Women Speak after the War

Abstract

The absence of women’s voices presents a significant emptiness in European filmic and general historiography. Post-Yugoslav territories fit perfectly with the ‘Old Continent’s’ paradigm of the distant and even recent past. With a few exceptions, which only confirm the rule of general absence, women’s perspectives and discursive stances on the Western Balkans are blurred, not taken into account due to their ‘irrelevance’, or simply ignored. Consequently, no-one should be surprised at my stating that the absence of women’s perspectives in creating knowledge about the Western Balkans is both ethically and epistemologically problematic. Without knowing the role of women in the post-Yugoslav past and present, we are not in position to create a valid epistemological knowledge (Slapsak 2009). And only with plural perceptions of an event may we strive towards the ‘universal’ (Balibar 2007).