Dubravka Žarkov is an Associate Professor in Gender, Conflict, and Development Studies at the Institute of Social Studies in The Hague. She is a coeditor of The Postwar Moment: Militaries, Masculinities, and International Peacekeeping and an associate editor of Focaal: European Journal of Anthropology.

THE BODY OF WAR

Media, Ethnicity, and Gender in the Break-up of YugoslaviaBy Dubravka Zarkov

DUKE UNIVERSITY PRESS

Copyright © 2007 Duke University Press
All right reserved.
ISBN: 978-0-8223-3955-7

Contents

Acknowledgments…………………………………………..ixIntroduction……………………………………………..11. The Whore against the Mother of All Serbs…………………192. Pictures of the Wall of Love…………………………….433. Troubles with Motherhood………………………………..694. The Body of All Serbs…………………………………..855. All the Bodies of Croatia……………………………….1026. Sexual Geographies of Ethnicity………………………….1167. On Victims and Villains…………………………………1438. The Body of the Other Man……………………………….1559. Troubles with the Victim………………………………..17010. Soldiers of Tradition………………………………….19111. Troubles with Arms…………………………………….212Notes……………………………………………………233Bibliography……………………………………………..257Index……………………………………………………281

Chapter One

THE WHORE AGAINST THE MOTHER OF ALL SERBS

When in 1987 women flooded the streets of towns and cities in Kosovo and Serbia proper, marching militantly (as the Croatian press stated) and claiming peacefully (as the Serbian press stated) that they were mothers under the threat of rape, few could imagine that the issues of rape and motherhood would become central in the violent conflict that would tear socialist Yugoslavia apart only a few years down the line. Yet it should not have been a surprise. For there is hardly a war-let alone a war in which identity politics stand central-where the maternal body is irrelevant. For this is the body vested with the power to give birth to the nation. As such, it is both vulnerable and powerful, a potential target of attacks and a focus of protection, a fierce defender of its honor and its offspring. Thus, the maternal body, both symbolic and lived, is the body within which both victimization and militancy found their place.

It is this birthing role of the maternal body, and the apparent ease with which it was accorded both vulnerability and militancy, that are central to my discussion of the production of ethnicity in media representations of the women’s demonstrations. For the writing of the press was not only different, with Serbian and Croatian papers offering very different pictures of the events to their readers; it was also curiously similar, with both the Serbian and the Croatian press using the same representational strategies to define the maternal body and link it to ethnicity. These differences and similarities are symptomatic of the representational capacities of the female body in all its ambiguities, of all the threats and promises it held for the nation, and of the discursive-and ultimately, mortal-practices through which it would be claimed and appropriated, as maternal body.

In 1987 Kosovo-a region that (following Slobodan Milosevic’s rise to power) marked the start of this region’s disintegration and will probably also mark its end-was one of the main foci of the “media war.” And the maternal body was one of its main sites. As the least developed region economically, Kosovo had the highest illiteracy rate (of which women comprised the majority), the highest unemployment rate (with more women not working than men), and the largest number of dependents (with more women dependent than men). Large amounts of economic aid were regularly distributed to Kosovo from the federal budget as well as that of other republics (Zolic 1986, 258). But Kosovo remained underdeveloped, its economic underdevelopment being regularly linked in political discourse to cultural factors (Mertus 1999, Vickers 1998). Not surprisingly, in the gendered narratives of socialist modernity, the Albanian women of Kosovo, uneducated, unemployed, and with numerous offspring, became a metaphor for backwardness throughout socialist Yugoslavia and especially in Serbia. Regularly described as supporting patriarchy and tradition themselves, they were at the same time represented as victims of the patriarchy and tradition of their men. Mothering was essential in these representations. Throughout the 1980s the images of “overreproductive” Albanian women were pitted against images of “underreproductive” Serb women. Then in mid-1980 images of “sexually aggressive” Albanian men started to appear in the Serbian press, following discussion of the rapid ethnic homogenization of Kosovo. Both a divisive political issue and a recurrent theme in the media, the ethnic homogenization of Kosovo was explained as the result of the relatively high fertility rates of the Albanian population and the rapid emigration of non-Albanians, primarily Serbs and Montenegrins. Both processes were widely believed in Serbia to be a result of a conscious strategy by the Albanian political and religious leadership to make Kosovo “ethnically pure.” Ironically, this strategy, renamed “ethnic cleansing,” was the one that would be used by Serbian forces later on, in Croatia and Bosnia. The emigrations of non-Albanians from Kosovo were commonly referred to as “forced expulsions,” the result of systematic intimidation that ranged from arson and the destruction of crops and livestock to attacks on people, and finally to the rape of Serb and Montenegrin women. It is through these discussions of population growth and sexual violence that the maternal and victimized body came together in the media war in the mid-1980s. But what fixed their place of significance in the production of ethnicity was an alleged statement by a politician, uttered at a dining table, as a joke.

