Discourse on Corporeality and the Logic of Control in the Works of Contemporary post-Yugoslav Women Playwrights

Gabriela Abrasowicz

doi:10.25038/am.v0i18.296

Authors

Gabriela Abrasowicz

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.25038/am.v0i18.296

Keywords:

beauty myth, contemporary women playwrights, control, corporeality, motherhood, post-Yugoslav region, violence

Abstract

The issue of corporeality is one of the dominant motifs in contemporary women’s playwriting in the countries formed after the collapse of Yugoslavia. At the turn of the 20th and 21st centuries women’s bodies function as a specific open register in their works, where real-life content is included. The body is also an instrument which detects the meanings of social actions and interactions. According to the authors – mainly from Serbia, Croatia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, and Montenegro – the body becomes a constantly-transforming palimpsestic, multi-layered body-text which delivers information about the logic of control. The body-centric perspective here is connected with the problematization of the characters’ reactions to some mechanisms of normalization, classification, and increasing productivity of the bodies in their population. The changes in the configuration of control modes and everyday practices in some areas of women’s life activity are presented. The female authors, e.g.: Milena Bogavac, Maja Pelević (Serbia), Lada Kaštelan, Ivana Sajko (Croatia), Jasna Šamić, Elma Tataragić (Bosnia and Herzegovina), Nataša Nelević (Montenegro), Simona Semenič (Slovenia) illustrate some rituals and transgressions concerning procreation, female visual representations and the body losing its fitness and becoming isolated. In their artistic descriptions the authors confirm the relationship between the cultural and psychological inscription of the female body and female difference in language and text.

Article received: December 13, 2018; Article accepted: January 23, 2019; Pulbished online: April 15, 2019; Original scholarly paper

How to cite this article: Abrasowicz, Gabriela. "Discourse on Corporeality and the Logic of Control in the Works of Contemporary post-Yugoslav Women Playwrights." AM Journal of Art and Media Studies 18 (2019): 51–64. doi: 10.25038/am.v0i18.296

Author Biography

Gabriela Abrasowicz

Gabriela Abrasowicz
Faculty of Philology, University of Silesia in Katowice
Poland

Gabriela Abrasowicz holds PhD degree in the Humanities, in the field of Literature studies. She has published a monograph about contemporary women-dramatists in Serbia and Croatia. She is the author of scientific papers dealing with the question of analysis of post-Yugoslav drama writing from the perspective of anthropology of the body, gender studies and transcultural studies. Presently, she is employed at the University of Silesia in Katowice, Poland and she is carrying out research project financed by the National Science Centre, Poland – “(Trans)Positions of Ideas in Croatian and Serbian Playwriting and Theatre (1990–2020). A Transcultural Perspective."

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DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.25038/am.v0i18.296 DOI: https://doi.org/10.25038/am.v0i18.296