solidarity and intersectionality: what can transnational

feminist theory learn from regional feminist activism

Suzana Milevska

Trans/National Intersections Panel

Feminist Theory & Activism in Global Perspective: FR Conference Proceedings, e52–e61

In the context of a discussion about transnational feminism I want to consider the

potentialities of regional feminisms. I find the question of how a regional perspective
could contribute towards the development of a more thorough and comprehensive
transnational feminism urgent. I will explore the specificities and possible benefits of a
regional approach in feminist theory and activism through some examples from the
Balkan region. The tensions that persist between ethnicity and gender in multicultural
environments are often ignored or overlooked when hegemonic power relations and
hierarchies between different ethnicities are still vehemently at work at the local state
and national levels. They are even more difficult to grasp when discussed in a
transnational framework. Hence, the need for nuanced reinterpretations of certain
historic, political and social conflicts among different ethnic communities that border
each other. Regional research and action is also much more focused and precise in
reflecting the urgent issues in need of feminist reconsideration on a pragmatic level. I
advocate the importance of regional feminist networks because they can supplement
both local and transnational feminist work with more profound research and concrete
action that can address and sometimes reconcile local ethnic and religious
contradictions.

Positioned between local and global feminist tendencies, regional feminist knowledge is
very often neglected and its potentialities remain unrecognised within the wider picture
of transnationalism. I argue that cross-regional research and theoretical exchange can
actually assist in producing relevant instruments for locating and embracing urgent
issues in the transnational feminist context.

The main aim of my paper is not, however, to define a specific regionally oriented
feminist theory. The logic of the supplementation of national and gender identity with
the paradigm of regional identity reverberates with a kind of Derridean understanding of
the notion of supplement: as two apparently contradictory ideas comprised in one
concept (Derrida, 1976: 141, 145–165).1 However homogenous, stable and self-
sufficient, national identity once again shows its cracks, inconsistencies and fuzzy
borderlines that are accompanied exactly by the insistence and the hope of its expansion
in the realm of the regional.

Of course, regions are also social and cultural constructs and are established because of
a belief in a common history and consideration of common interests. 2 However, even
though it is clear that regions can not function as the only relevant cultural identity
concept, the regional context is relevant exactly because of the danger of
essentialisation and the overburdening complexities and exclusions that prevail in the
national context. Regional distinctions and definitions are moreover still necessary in
pragmatic terms for smaller scale co-operation in the context of globalisation: they
facilitate economic networks, boost markets and advertising or enable political
negotiations. Also, regionalism can be seen as part of a turn from identity politics
towards what Nira Yuval-Davis so successfully dubbed, ‘transversal politics’ (Yuval-Davis,
1999: 94).
As an alternative to universalistic assimilationist and exclusionary politics, as well as to
identity politics, ‘transversal politics’ deals with: people who identify themselves as
belonging to the same collectivity or social category [but] can actually be positioned very
differently in relation to a whole range of social locations (e.g. class, gender, ability,
sexuality, stage in the life cycle, etc.). (Yuval-Davis, 2004: 17)

For some theorists, the only adequate political response to globalisation is the
consolidation of democracy through the strengthening of national borders. For others
exactly the opposite is required, and preferred, when the national and other values are
questioned from abroad. Many theorists of democracy would agree that democratic
government could be maintained only by extending its borders beyond the nation. The
expansion and acceleration of cultural, political and economic activities cutting across
national and regional borders is not inherently incompatible with democracy.

For example, Adam Lupel identifies three different ways in which the politics of
regionalism could serve to broaden democratic legitimacy beyond the nation-state and
towards transnationalism: (1) cosmopolitan democracy; (2) democratic regionalism; and
(3) democratic network governance (Lupel, 2005: 117–133). According to Lupel, the
politics of regionalism finds a supporter in Habermas who offered a theory of a
democratised European Union in terms of post-national citizenship and regionalism: One
way to imagine the middle course between a retreat to national isolationism and the
rush to global integration is the pursuit of regional structures of governance. The
accelerated integration of separate nation-states into new political and economic units on
a regional scale may be read as a particular response to the exigencies of globalization.
(Lupel, 123)

Such a newly emergent regionalism is usually interpreted as a political project that

would lead us towards democratisation and globalisation. Such a tendency is seen not
only as a gradual re-integration of a previously divided territory, but also as a project
that ‘seeks to transcend long-standing ethnic or linguistic divisions’ (Lupel, 123). In
Lupel's view, the Habermasean post-national regionalism is ‘an attempt to demonstrate
how democratic politics might be reconfigured to regain power lost to transnational
economic and political actors’ (Lupel, 123).

