Our Bodies, Our Location: The Politics of Feminist Translation and Reproduction in Post-socialist Serbia

Abstract

The dissertation studies feminist knowledge production through translation in the context of post-communist Eastern Europe. It focuses on one case study, the Serbian translation of the American feminist health classic Our Bodies, Ourselves (OBOS) through the lens of the politics of translation and reproduction. The translation, Naša tela, mi (NTM), was published by a group of feminist activists from the Autonomous Women’s Centre (AWC) in Belgrade, Serbia in 2001. By focusing on this one case study, my dissertation offers an in-depth analysis of the political, social, linguistic, and feminist dimensions implicated in the transfer of a Western feminist project from one geopolitical location to another, to a post-socialist, post-conflict Eastern European country in the 1990s.

Against the background of the Yugoslav wars and the influence of ethno-nationalism in the 1990s, I examine the development of domestic and transnational feminist networking, including the Belgrade feminists’ work with victims of domestic and sexual violence and refugees. I assess the extent to which NTM serves as oppositional discourse to the changing politics of reproduction and pronatalist discourses around abortion and fertility in Serbia in this period. Furthermore, I analyze NTM’s contribution to local feminist knowledge on women’s reproductive health, rights, and sexuality. I emphasize the importance of the local context, including the history of abortion access and traditional gender relations. Methodologically, the dissertation is based on interview data, archival documents, and comparative textual analysis.

The dissertation draws attention to feminist knowledge production across uneven geopolitical borders, translation flows across the East-West divide, and the role of English in transnational feminist networking. The dissertation brings together the politics of translation and the politics of reproduction and calls for further studies into the role of translation in transnational feminist patterns of knowledge production.