Not in our name: Collective identity of the Serbian Women in Black

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Not in our name: collective identity ofthe Serbian Women in BlackBojan Bilić aa School of Slavonic and East European Studies, University CollegeLondon, London, UK

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Not in our name: collective identity of the Serbian Women in Black

Bojan Bilic∗

School of Slavonic and East European Studies, University College London, London, UK

(Received 10 August 2011; final version received 20 March 2012)

The Belgrade-based activist group Women in Black has been for twenty years nowarticulating a feminist anti-war stance in an inimical socio-political climate. Theoperation of this anti-patriarchal and anti-militarist organization, which has resistednumerous instances of repression, has not been until now systematically approachedfrom a social movement perspective. This paper draws upon a range of empiricalmethods, comprising life-story interviews, documentary analysis and participantobservation, to address the question as to how it was possible for this small circle ofactivists to remain on the Serbian/post-Yugoslav civic scene for the last two decades.My central argument is that a consistent collective identity, which informs thegroup’s resource mobilization and strategic options, holds the key to the surprisingsurvival of this activist organization. I apply recent theoretical advances on collectiveidentity to the case of the Belgrade Women in Black with the view of promoting apotentially fruitful cross-fertilization between non-Western activism and the Westernconceptual apparatus for studying civic engagement.

Keywords: Women in Black; Serbia; collective identity; anti-war activism

On 12 October 2010 the Belgrade-based Women in Black (WIB) reported that two young

men invaded their organization’s headquarters and attacked both men and women activists

with a hammer. They were, according to the report, shouting and calling for the “faggots”

among the present. Given that the incident occurred on the same day as another extremely

violent occurrence – the Belgrade Gay Pride Parade – WIB concluded that the attack was

related to the support the group has been giving to the rights of the LGBT population in

Serbia. They called upon the Serbian authorities to find and punish the perpetrators

(Tanjug). A few hours later, WIB were in the first line of activists carrying banners

against homophobia in a heavily policed human rights demonstration in which more

than a hundred policemen were injured.

∗ ∗ ∗

This has been one of the latest incidents in a twenty year long history of (repression towards)

the Belgrade-based WIB – an indisputably singular phenomenon on the Serbian civic

scene. Active for exactly two decades, since the very beginning of the wars of Yugoslav

succession, the members of this group have staged more than 700 street performances, cam-

paigns and demonstrations in Serbia and throughout the region – an achievement that would

be extraordinary even in countries with longer activist traditions and more liberal political

cultures. From its very inception, this organization has been led by two slogans: Always dis-

obedient and Not in our name, both of which reflect their strong and consistent political

ISSN 0090-5992 print/ISSN 1465-3923 online

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∗Email: [email protected]

Nationalities Papers

Vol. 40, No. 4, July 2012, 607–623

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stances characterized by the prefix anti. They are anti-patriarchal, anti-nationalist and anti-

militarist as well as anti-homophobic and anticlerical (secular).

The Belgrade WIB represent an essential part of a small, but vibrant community of

activists and human rights defenders that became prominent in the early 1990s, immedi-

ately prior to and during the wars in the former Yugoslavia. Many of these initiatives and

groups have waxed and waned, faced with internal tensions, constant regime repression

and an inimical societal atmosphere fraught with poverty and fear. However, in spite of

the unfavourable circumstances, WIB have managed to preserve their activist charge

and they have consistently (re)won a portion of the public sphere and physical public

space in which their anti-war and anti-patriarchal message could be clearly heard.

This paper draws upon a range of methodological techniques to account for the surpris-

ing survival of this group of activists. The empirical corpus pertains to life-story interviews

with the group members and other (non-WIB) anti-war activists in Serbia and in the region,

their leaflets and publications as well as to my participant observations.1 In summer 2010, I

spent two months with WIB, taking an active part in their activities which provided me with

access to their documentary sources. I also participated in a silent public vigil in the

memory of the Srebrenica massacre which took place at the Belgrade Republic Square

as well as in a street performance organized in the central street of the Serbian capital.

The collected empirical material is here positioned in the framework of recent collec-

tive identity scholarship because this approach can begin to account for the two-decade

long resilience of WIB in an unpropitious political climate. By drawing upon Anglo-

Saxon sociological scholarship and applying it to the post-Yugoslav research context,

this paper promotes a potentially fruitful cross-fertilization between the non-Western acti-

vism and the Western conceptual apparatus for studying civic engagement. In the follow-

ing section, I introduce the (post-)Yugoslav feminist scene and position WIB in it.