Nevertheless, the very discussion of democratic politics leaves out the relevance of
putting the concrete questions of gender and feminism in regional perspective that
particularly in the Balkans could overcome the ethnic and linguistic divisions present in
feminist circles as in others.

There are certain potentialities within regional feminist perspectives starting from some
cases of feminist activism in Southeast Europe and the Balkans region, particularly
through the concepts of ‘solidarity’. Patricia S. Mann's (1994: 21–22) warning of the
dangers of economic and familial ‘unmooring’ of women in globalisation suggests that
the potential effects of regionalism may not be strictly limited to neoliberal controlling
politics and may also shed new light on the somehow ‘cheapened term of solidarity’
(Gilroy and Shelby, 2006).

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the return to regionalism: solidarity

I suggest that we look at some examples from the Western Balkans that are complicated
on several different levels: on the level of the still fresh wounds of the Yugoslav wars, on
the level of tension between academic and activist feminisms and on the level of
gender/religion intersections in a mixed Muslim/Christian community.
The first example that I present here shows the possibility of bridging-over ethnic hate
and conflict in the context of feminist organisations in troubled regions, in fact between
the two most conflicting sides in the Balkans today: Serbia and Kosovo. Kosovo is still
not recognised by Serbia, as it is seen as unjustly lost territory. But while official
channels of communication between the two governments do not exist, this could not
circumvent joint work and solidarity between the two national networks of women, the
Women in Black Network in Serbia, based in the Serbian capital Belgrade (gathering
women from Leskovac, Vranje, Vlasotince, Beograd, etc.; www.zeneucrnom.org) and the
Kosova Women's Network from Kosovo (http://www.womensnetwork.org/). These
groups created one of the rare if not the only collaborative organisations in this context:
the Women's Feminist Antimilitarist Peace Organisation.

This collaboration started on March 1, 2006 in Belgrade when the Kosova Women's
Network coordinator (Igballe Rogova) and Women in Black representatives (Stasa
Zajovic, Vera Markovic, Jovana Vukovic) met in Belgrade to discuss the political situation
with regard to security, regional peace building and women's participation in the
negotiation processes both in Serbia and Kosovo. The discussions on possible future
cooperation led to the idea of parallel women's negotiations and critiques of the positions
and conclusions of the official negotiation teams, and these culminated in the creation of
the Women's Peace Coalition in May 2006. After a meeting in Struga (Macedonia) on
September 10, 2007, the members of the Women's Peace Coalition published an Open
Letter to Kosovan women activists, entitled ‘An Enormous Wish to Work Together’. 3

The letter may have promised all too much, given the actual situation of the legal case
before the European Court of Justice in Strasbourg and other international actions that
the Serbian State had undertaken against the independence of Kosovo. However, it
offered another voice in the public sphere, the voice of solidarity instead of one
overburdened with excitable hate speech, constantly differentiating between ‘us’ and ‘the
other’, as is referred to in the letter.

Recently, however, I witnessed an opposite situation, a real outburst of tensions

between women, during the international conference Gender and Identity in Pristina,
Kosovo. The conference was organised by the governmental Agency of Gender Equality
at the governmental offices in Pristina on March 7–8, 2009. Around fifty local and
international academics, activists and women professionally involved in governmental
political institutions were invited to participate and share their ideas and positions
regarding the inter-relationship of issues of national, ethnic and religious identities with
gender issues.

The biggest controversy that I want to discuss here was created around a paper by Nita
Luci (2002), an anthropologist from the American University in Pristina, entitled ‘From
Victim to Freedom Fighter: Friendship of the Kosovo Liberation Army’. In her paper, Luci
addressed the issue of masculinity in Kosovo, still a very sensitive issue, given the
complexity of debates over whether Kosovo warriors fighting the Serbian Army were
best understood as victims, national heroes and liberators or aggressors. Luci tried to
unravel the different conflicted stances and thus questioned the unstable and troubled
masculinity of men in contemporary Kosovo.

