East and West Kiss: Gender, Orientalism, and Balkanism in Muslim-Majority Bosnia-Herzegovina

Abstract

Through an ethnographic analysis of public and “everyday” discourses in the Muslim-majority area of Bosnia-Herzegovina, this article shows how gender is frequently constitutive of orientalist and balkanist representations. Both orientalism and balkanism have recently undergone a shift, precisely in the ways in which they are gendered. Women have become more visible symbols of Balkan backwardness while orientalist depictions have moved from emphasizing erotic sexuality to a focus on heavily veiled and controlled women, symbolizing the political threat of the east/Islam. In examining the everyday workings of such discourses in a community straddling the imagined boundaries of east and west, Elissa Helms shows a range of competing (re) configurations of east/west and related dichotomies, which are reconfigured precisely through notions of gender. While some of these (re)articulations seem to challenge dominant orientalist and balkanist frameworks, Helms argues that they ultimately reproduce (gendered) notions of opposing east and west civilizations.

Transformations of gender, sexuality and citizenship in Southeast Europe: New lenses for new, and not so new, times

“…In this group of texts, Kahlina considers most directly the impact of EU politics on sexual citizenship in Croatia and Serbia, noting the different rhetorical and political strategies being used by differently positioned actors in their countries. She finds alive and well the maintenance and redrawing of the boundaries of "Europe" in relation to "the Balkans" (Bakić-Hayden 1995; Helms, 2008) where state policies towards gays and lesbians become a litmus test for whether a country will be accepted into the European club (see Renkin, 2009). At the same time, Kahlina's work also complicates notions, established by feminist critics in the 1990s, of gendered nationalism in the successor states of Yugoslavia as (hetero)patriarchal, showing that this region has its own versions of homonationalism (Puar, 2013(Puar, , 2007 where full citizenship rights for sexual minorities go hand in hand with nationalism rather than against it.…”

Wearing Hijab in Sarajevo

“…Veiling is often viewed in Orientalist terms, among non-Muslim and Muslim Bosnians alike (Helms 2008). The image of veiling that had taken root during the socialist period has a particularly important impact on contemporary perceptions.…”

“…Interestingly, attitudes to veiling do not necessarily follow religious or ethnic lines. Although veiling as a marker of Muslim and Bosniak identity does play a role in interactions with other Bosnians, questions of Islamic dress arguably have a higher profile among Bosniaks themselves, particularly in Bosniak majority areas like Sarajevo (Helms 2008). …”

Comment: post-war settlements and the production of new illegalities

“…Janine Wendel's (2001) enlightening look at aid to the region might provide good contextual background to the account of its dismantling. Last but not least, new work on gender in BiH which explores the subtleties of ethnic representations and identities could perhaps further fill out the complex picture of the post-conflict gender landscape (Helms 2008).…”