Yugoslav feminism and the Serbian WIB

The Belgrade-based WIB has built upon and continued a relatively long tradition of fem-

inist activism in the former Yugoslavia (Bilic, “Recovering post-Yugoslav anti-war and

pacifist activism”; Bozinovic). The emergence and operation of the autonomous anti-

war feminist groups on the Yugoslav territory throughout the 1990s cannot be understood

without appreciating the long-term trajectories of the Yugoslav feminist movement.2 The

political involvement of the Yugoslav women intensified towards the end of the Second

World War and in the immediate post-war period.3 Women from all of the Yugoslav

republics (except from Macedonia – they could not reach Bosanski Petrovac because of

the still non-liberated territories) established the Antifascist Women Front [Antifasisticki

front zena] whose principal tasks were the liberation of the country, the improvement of

the women social and educational standing and the struggle for the equality of women and

men. Once the war was over, the Front was representing the women of Yugoslavia in the

international women movement. Due to the constant women’s engagement, the Yugoslav

progressive legislature equalized the legal status of men and women in all spheres of life. It

allowed abortion by a law passed already in 1951 and it also incorporated into its legal

system all international conventions pertaining to women’s rights (Nedovic).

However, while these efforts appreciably reduced women’s illiteracy and improved

public health, the regime never really succeeded in destabilizing the deeply entrenched

patriarchal values. In spite of many positive trends, Yugoslavia still witnessed differences

between regions and republics as well as serious gender-related urban–rural imbalances.

For many women there was a discrepancy between the proclaimed equality policies of the

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regime and their everyday social reality coloured by male dominance, sexism and dis-

crimination (Bilic, “In a crevice between gender and nation”).

Towards the beginning of the 1970s, in the context of the global 1968 student demon-

strations, there were groups of highly educated, mostly non-party-affiliated women in

Yugoslav urban centres. Well-informed about the contemporary feminist trends in the

Western world, these women grew increasingly dissatisfied by the position of women in

the Yugoslav society. As a result of this, feminist ideas became ever more present in

the Yugoslav public space, especially after the conference Comrade Women. The

Woman Question: A New Approach? which took place in Belgrade in 1978 (Blagojevic;

Bonfiglioli). Two groups, called Women and Society, were then established in Belgrade

and Zagreb and the Belgrade one defined itself in 1986 as feminist. Interestingly

enough, it operated without any state financial or institutional support. Thus, feminist

engagement grew ever stronger and led to a proliferation of workshops, public discussions,

SOS hotlines for women victims of violence and other women’s groups, although it was

constantly confronted with a lot of resistance coming from the governmental organizations

devoted to women.

As republic nationalisms grew stronger throughout Yugoslavia, some feminists felt that

they brought with them sweeping militarization and patriarchy that threatened to undo the

women-oriented legacies of Yugoslav socialism. With the deterioration of the political situ-

ation in Yugoslavia, feminist work acquired a more political dimension. In the Serbian

context, feminist activists distanced themselves from the rising nationalist sentiment and

decided to undertake political actions. A group of them established the Belgrade Women

Lobby (in 1990), an organization which issued around twenty anti-war public statements.

The major anti-war initiative in Belgrade, the Centre for Anti-War Action, was established

in December 1991 and it, among other activities, organized many anti-war demonstrations

and offered legal help to the conscientious objectors in Serbia.

The key figure of the Belgrade-based WIB – Stanislava Stasa Zajovic – was active in

the group Women and Society and she was a co-founder of the Belgrade Women Lobby and

the SOS hotline. She was also a participant in the activities of the Centre for Anti-War

Actions. Zajovic became dissatisfied with the character of the mainstream anti-war protests

organized by the Centre, arguing that “the peace movement. . . repeated certain patriarchal

models, using patriarchal language and ignoring the inequalities between men and

women”. She thus saw a need to found a “specifically feminist initiative against the terri-

fying upsurge of patriarchal militarism now dominating politics, pervading the media and

swaggering the streets” (Zajovic, issued in 1991, published in 1993, 84).

In such a politico-social context, the Belgrade-based WIB had their first public appear-

ance on 9 October 1991 when they staged a silent vigil in front of the Student Cultural

Centre in downtown Belgrade. They were inspired by the first group of WIB which was

founded in Israel in 1988 as a reaction to the First Intifada with the view of publicly

denouncing the omnipresence of war, violence and unpunished crimes in their lives.