Because the paper was written in a very hermetic language that was almost
incomprehensible to some audience members, especially those coming from the older
generation of local feminist activists and the women members of parliament in Kosovo, it
created a notable sense of frustration at the conference. This already put Luci at odds
with most of the other local participants and made her presentation sound unpatriotic in
the eyes of her local feminist colleagues, who attacked her because she read the paper
in English (even though simultaneous translation was provided for the papers in all
languages). Obviously, the local language was taken as a symbol of the national identity
of the newly established state. The discussion about the main topic of the conference,
gender, was overshadowed by the locally prevailing topic of national identity. The debate
showed how solidarity between academics on the one hand and activists and politicians
on the other, within one country's feminist scene, is often more fragile than the solidarity
between women from two countries in a serious political conflict. Also, the foreign
conference participants, both academic and activists, were in agreement with Luci's
arguments, as national patriotism was not at stake in their own views when discussing
the overly dominant masculinist policy.

It is absolutely necessary to begin a discussion about regional feminism and solidarity in

both academic and activist contexts because not only will it inform and enrich the
transnationally oriented feminist theory with more transversal links and ‘reciprocal
influxes’ (Daragahi, 2009), but it could also contribute to a more successful strategy of
bridging oppositional positions and towards encouraging women's empowerment at the
local level.

My third example focuses on the ways in which gender policy in Macedonia is strongly
marked by a dichotomy determined by the ethnic and political division between Christian
and Muslim populations that overwrite the solidarity among women on local level. The
theoretical critique of patriarchy does not help the activists battle against this new
conservatism particularly since some of the local gender research centres are closely
affiliated to the ruling nationalistic party. Let me first give a brief explanation of the
concrete situation in terms of gender policies, and particularly of the recent development
of policies around population and reproductive rights in Macedonia.

On the one hand, the local Orthodox Church supports conservative projects in the form
of a very aggressive pro-life media campaign against abortion, while on the other hand
the government is pushing for a pro-natalist population policy through a campaign
encouraging larger families.

Many suspect that the anti-abortion campaign, which has already been going on for 2
years across all print and electronic media, as well on huge billboards in the public
space, will lead to the eventual introduction of new anti-abortion laws. The campaign is
proof of the close relationship between the local church and the right-wing party VMRO
DPMNE (the strongest part of the coalition in power). The government pays close
attention to Orthodox religious voices, as it sees the conservative Christian discourse as
being close to the nationalist politics of the ruling party. Such actions are extremely
sensitive, given the multilayered and multicultural context of contemporary Macedonian
society, with about a quarter of population being Muslim. These tendencies actually
provoke a sense of fear among the people (particularly among the Christian majority)
that national interests are endangered because of the difference in birth rates between
the Macedonian Christian majority and the Albanian Muslim minority.4

In August 2008, the government in Macedonia announced a change to the laws on Child
Protection, Social Protection and Health Insurance by introducing new acts. The acts
stipulated that new forms of financial support should be introduced from January 20,
2009 onwards. This support was to be distributed to all mothers bearing more than one
child and was to be gradually increased for each additional child. However, many non-
governmental organisations opposed such policies because they understood the
discriminatory impact hidden in the small print of these legislative changes. The new act,
which offered financial support amounting to fifty per cent of an average salary for any
woman delivering a fourth child, was not to be applied equally to all parts of Macedonia.
The Act would apply only to women living in municipalities with a birth rate lower than
2.1. This would mean that it was mainly the Christian Orthodox Macedonian families with
fewer children who live in these areas that would be eligible for support.

Legal proceedings against Act 24 were initiated in December 2008, although this was
only because of an initiative undertaken by representatives of the Citizen's Association
‘Wake up’, and the Act was overturned on March 18, 2009. Despite the fact that the Act
was in place for only 3 months, some families had already begun to receive support and,
as expected, the only families that did receive support were those living in the
‘endangered’ municipalities inhabited mainly by Macedonians. In fact, the whole episode
was uncharacteristic of the Macedonian legal system, which is notorious for its slowness
and incompetence, and for the close links between judicial and executive branches.
There were several public debates regarding both campaigns that were mostly initiated
by activists’ associations, and art and culture NGOs against the obvious nationalistic
‘population policy discourse’ that unfortunately is not unique to Macedonia (Zielinska,
2000: 126).

