zore and helped with public

relations, text editing, translation and program selection. She has occasionally moderated

discussions. Currently, she lives between Santa Cruz, Budapest and Ljubljana.

Ana Jereb (27) graduated in Sociology and is a postgraduate student of Women's Studies

and Feminist Theory, currently based in London. She is interested in theatre,

psychoanalysis and fiction. She has been active in the field of feminism as a writer,

theoretician, activist and organizer. In the past, she collaborated with an anarchist-

feminist reading group, led workshops for children about ecology and equality, and has

been cooperating with Rdeče zore since 2004 as an organizer of discussions, workshops

and exhibitions. She also took care of public relations.

Anja Kocman (24) is a Culturology student interested in Gay and Lesbian Studies and

feminism. She is “obsessed with music”, a choir singer and occasional co-organizer of

music events in youth club MC Postojna. Rdeče zore volunteer since 2009.

Jadranka Ljubičič (34) holds a BA degree in Art History and is currently working on

her MA thesis in the same field. Since 1996 she is the assistant, and since 2000 the

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curator, of Gallery Alkatraz in ACC Metelkova mesto, employed in association KUD

Mreža. She is interested in visual arts, especially women’s production. Since 2000, she is

one of the program selectors and coordinators of Rdeče zore’s visual arts program.

Urška Merc (32) is a freelance web developer and programmer based in Amsterdam.

She is interested in the mutual influence and intersections of activism and art as ways of

inventing new strategies of resistance. She co-organized the first Rdeče zore festival and,

after a five year break, returned as the festival’s first web master, EYFA cooperation

coordinator (together with Dunja Mijatović), and “helping hand”. She is also a passionate

animal rights activist.

Slađana Mitrović (28) graduated in Visual Pedagogics and currently studies Painting

and MA level Gender Studies. She is interested in feminist perspectives on the female

body and artistic narrations of women’s autoeroticism. After her first artistic participation

at Rdeče zore in 2008, she has continued to collaborate with the visual program

organization group.

Lidija Radojević (30), currently working on her MA in Anthropology of Everyday Life,

is interested in sociology, anthropology, economy and political theory. She is the

coordinator of Workers’-Punks’ University (project of the Peace Institute) in Metelkova

mesto and co-founder of MINA, Institute for Cultural Production and Socio-Political

Studies (with Jelena Petrović). Since 2006, she has been volunteering for Rdeče zore as a

translator, program co-selector and co-organizer.

Nataša Serec (41) has been actively involved in ACC Metelkova mesto since 1993 and is

employed in the association KUD Mreža as an organizer of cultural events and

workshops. She is also the coordinator of Urban Arts Project, archivist, networker, and

one of Metekova forum negotiators with the Municipality of Ljubljana. She studied

Sociology of Culture and Andragogics. She is one of the founders of Rdeče zore festival

and responsible for funding, PR, program co-selection and co-ordination.

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Tanja Škander (24) graduated in Political Science and currently studies and lives in

Berlin. Her interests lay in the intersections of gender and nationalism, Central and

Eastern-European fiction, and voluntary work with lesbian migrants in Berlin. She co-

creates Lad.i.y.fest Berlin and volunteers for Rdeče zore as a translator, program co-

selector and “helping hand” since 2008.

Daša Tepina (26) graduated in Sociology of Culture and History and continues her

studies in Sociology of Culture (MA). Her main interests lie in radical social movements

and ideologies, globalization, and critical theory. She participates in the [A] Infoshop in

ACC Metelkova mesto and is one of the initiators of their anarchist-feminist reading

group. She has a long activist history of squatting and protest organization. She

volunteers for Rdeče zore since 2006 with translation, program selection, fire

performances, and practical help.

Vesna Vravnik (31) finished her MA in Media Studies. She is interested in the

connections between queer theory and lesbian activism. She has been organizing actions,

discussions, film screenings, parties and workshops on lesbian, trans and queer visibility

in the official public sphere in cooperation with collectives Alter Šalter and Vstaja

Lezbosov. They have occasionally co-created the queer and lesbian program of Rdeče

zore and also collaborated in the organization of antifascist demonstrations with Social

Center Rog.

Suzana Tratnik (46) graduated in Sociology and finished her MA in Gender

Anthropology. She lives and works in Ljubljana as a writer, translator, lesbian activist,

organizer and publicist. She published four short stories collections, two novels, a play

and two non-fiction books about the lesbian movement in Slovenia and lesbian literature.

She was a long-term program coordinator of lesbian club Monokel, and continues to

cooperate with the Lesbian and Gay Film Festival in Ljubljana as program co-selector.

Together with Mateja Lapajne, she has co-created the lesbian program of Rdeče zore in

Monokel from 2000 to 2007.

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Appendix 3: Incomplete List of Rdeče zore Organisation Teams, Volunteers and Co-

organizers (2000-2010)

Individuals' affiliations with different associations, collectives, art groups, etc. are

mentioned in brackets after their first and last name.