The Statement

On October 9, 1987, Yugoslav dailies reported that Fadil Hoxha, one of the highest ranking Albanian politicians from Kosovo, a member of the Socialist Federal Republic’s collective presidency (established after Tito’s death), had made some “unacceptable” and “offensive” statements regarding the political situation in Kosovo and Serbia. According to the media reports, the statement had been made a year earlier, during one of the semiofficial lunches of the reserve military commanders of Kosovo, Serbia, and Macedonia, known as “gatherings of brotherhood and unity,” and traditionally held in Kosovo. As the highest ranking political-military guest at the dinner, Fadil Hoxha had been asked to address the other guests at the table in an informal manner. His address was reportedly about critical political issues: conflicts between the political leaders of Kosovo and Serbia, the security of Albanians in Serbia and of Serbs and Montenegrins in Kosovo, the “forceful expulsion” of non-Albanians from Kosovo, the separatism and irredentism of Albanians in Kosovo, Serbian nationalism, changes in the 1974 constitution, demographic differences and population policies in Kosovo and Serbia, and the rapes of Serb and Montenegrin women from Kosovo by Albanian men. The element of his address that prompted the most reactions was about the rapes. He reportedly stated that the problem of rapes of Serb women by Albanian men in Kosovo would be solved if more non-Albanian women worked as prostitutes in Kosovo’s taverns.

After Hoxha’s address was reported by the media, a flood of reports followed about letters of protest and meetings of numerous institutions and organizations who condemned his words. Within days the protest spilled from meeting rooms into the streets: Serbs and Montenegrins began demonstrating publicly in cities and villages across Kosovo. In some towns in Serbia demonstrations were also held by people who had migrated from Kosovo during the previous decade.

A week later, Hoxha issued a press release. He confirmed that he did talk about all these issues, but not in the manner that was reported. He defended himself by explaining that the alleged “solution” for the rapes was actually offered jokingly. An even stronger outrage seems to have followed his press release, in the Serbian media and public, where the “statement of Fadil Hoxha”-meaning the alleged “solution” for the rapes-was consistently denounced. And “the statement” became “the Statement.”

Two weeks after the first leak of the lunch speech (on October 22, 1987) the presidency of the Central Committee of the League of Communists of the Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia suggested that he could no longer remain a member of the League of Communists nor could he continue to hold his high political functions. Hoxha was dismissed from all his functions, and the media soon lost interest in the entire event. But during those two weeks of October-November 1987, the events surrounding the Statement were often top news, with main daily and weekly newspapers from both Serbia and Croatia reporting on the happenings.

Women’s mass street protests against the Statement were one of these happenings. They are significant for two reasons. First, they were probably the first massive, political actions in socialist Yugoslavia in which women participated in noticeable numbers. There are no independent sources by which one could corroborate the true extent of women’s engagement, but their presence was obviously substantial enough for the highest political bodies to address it. The presidency of the League of Communists committee explicitly stated in its report that the anger of the public, and of “women specifically,” was justified, adding that the incident was being misused by Serb nationalists for their own political ends. No feminist action-and there were some, in the late 1970s and 1980s-ever received such high support. Second, these demonstrations marked the first appearance of maternal politics in the region. Demonstrating women proclaimed their motherhood for everybody to know and hear. The second time maternity became politicized-albeit in a different way-would be in 1991, with the beginning of the violent disintegration of the country. Each time, the maternal body would be the site of the media war. Each time, notions of femininity and masculinity intersected with norms of sexuality in order to produce ethnicity. I will address the issues raised by the 1991 events in chapter 2, and the troubles that maternal politics poses to feminism in chapter 3; here, I will examine the media representations of the Statement and the women’s demonstrations, in search of the role of the maternal body in the media war. For this was not just any maternal body-it was a body with qualification. While women openly defined themselves as mothers, the Serbian press focused on two points of this motherhood, which were written on the women’s banners: “We are mothers of the sons of Serbia” and “We are mothers, not whores.”

It is precisely these two qualifications of the maternal body-its clear ethnic connotation and its clear sexual-moral distinction-that became significant for the production of “the Serbs” and “the Albanians” in the media war in the Serbian press. They were not only central but also directly linked to victimhood. In the Croatian press, on the other hand, the maternal claims and the maternal body were largely ignored. In their place came militant women.

