Abstract
In her article “Experience,” Joan Scott problematizes the “objective evidence of experience,” arguing that the subject is constructed through discourse and only from that position is he/she able to produce his/her experience. Instead of assuming that individual subjects have experiences, she proposes that subjectivity is produced through the discursive processing of their experiences: “It is not individuals who have experiences but subjects who are constituted through experience.”1 Building on Scott’s arguments, this chapter examines the self-reflexive potential of experience in interpretations of Yugoslavia’s socialist past. It focuses on women of the “older generations” (born between 1914 and 1946) in the area of Niško Polje in southeastern Serbia who actively participated in amateur vocal groups and performed at state-sponsored festivals in villages during the socialist period.2 Niško Polje belongs to a wider region called the Valley of the Južna Morava River, with the city of Niš as its administrative center.3 The population is ethnically quite uniform, with a dominant Serbian population and the Roma community forming the largest minority.4
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Joan W. Scott, “Experience,” in Feminists Theorize the Political, ed. Judith Butler and Joan W. Scott (New York, 1992), 26.
Petar Vlahović, Srbija—Zemlja, Narod, Život, Običaji (Belgrade, 1999), 46.
Since my research is focused on personal experiences of the socialist past, the term socialism seems to be more appropriate than the concept of state socialism, which refers to the institutional (official) state system of communism, and which, as Chris Hann points out, is frequently used as a term of political abuse. See Chris Hann, Caroline Humphrey, and Katherine Verdery, “Introduction: postsocialism as a topic of anthropological investigation,” in Postsocialism: ideals, ideologies, and practices in Eurasia, ed. Chris M. Hann (London, 2002), 21.
Sherna Berger Gluck, “What’s so Special about Women?” Women’s Oral History,” in Women’s Oral History: The Frontiers Reader, ed. Susan H. Armitage, Patricia Hart and Karen Weathermon (Lincoln, NB, 2002), 3.
See, for instance, Susannah Radstone and Katherine Hodgkin, eds., Memory Cultures: Subjectivity, Recognition, and Memory (New Brunswick, NJ, 2007), 2.
Geoffrey Cubitt, History and Memory (Manchester, 2007), 73.
See, in particular, the work of Geertz, Turner, and Bruner, who introduced the concept of the “anthropology of experience.” Victor W. Turner and Edward M. Bruner, eds., The Anthropology of Experience (Urbana, IL, 1986).
On Jacques Derrida and Paul Ricoeur’s concept of phenomenology and hermeneutics, see Derrida, Glas i fenomen (Belgrade, 1989)
Sundara Rajan, Studies in Phenomenology, Hermeneutics, and Deconstruction (Indian Council of Philosophical Research, 1991).
And on the phenomenological approach in ethnomusicological scholarship, see Jeff T. Titon, “Knowing Fieldwork,” in Shadows in the Field: New Perspectives for Fieldwork in Ethnomusicology, ed. Gregory F. Barz and Timothy J. Cooley (New York, 1997), 87–100, 96
Timothy Rice, “Time, Place, and Metaphor in Musical Experience and Ethnography,” Ethnomusicology 47, no. 2 (2003): 152.
Mojca Ramšak, a Slovenian ethnologist, asserts that personal memories and life stories are crucial for understanding the way people connect their personal experiences and interpretations of the past to their social environment. Mojca Ramšak, “Zbiranje življenskih zgodb v slovenski etnologiji,” Etnolog 10, no. 61 (2000): 30.
Rudi Supek, “Sociološki značaj amaterizma,” Kultura 26 (1974): 8–9.
More than 90 percent of the state budget for culture went to cultural institutions in municipalities; the balance went to Houses of Culture and local cultural centers in villages. Milivoje Ivanišević, “Nemogućnost kulturnog razvoja sela,” Kultura 38 (1977): 171.
This is in contrast to Bulgaria where village music and dance became a central part of the urban soundscape. Since “village art” was considered a symbol of the nation in Bulgaria, it was to be accepted by sophisticated urbanites and elites alike. See Timothy Rice, May It Fill Your Soul: Experiencing Bulgarian Music (Chicago, 1994), 181. Meanwhile, with Yugoslavia’s opening up to the West in the 1950s, genres such as entertainment music and rock music were supported by the state.
See Dean Vuletić, “Generation Number One: Politics and Popular Music in Yugoslavia in the 1950s,” Nationalities Papers 36, no. 5 (2008): 862.