Macedonian academic feminists and intellectuals were much louder in their protests
against the anti-abortion campaign than against the restrictive population policy act,
with only a few exceptions (e.g. the cyber-feminist blogger femgerila).5 So much for
solidarity with women of other religions. One might say that this should be expected,
because in the case of bringing in a new more restrictive law against abortion, that
change would have affected both Macedonian and Albanian woman citizens of
Macedonia. But this is not an adequate response, since it ignores the ways in which the
proposed population policy would have actively favoured Macedonian mothers before the
law: this was actually the biggest contradiction in the actions (or rather, lack of firm
action) on the part of the Macedonian feminists.6 While the anti-abortion discussion
never moved beyond the level of a media campaign, the newly introduced Act could
have effectively increased the social, economic and ethnic gap between the Macedonian
and ethnic Albanian populations.

Such a bifurcated situation is further underlined by the tension between the local
democratic ideas and various, often contradictory models of democracy (antagonistic,
participatory, communitarian, deliberative, agonistic, radical, etc.) that stand behind EU
cultural policies, mostly stipulated through the Ohrid Agreement that was signed by both
Macedonian and Albanian leaders on August 13, 2001.7 The Ohrid Agreement had
brought with it new conditions and terms of communication as well as laws that are still
difficult to follow and accept from two sides of the conflict because of the local
hypocritical ruling elite who are not ready to fully embrace ethnic equity, as well as
radical Albanian minority leaders.

The local conservative and nationalist-centred cultural policymakers are inevitably

confusing the new rules and even though they show declarative readiness to meet the
demands stated in the EU acquis communautaire, they also veer off the promised actions
that would lead the country towards faster EU integration. This affects not only social
change in the realm of gender relations but also in the institutions of law, and the areas
of corruption and nepotism, and control by army, security and police.

Given that similar reproductive rights legislation has been discussed or introduced
recently in various Balkan countries, it becomes obvious that the only way to fight such
regressive initiatives is to tackle them on a regional level.8 The future impact of such
legislative practices on women captured by the nationalist policies of their own
governments can be publicised and challenged regionally through solidarity among
different organisations and individuals and the learning and resource-sharing such
solidarity can bring with it.

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beyond negative theoretical paradigms

I have discussed the above examples of solidarity (or lack of solidarity) because as a
feminist I assume that in this realm theory and activism inform each other. In the wake
of the onward march of neoliberal values, globalisation of markets and the turn towards
consumerism on both sides of the collapsed, once opaque wall, this connection becomes
even more relevant.

Here, I suggest that it would be problematic to expect a nationally particular feminist

model that analyses the specificities of socialist and post-socialist representations in
isolation. Mrinalini Sinha further has already warned that it can not be expected from
non-Western feminisms to offer the necessary instruments for revising Western
feminism because such dichotomy is no longer viable (Sinha, 2000: 175). Chandra
Talpade Mohanty had carefully discussed Marnia Lazreg's call against ‘essentialism of
difference’ and quoted her nuanced discussion of the traps of any generalised attacks of
either universalist, essentialist or constructivist feminist theories: ‘The point is neither to
subsume the other woman under one's own experience nor to uphold a separate truth
for them’ (Lazreg, 1988: 99; Mohanty, 2003: 257).

The model of comparative feminist studies proposed by Mohanty could be much more
helpful because it does not focus on any single fixed theory, thus giving more options for
grasping the complexities of the gender issue in the globalised world (Mohanty, 2003:
241–242). She reminds us that the local and global are in a reciprocal relation and
constitute each other since their relationships are not defined in material ways, in terms
of physical geography and territories. Instead, she argues, they are linked conceptually,
temporally and contextually. This kind of comparative framework assumes intersections
of race, class, nation, gender and sexuality and analysis of the intertwining of different
historic experiences of oppression and exploitation. At the same time, this view entails
interrogating the potential for solidarity and mutuality in the struggle, both on specific
and universal levels (Mohanty, 2003: 242). Thus, the tasks of feminists should be
constantly re-imagined by ‘transcending the conceptual borders inherent in the old
cartographies’ and by introducing models of intersecting and transversal research
particularly in the context of the studies of different regions and cultures (Shohat, 2001:
1272; Mohanty, 2003: 241).

