No. 38 (2025): Issue No. 38, October 2025 – Main Topic: Bodily Autonomy and Identity Politics: Feminist Approaches in the Era of Global Political Changes
Editors’ Note
We live in an era of global strengthening of right-wing and neo-fascist movements and witnessing a general social shift to the right on a worldwide level. The strengthening of anti-gender movements in the last few decades led to the abolition of a whole series of hard-won human rights of women, LGBTIQ+ people, and minority groups around the world. Neoliberal commodification of identity and right-wing strategies of using identity politics against women and oppressed minorities divide feminist and other civil rights movements and undermine the potential for alliance building. On the other hand, we are also witnessing the resistance and activistic tendencies toward united action by all those who advocate for basic feminist principles and values. These tendencies are present and visible through artistic work and social media campaigns, and they are expressed through activist and academic conferences and activities that illuminate problems and point to possible solutions and strategies for struggle and resistance. Our intention for this special issue of the AM Journal of Art and Media Studies was to offer a platform for voices that are rarely heard in public discourse, and to present topics that are of great importance primarily to the feminist and queer communities, but also to the society as a whole – because no one is free and safe until we are all free and safe. Collected papers in this issue deal with feminist and queer topics belonging to various social contexts.
The main topic is divided into three thematic units. The first unit comprises texts describing feminist and related progressive movements. Marija Radoman examines the experiences of queer students during the 2024/2025 student protests in Serbia, with a focus on how solidarity and identity were negotiated within the broader mobilization. Berceste Gülçin Özdemir analyzes #SusmaBitsin social media movement in order to question the male-dominated perspective on the female body in the digital public sphere from a feminist perspective with a focus on Turkey. Text co-authored by Vanja Petrović, Jana Kujundžić, and Nina Čolović uses the theoretical framework of abolition feminism and critical feminist discourse analysis to develop the critique of the overreliance of the mainstream feminist advocacy on the police and criminal legal system as the solution for femicide and gendered violence in the contexts of Croatia and Serbia.
The second thematic unit focuses on anti-gender movements and transfeminist resistance against them. Aleksa Milanović examines the growth of the trans activist movement in the post-Yugoslav space and its regional connections, focusing on the fight against anti-gender politics. Ana Marinković employs visual discourse analysis of three case studies to analyze the intersection of feminist resistance and anti-gender movements within contemporary media art, explicitly focusing on algorithmic bias and bodily autonomy. Nađa Bobičić analyzes the discourse of anti-gender actors using the news section of the Ministry for Family Welfare and Demography of Serbia website.
The third thematic unit is dedicated to the feminist and queer analyses of various artistic formats. In her paper, Katarzyna Ewa Stojičić draws on theoretical frameworks from Laura Mulvey, Judith Butler, Susan Sontag, Naomi Wolf, Deborah Ferreday, and Angela McRobbie to argue that glamour should not be understood as either purely oppressive or liberating, but as an ambivalent and dynamic practice that continues to evolve in dialogue with feminism, queer theory, and contemporary performance culture. Dara Šljukić uses the conceptual lens of queer utopian hermeneutics by José Esteban Muñoz in order to analyze two post-Yugoslav literary texts. Her analysis reveals that queer futurity is inextricably linked to the knowledge of the past, specifically of local anti-fascist heritage, offering a distinct regional perspective on the concept of queer time. Bhavya Sinha’s and Aditi Dirghangi’s text analyzes Indian Netflix miniseries Ghoul (2018) to examine the intersections of gender, religion, and social politics within the theoretical framework of Foucauldian analyses of power and identity, Said’s Orientalism, and Crenshaw’s intersectionality, and finally in her paper Jelena Mišeljić explores the intersection of phenomenology and trans cinema through Jane Schoenbrun’s films, arguing that their work evokes the lived, sensory experience of in-betweenness and liminality.
In the section Artist Portfolio visual artist based in Serbia ‒ Citero presents multimedia art project Shine a Life which depicts an aspect of gender nonbinary, trans and queer people's lives that we rarely see.
In addition, this issue has two more texts in the section Beyond the main topic. Rafael Marino writes about Brazilian artist Hélio Oiticica and his crucial role in constructing a Brazilian image of art in the world. The second text in this section is authored by Đorđe Božović who wrote an essay based on the reflexive practice with the intention of critical examination and an autoethnographic account of the 21st-century literary translation interchange between Serbia and Albania in the decade-long period from 2011 until 2021. The issue concludes with Nađa Pavlica’s review of Paul B. Preciado’s book Can the Monster Speak?
Guest Issue Editors: Aleksa Milanović, PhD, Faculty of Media and Communications and Nađa Bobičić, PhD, Faculty of Political Science, University of Belgrade, Serbia
Reviewers: Bojan Bilić (Faculty of Philosophy and Education, University of Vienna), Emina Bužinkić (IRMO – Institute for Development and International Relations; AGITATE! Unsettling knowledges Editorial Collective Member & Environmental Justice Worldmaking Researcher), Slaven Crnić (Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences, University of Rijeka, Croatia), Ramona Dima (Södertörn University, Sweden), Pedro Duarte (Pontifical Catholic University of Rio de Janeiro, CNPq and Faperj, Brazil), Matteo Gigante (School of Arts and Humanities of the University of Lisbon – FLUL; Center for Lusophone and European Literatures and Cultures of the University of Lisbon – CLEPUL, Portugal), Jelena Guga (Institute for Philosophy and Social Theory, University of Belgrade), Xian Huang (Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences, City University of Macau, Taipa, Macau, China), Slađana Jeremić (Faculty of Political Science, University of Belgrade, Serbia), Lara Končar (Faculty of Political Science, University of Belgrade, Serbia), Aleksandra Marković (Institute for Sociological Research, Faculty of Philosophy, University of Belgrade), Tatjana Nikolić (Institute for Theatre, Film, Radio and Television, Faculty of Dramatic Arts, University of Arts, Belgrade), Sanja Petkovska (Institute of Criminological & Sociological Research, Belgrade, Serbia), Selena Savic (Department of Arts and Culture – Cultural Studies, University of Amsterdam), Gülüm Şener (Faculty of Communication, 15 November Cyprus University), Kay Siebler (University of Nebraska Omaha, United States), Miodrag Šuvaković (Faculty of Media and Communications, Singidunum University, Belgrade), Aleksandar Trifunović (Faculty of Philosophy, University of Ljubljana, Slovenia), Vuk Vuković (University of Montenegro, Faculty of Dramatic Arts)
On the cover: Sara Sarić Citero, Queer Time, 2023.
