imagery, gender and power: the politics of representation in post-war Kosova
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abstract The article focuses on the politics of representation in Kosova since the United Nations took over ‘peace management’ in 1999. It uses UN propaganda posters (political pedagogy) and local nationalist political advertising as a way to read the multiple gendered discourses of representation. It shows how gender is used relationally between competing forces – the ‘international community’ and nationalists – as a tool to ensure UN’s imposition of Western policies and norms and as a mechanism for local politicians to consolidate their domination of the domestic/private sphere. Moreover, it discusses the price paid to mimic the West: how Kosovar politicians have sought to ‘undo’ national identity in favour of a Western self-representation through a gendered abnegation of Islam. Thus, as an intrinsic part of the discourse of ‘peace-building’, these images represent the site of power production, domination, negotiation, and rejection, involving the collaboration of different actors, institutions, and individuals. Three specific points will be made: first, the article seeks to show that a Western political modernization discourse has, paradoxically, reinforced patriarchal relations of power and traditional gender roles in Kosova through the subjugation of women. Second, it explains the inability to resolve competing Albanian narratives – one relying on the legacy of peaceful resistance and the other on the armed struggle against Serbian domination during the 1990s. Third, through the intermeshing of international peace-keepers and local nationalist patriarchs, it will show how the militarization of culture is perpetuated through, and in relationship to, gender.
keywords Kosova; gender; peacekeeping; images; representations; patriarchies
feminist review 86 2007 c 2007 Feminist Review. 0141-7789/07 $30 www.feminist-review.com (1–23)
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introduction The purpose of this article is to map out the multiple gendered discourses and North/South ‘monologues’ in a post-Cold War/post-conflict setting. By focusing on Kosova,1 I want to show how gender identities are being reconstructed, reconfigured, and redefined – discursively and materially – through an interaction between an international/Western ‘peace-building’/reconstruction discourse and Kosovar Albanian nationalism, culture, and religion.2 Since Kosova became a UN protectorate following the 1999 war, the restructuring of social, political, economic, and cultural life has had enormous impact on gender roles and subjectivities as well as on notions of femininity and masculinity. Moreover, with respect to contestations and collaborations, gender has played a vital role in the relationship between transnational actors and local patriarchies. As I will demonstrate here, in the binary oppositions between the international and local, democratic and undemocratic, gender has been a means to reaffirm new divisions and exclusions. In what may be termed transnational political theatre, where there is active competition between peace-keepers and Albanian nationalists as well a
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