Similar concerns were recently raised by other theorists who pointed to the urgency for
solidarity and conviviality (Gilroy, 2004: xv), or transversality (Yuval-Davis, 1997) in
cultural and feminist studies in contrast to the predominance of the post-structuralist
and psychoanalytical approach that according to agency theorists and other critics of
psychoanalysis (Fraser, 1998; McNay, 2000; Mann, 1994) invests too much in the pre-
existing fixed psychic structures, thus, not allowing any societal transformations.
MacNay's call for moving away from Joan Riviere's (1929) and Judith Butler's (1997)
psychoanalytical negative paradigms ‘regarded as relatively ahistorical theories of
patriarchy and female subordination’ is necessary in order to re-conceptualise agency
that in her words is formulated as ‘explanations of how gender identity is a durable but
not immutable phenomenon’ (McNay, 2000: 2).

Thus, I argue that solidarity needs to be urgently addressed in Balkan gender and
feminist theories, setting aside dense post-structuralist theories, in order to loosen up
the fixation with only negative paradigms inherited from post-structuralism and
psychoanalysis that can easily turn into victimhood contests. In this context, academic
discussions sometimes lag far behind the feminist activists who act without the burden of
the negative paradigmatic processes or metaphors of loss (read: victimisation), perhaps
sometimes tackling the concrete problems in a more naïve way but at the same time
with more confidence when it comes to the urgency of solidarity, and transversal and
intersectional research.

The academic and activist investment in intersectional research on a regional level would
also prevent the emergence of a hollow solidarity that remains on the level of empathy
with women on the basis of essentialist commonalities of sex, and instead would be
informed by the concrete local issues that may be or may not be in common for the
women from different ethnic backgrounds. Moreover, solidarity that is based on
difference, rather than solidarity based on gender and national identity is far more in
need of exact data and appropriate methods, in order to address the most urgent
problems such as the abortion laws, population policies driven by nationalist fears of
national disappearance and other reproductive rights policies.

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Notes

1 The more obvious definition of the notion of supplement, as something that aims to
enhance the presence of something that is self-sufficient and therefore already
complete, is overshadowed by the idea that a thing that has a supplement can not be
truly ‘complete in itself’.

2 Recently, the relations between regionalism and transnationalism in the period of

globalisation were researched in: Lothar Hönnighausen, Marc Frey, James Peacock and
Niklaus Steiner, (2004) editors, Regionalism in the Age of Globalism, Volume 1,
Concepts of Regionalism, Madison: University of Wisconsin.

3 This statement issued on September 10, 2007 can be found at

http://www.zeneucrnom.org/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=354&Itemid
=54 (last accessed August 15, 2009).

4 Here, I paraphrase Mirushe Hoxha's TV interview given as the first officially nominated
Albanian woman to run for the President of Republic of Macedonia. As a representative of
the Democratic Party of Albanians, she stated that she would opt for fighting against any
anti-abortion law and for ethics in politics but was not very clear whose ethics she would
opt for: the ethics in care of the complete Albanian minority population, the ethics of
Albanian woman or the ethics of the Democratic Party of Albanians that obviously do not
always share the same ethical principles. See ‘The first officially nominated Albanian
woman to run for President of Republic of Macedonia as representative of Democratic
Party of Albanians’, TV interview, Alsat TV, Skopje, March 4, 2009.

5 The blog: femgerila.blog.com.mk is actively written by Irena Cvetkovi who is a MA

student in Gender studies in Skopje, but also a feminist activist and media columnist.
She wrote boldly against the public media campaign in Macedonia ‘Abortion is a murder.
Do not abort’ that was linked to: www.abortionNO.org.

6 Patricia S. Mann's arguments against naturalisation of motherhood and against

criminalisation of abortion and her concept ‘cyborgian motherhood’ that refers to
contemporary mediated motherhood were never brought in during the debate (Mann,
1994: 90–120). Interestingly enough, Mann begins her chapter Cyborgian Motherhood
and Abortion exactly with the recent attacks on freedom of abortion in Eastern Europe.

7 The Ohrid Agreement had a very positive impact in Macedonia after the civil conflicts
between the Macedonian Army and the Albanian minorities (Spring 2001) because in a
very short time it stabilised the country and partially reconciled the trust among the
conflicted sides.

8 For a profound comparison of the reproduction policies between Croatia and Serbia in
which the authors see as common for both countries the fear of ‘disappearing of the
nation’ because of low fertility in comparison with Muslim population see Shiffman et al.
(2002).

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References
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Acknowledgements

This paper was presented as part of Feminist Review's Conference celebrating 30 years
of the journal. The ‘Feminist Theory & Activism in Global Perspective’ Conference was
held at SOAS, The University of London, on September 26, 2009.

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biography