Organization:

KUD Mreža - AKC Metelkova mesto

Masarykova 24, 1000 Ljubljana

Tel.: +386 (0)1 434 0345

Fax: +386 (0)1 432 3378

Website: http://www.rdecezore.org

E-mail: rdece.zore@gmail.com

Festival Team 2010: Nataša Serec, Jadranka Ljubičič, Anna Ehrlemark, Tea Hvala, Ana

Grobler, Jernej Škof, Stefania Azzarello, Tanja Škander, Dare Pejić, Jasmina Klančar,

Benedetta Bassi, Lina Ravbar, Danijela Zajc, Marijana Mitrović, Lee San Juan, Jelena

Dragutinović, Ruby Leijenhorst, Liedeke Oosterik, Saška Goropevšek, Sebastian Robert

Krawczyk, Nevena Aleksovski, Sara Filipović, Jasper Spoelstra, Emilija Veronika

Gheorghe, Tine Hafner

Co-organization 2010: Miha Zadnikar and Jasna Babić (Klub Gromka), Mate Čosić and

Daša Tepina ([A] Infoshop), Studio Azil, Mor Segal and LadyElectric (Mizzart Gallery),

YHD/SOT- 24,5, Barbara Beznec (Social Center Rog), Gallery Kapsula, SCCA, Marija

Mojca Pungerčar (KUD Trivia), Lana Zdravković (Kitch™), Alja Adam (Zavod

Liminal), Gabe Ivanov (Cunterview.org), Red Chigdey (Grassroots Feminism Archives),

ŠKUC-Cultural Center Q (Club Monokel, Club Tiffany), LesMigraS, Dlake na jeziku

(MC Medvode), Community of Ljubljana-Center and the teams of the above-mentioned

clubs and galleries.

Festival Teams and Volunteers (2000-2009): Dragana Rajković (Kasandra), Urška

Merc (Metelkova Women’s Center; EYFA), Dunja Mijatović (EYFA), Nataša Serec

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(KUD Mreža), Jadranka Ljubičič (KUD Mreža; Gallery Alkatraz), Milan Vračar and

Almedin Botonjić (KUD Mreža), Suzana Tratnik (Monokel, ŠKUC-LL), Mateja Lapajne

(Monokel, ŠKUC-LL), Mateja Zobarič and Tomaž Trplan (KUD Anarhiv), Jasna Babič,

Dunja Danial and Renata Vidič (Klub Gromka), Sabina Đogić (kino-klub iNVISIBLE;

Klub Gromka), Senada Čorović and Selman Čorović (Menza pri koritu), Vesna Vravnik

(Alter Šalter; Vstaja Lezbosov), Mateja Fajt ([A] Infoshop, Gallery Alkatraz), Daša

Tepina and Andrej Pavlišič ([A] Infoshop), Saša Spačal, Anna Ehrlemark, Tea Hvala,

Jasmina Klančar, Ana Jereb, Janna Nehls, Jelena Petrović, Lidija Radojević, Jasmina

Jerant, Tanja Škander, Mirjana Batinić, Andreja Kopač, Tanja Velagić, Marion Quinut,

Vanja Bučan, Špela Oberstar, Manuel Corman, Vita Žgur, Sabina Čobec, Živa Humar,

Zoe Gudović, Ruby van Leijenhorst, Marieke Vink, Liedeke Oosterik, Esmeralda Tijhoff,

Karin Aarts, Lina Ravbar, Antje Höhne, Cym, Maja Pan, Katarina Višnar, Lenka

Kukurova, Saša Goropevšek, Samo Dekleva, Vita Žgur, Zdravko Pravdič - Pec, Nika

Gabrovšek, Nika Autor, Barb, MP5, Nina Farič, Miha Fugina, Ana Grobler, Slađana

Mitrović, Teja Rutar, Danaja Grešak, Mirjana Frank, Anja Kocman, Alja Bebar, Danijela

Zajc, Lee San Juan, Jelena Dragutinović, Mirjam Baumert, Nadja Duhaček, Sofia von

Grihs Andersson and others…

Co-organization (2000-2009): Sabina Potočki (Mesto žensk/City of Women), Maja

Založnik (D.Z.A.Č.), Nataša Pivec and Borut Wenzel (Pekarna magdalenske mreže,

Maribor), Ivor Knafelj and Tomislav Glavica (MIKK, Murska Sobota), Nina Ukmar (MC

Podlaga, Sežana), Arijana Markučič Brecelj (MKC Koper), Marko Rusjan (Mostovna,

Nova Gorica), Darjan Kruševac - Darči (AKD Izbruh, Kranj), Gallery Celica (Ljubljana),

Miha Colner (Gallery Photon, Ljubljana), Dušan Dovč (SCCA), Amer Hajdarpašić (KOŽ

Library-Kolodvor), Tadej Pogačar (Gallery Kapsula), Matej Vukovič (Production School

Jarše), Radio Študent, Social Center Rog, Teja Oblak (KUD Evine potomke), Jernej Škof

(Klub Tiffany), Ana Ziherl (Ženska svetovalnica), Primož Karba (Galerija Mizzart),

Katarina Gorenc (YHD/SOT-24,5), Nataša Pivec, Goran Grabič, Maja Ikanovič and

others… (Co-organisers from Maribor, Murska Sobota, Sežana, Koper, Nova Gorica and

Kranj hosted parts of Rdeče zore program in their towns/venues.)

134

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Vravnik, Vesna. In Slovene, 23.7.2009, in front of Menza pri koritu, ACC Metelkova

Mesto, Ljubljana. 1 file (35m16s)

147

Authorship Statement

I declare that I have conceived and written my thesis entitled “‘When We Move, It’s a

Movement!’ Rdeče zore Festival as a Feminist-Queer Counterpublic” on the basis of my

individual research, conducted interviews and the sources listed in the Bibliography

section.

Ljubljana, April 12th 2010

Tea Hvala