Description
Book SynopsisAnalyses representations of female and male bodies in the Croatian and Serbian press in the late 1980s, and in early 1990s during the war in which Yugoslavia disintegrated. This book proposes that the Balkan war was not a war between ethnic groups; rather, ethnicity was produced by the war itself.
Trade Review“Dubravka Žarkov’s remarkable book brings new insights to bear on the feminist theorizing of war. Nuanced, complex, lucid, and empirically grounded, Žarkov’s powerful combination of the insider’s understanding, passion, and emotional attachment with the academic’s distance and rigor, makes this a hard-to-put-down read.”—Urvashi Butalia, author of
The Other Side of Silence: Voices from the Partition of India“Theoretically sophisticated and passionately argued,
The Body of War shows how women’s (and men’s) bodies are implicated in the war in former Yugoslavia and its aftermath. Dubravka Žarkov courageously goes where others have feared to tread, rejecting too-easy assumptions that this was just a conflict between ethnic groups. Her book is a ‘must read’ for anyone interested in the ways gender and sexuality intersect to produce differences in ethnicity, thereby creating the pretext and the context for conflict and war.”—Kathy Davis, author of
The Making of Our Bodies, Ourselves:
How Feminism Travels across Borders“
The Body of War is the crowning achievement of Dubravka Žarkov’s year-long research in media, gender and ethnicity during ethnic conflict in the former Yugoslavia. . . . The book is highly recommended to those interested not only in gender studies and issues of violence against women, but also to criminologists, victimologists, as well as scholars and activists in conflict, media and peace studies.” -- Vesna Nikolic-Ristanovic * Feminist Review *
“This illuminating book is erudite and systematic. There is a lot in it that is very valuable, particularly the discussion on victimized fe/male bodies, making this book an important addition to the literature on how gender and sexuality intersect with ethnicity and produce war and war violence in specific circumstances and points in time.” -- Maja Korac * Nations and Nationalism *
“While
The Body of War provides an extremely useful feminist analysis for scholars and general readers on the discourses of the media during the Balkans conflict, it goes beyond discourse analysis to reflect upon, and intervene, in crucial current debates on feminist narrativization, historiography and practice. . . . Zarkov’s treatment of themedia, feminist discourse and questions of history and representation in the context of armed conflict provides a very thoughtful, accessible and timely platform towards this goal.” -- Neloufer de Mel * European Journal of Women's Studies *
Table of ContentsAcknowledgments ix
Introduction 1
Part I. The Maternal Body
1. The Whore against the Mother of All Serbs 19
2. Pictures of the Wall of Love 43
3. Troubles with Motherhood 69
Part II. The Victimized Body
4. The Body of All Serbs 85
5. All the Bodies of Croatia 102
6. Sexual Geographies of Ethnicity 116
7. On Victims and Villains 143
8. The Body of the Other Man 155
9. Troubles with the Victim 170
Part III. The Armed Body
10. Soldirs of Tradition 191
11. Troubles with Arms 212
Notes 233
Bibliography 257
Index 281
