October 2018

FIFTH PANEL DISCUSSION OF FER DISCOURSES:
"INSTRUMENTALIZATION OF A 'LIVING' WOMANS BODY"


TPO Foundation and IMIC Zajedno from Sarajevo organized fifth session of FER Discourses on October 25, 2018. The session was moderated by Nikola Vučić and professor Ajla Demiragić from the Faculty of Philosophy in Sarajevo, gave her presentation: "Instrumentalization of female 'living body': from national guardians of life to 'cowgirls with hijab'".
Her lecture started from the thesis of Arthur Kroker that women's bodies have always served as a text in which the dominant myths of masculine culture were inscribed, myths that have defined these bodies as ' other ', embedded with ideology and discursively constructed as disobedient, threatening, and the one that can't be controlled.

A brief overview of the issue of gender specific bodies that are, not only in the war, but also the so-called post-war period and the time of transition, treated as "territory, makers and producers of a nation's narratives" (Niro Yuval-Davis). Professor Demiragić also critically spoke about desirable social roles, including the "ideology motherhood" that denies women the right to her identity of a woman and self outside of motherhood. She pointed out that the strengthening of capitalism particularly emphasizes a clear distinction between male and female bodies.