It is important to note that, in contrast to other socialist countries such as the Soviet Union, Bulgaria, and Romania where rural people were forced to write new, politically conscious songs or where village tunes were arranged for choral performances, in the village festivals in socialist Yugoslavia the original song repertoire was presented on stage, without being influenced by political elements or undergoing significant transformations. See Anca Stere: “The Social Dimension of the Folkloric Text in the Postwar Totalitarianism,” Symposia. Journal for Studies in Ethnology and Anthropology (2003): 85; and Laura J. Olson, Performing Russia: Folk Revival and Russian Identity (New York, 2004), 41. Rice and Kaneff also write about highly folklorized versions of songs, predominantly choral arrangements of village tunes, in Bulgaria.
See Rice, May It Fill, 176; and Deema Kaneff, Who Owns the Past? The Politics of Time in a “Model” Bulgarian Village (New York, 2004), 152.
The concept of female musical shame has been examined by numerous authors including Susan Auerbach: “From Singing to Lamenting: Women’s Musical Role in a Greek Village,” in Women and Music in Cross-Cultural Perspective, ed. Ellen Koskoff, (Westport, CN, 1987), 79
Jane Sugarman, Engendering Song—Singing and Subjectivity at Prespa Albanian Weddings (Chicago, 1997).
According to Stef Jansen, references to mobility are generally present in people’s memories of socialist Yugoslavia. Longing for the “big country” and free travel is the result of the post-Yugoslav restriction in mobility caused by war, difficult economic circumstances, and visa policies. See Stef Jansen, Antinacionalizam: etnografija otpora u Zagrebu i Beogradu (Belgrade, 2005), 224.
See Naila Ceribašić, Hrvatsko, seljačko, starinsko i domaće: Povijest i etnografija javne prakse narodne glazbe u Hrvatskoj (Zagreb, 2003), 20.
Jansen, Antinacionalizam, 32. See also Daša Duhaček, “Women’s Time in the Former Yugoslavia”; Hana Havelkova, “A Few Prefeminist Thoughts”; and Andjelka Milić, “Women and Nationalism in the Former Yugoslavia,” both in Gender Politics and Post-Communism: Reflections from Eastern Europe and the Former Soviet Union, ed. Nanette Funk and Magda Mueller (New York, 1993).
See also Laurie Occhipinti, “Two Steps Back?: Anti-Feminism in Eastern Europe,” Anthropology Today 12, no. 6 (1996): 14
Mirjana Morokvasić, “The Logics of Exclusion: Nationalism, Sexism and the Yugoslav War,” in Gender, Ethnicity and Political Ideologies, ed. Nickie Charles and Helen Hintjens (London, 1997), 65–90, 72
Tanja Rener and Mirjana Ule, “Back to the Future: Nationalism and Gender in Post-Socialist Societies,” in Women, Ethnicity and Nationalism: The Politics of Transition, ed. Rick Wilford and Robert L. Miller (London, 1998), 120–32, 121.
In the post-Yugoslav context, the period after the dislocation of the country was marked by negative interpretations of the socialist past and the so-called confiscation of memories or collective amnesia. See Dubravka Ugrešić, Have a Nice Day: From the Balkan War to the American Dream, trans. Celia Hawkesworth (New York, 1995), 275; and Jansen, Antinacionalizam, 220.
Kenneth J. Gergen and Mary M. Gergen, “Narratives of the Self,” in Memory, Identity, Community: The Idea of the Narrative in the Human Sciences, ed. Lewis P. Hinchman and Sandra K. Hinchman (New York, 1997), 177.
Michael Herzfeld, Kulturna intimnost: Socijalna poetika u nacionalnoj državi (Belgrade, 2004), 186.
Predrag J. Marković, Trajnost i promena: Društvena istorija socijalističke i postsocijalističke svakodnevice u Jugoslaviji i Srbiji (Belgrade, 2007), 31.
Ulf Brunnbauer, “From equality without democracy to democracy without equality? women and transition in Southeastern Europe,” in Gender Relations in South Eastern Europe: Historical Perspectives on Womanhood and Manhood in 19th and 20th Century (Graz, 2002), 220.
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© 2009 Shana Penn and Jill Massino
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Hofman, A. (2009). “When We Were Walking down the Road and Singing”: Rural Women’s Memories of Socialism in Serbia. In: Penn, S., Massino, J. (eds) Gender Politics and Everyday Life in State Socialist Eastern and Central Europe. Palgrave Macmillan, New York. https://doi.org/10.1057/9780230101579_12
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