The Croatian Press

The Croatian daily Vjesnik published a handful of articles, all consistent in both form and style during the entire time of reporting: most were five to six inches long, factual, dry, and to the point, and they always appeared on page 3 of the paper. Almost all the articles were about sessions of different political organizations that addressed the Statement or about the demonstrations, though only one was from the site of a demonstration. Most of the articles consisted of quotations from the discussions and conclusions of these organizations, usually without editorial interventions or comments, and came accompanied by a handful of photographs, most of which were also taken at the political sessions. These reports rarely described the women as demonstrators or mentioned the slogans written on their banners.

On October 9, 1987, Vjesnik‘s first report on the events (reprinted the next day) quoted the alleged words of Fadil Hoxha, without comment: “There are individual cases of rape in Kosovo. I think that in the private taverns in Kosovo it should be allowed that women from other regions of Yugoslavia are brought in, so that the individuals who rape women of other nationalities can live out their frustrations that way. Albanian women will not do that, but Serb and other women would, so why not allow them?” (3). Hoxha’s press release was quoted by Vjesnik a week later in a similar manner, in a short column, again without comment:

In my wish to note that the reasons of these cases [of rape] are not only nationalist, but also pathological, I said half-jokingly that some of the causes may have been due to sexual frustration. Following upon that idea I said that we should perhaps be more tolerant toward some liberal behavior of some waitresses in private taverns. At that point I explicitly said that these are the waitresses who, in the majority of cases, are not from the territories where they work, meaning that they come from other municipalities. I did not talk about their nationality or their territorial background. I do think, however, that I have connected this anecdote in a rather crude manner with the problem of rapes, although my intentions were quite the opposite…. I did not think that I would be misunderstood…. I wish to stress that I do understand the justified and prompt reaction of the public, women in particular. (October 18, 1987, 3)

Vjesnik‘s single report from the demonstration did mention both the women and their demands. It noted, “The same demands that were put forward in previous gatherings and demonstrations of Serbian and Montenegrin women were repeated here-that stopping Albanian separatism and its precursors is long overdue and that ‘women should judge Fadil Hoxha’; open calls were made for fighting and weapons, and insults were voiced. From such statements, however, some women distanced themselves” (October 19, 1987, 3).

An October 22 article about the report from the League of Communists committee (the longest of all the articles covering the incident, also appearing on the page 3 but announced in large bold letters at the front page) marked the end of Vjesnik‘s reporting about the Statement and the demonstrations that followed it, although the name and the fate of Fadil Hoxha would still be mentioned there from time to time.

THE ABSENT ONES: THE MOTHER AND THE WHORE

Where is the maternal body in the articles in the Croatian daily? The dry, factual, almost uninterested style used in the short reports all but hides it. The style suggests that the articles simply gave information. But interestingly, this information is mostly about the sessions of various political bodies that discussed the events and not about the events themselves. The numbers of the demonstrators are mentioned (three hundred on October 18, five hundred on October 19), but there is only one report that mentions the slogans, banners, or actions of the women during the protests. Furthermore, the events surrounding the Statement, the demonstrations of the women and the sessions of the various political organizations, are not related directly to any other issues, such as other political or economic problems in Kosovo or Serbia. The main concern of the political bodies, most often mentioned in the reports, was the danger of public disorder, specifically in relation to “gatherings on a national basis” and to Serbian nationalists’ misusing the protests of women. There are a lot of quotation marks in the texts, around statements from the meetings. The issue of rapes of Serbian and Montenegrin women by Albanian men is mentioned once, in connection to the Statement, and that is within quotations, too.

So, apparently, no story developed in Vjesnik about the Statement. Presented were the facts: briefly and to the point. At first glance, the reports seem to be just what good journalism should be: factual and neutral. A closer reading, however, shows that this handful of short, dry reports give the impression that the event was not all that significant and thus did not merit development as a story. Nevertheless, many of the highest political institutions held sessions debating the events, and these sessions were reported in Vjesnik. Thus the message about the story’s insignificance is ambiguous, for it is difficult to render insignificant an event that at the same time causes political activity at such a high level. The resolution of that ambiguity lies in the representational strategy of Vjesnik-in which the Statement and the subsequent demonstrations were confined to and existed mainly within the meeting rooms of the political organizations that discussed them. An interesting shift of space occurs with this strategy: Fadil Hoxha’s words were spoken in a political meeting room, taken to the streets by demonstrators, and brought back into the political meeting rooms. In the process, the women demonstrating in the streets were all but erased from the picture.

(Continues…)

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