These women decided to dress in black following the white women of South Africa

who wore a black strip while protesting against Apartheid (Urosevic 29). The Serbian

WIB have received numerous awards for their engagement and along with their Israeli

counterpart they were nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize in 2001.4

Every week since their foundation and all the way until the end of the Yugoslav armed

conflicts, the Serbian WIB silently protested at the Belgrade central Republic Square while

dressed only in black. Since the end of the wars, they have organized silent vigils to com-

memorate some of the most important dates both regionally and internationally, but the

main thrust of their activities now has to do with forcing the Serbian authorities and the

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wider society to ‘come to terms with’ the criminal past, especially in relation to recogniz-

ing the above-mentioned Srebrenica massacre as genocide.

Ever since their first public appearance in 1991, WIB were exposed to numerous

instances of repression comprising the administrative-institutional as well as social. The

leader (Zajovic 65–70) of the group argues that the history of repression could be

divided into three distinct phases: the first one took place throughout the 1990s and is charac-

terized by the state involvement in the wars and the concurrent denial of it. During this phase,

the members of the group were not allowed to work with refugees and those with whom they

did work were questioned about this by the secret police. Many women also had “informa-

tive talks” with the police that were accompanied by threats and blackmail aimed at weak-

ening the group cohesion. Feminist colleagues coming to WIB meetings from other

countries were denied visas to enter Serbia or they were not allowed entry at the Serbian

border. The repression reached its apogee during the last months of the regime in 2000:

the activists were stigmatized, their houses searched, passports and documentation confis-

cated and their volunteers banished.

The second period is between the regime overthrow (October 2000) and the assassina-

tion of the Prime Minister Zoran Ðindic, where there was an appreciable relaxation in the

political climate which WIB used for decentralizing their activists and organizing initiat-

ives outside Belgrade. However, legal trials against the group that started during the pre-

vious government were continued before being terminated in 2003. This showed that the

judiciary was not reformed as quickly as expected. More serious repressive acts resumed

during the third phase which began in the wake of Ðindic’s assassination. The organiz-

ation was yet again audited, its members were physically and verbally attacked and

accused of prostitution. It can be added that, with the comeback of the Democratic

Party, the WIB performances enjoy state support, but they have become heavily

policed, which is an aspect that I discuss in further detail below.

During their almost two decade long existence, WIB have often been subject of socio-

logical inquiry, mostly in the context of other Yugoslav/Serbian anti-war efforts. For

example, Cockburn discusses their work in a broader study of feminist anti-war activism

in which she also touches upon the presence of men in WIB and other feminist vigils

around the world. Hughes et al. recognize WIB as the most important feminist anti-war

initiative in Serbia and they highlight a political shift away from the patriarchy-oriented

Centre for Anti-War Action. Other studies approach the group from a more anthropological

perspective and examine the ways in which feminist civic participation redefined women’s

political subjectivities and women’s role in the wars of Yugoslav succession (Devic,

“Redefining the public-private boundary”; Duhacek; Slapsak). Fridman (2006a, 2006b,

2011) positions the work of the organization in the context of social memory politics,

responsibility and denial. She explores the role of the organization in raising public aware-

ness and forcing Serbian society to come to terms with the criminal past. She concludes

that the anti-war efforts, including WIB, could not have stopped the wars, but managed

to keep an alternative voice alive throughout the conflicts.

The above studies mostly address the questions pertaining to the organization’s emer-

gence (Baiocchi) and its function as a ‘denial breaker’ within the Serbian political context

(Fridman). However, they do not draw upon the conceptual corpus of social movement

theories to enquire as to how it was possible for this activist organization to survive for

almost two decades. And yet, speaking at a celebration organized to mark the 15th anni-

versary of the organization, the co-founder and leader of the Belgrade WIB said: “Feel-

ings, opinions, passions and thoughts of many people are incorporated in the WIB as a

collective act, as a product of collective work” (Women for Peace 13, author’s emphasis).

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It is precisely this idea of collectivity that is, in my opinion, crucial for the organization’s

survival.

Analysis

Collective identity has become an increasingly explored concept in social movement

studies. It is argued that it might explain those aspects of collective enterprises for

which resource mobilization or political process accounts seem to be insufficient (Polletta

and Jaspers 283–305). At the heart of collective identity research lies the question of how

a sense of cohesion is developed among social movement participants which informs

collective action (Hunt and Benford 484). Melucci was one of the first social movement

scholars to systematically engage with the idea of collective identity. He claimed that:

the empirical unity of a social movement should be considered as a result, rather than a start-ing point, a fact to be explained rather than evidence [. . .] the actors “produce” the collectiveaction because they are able to define themselves and their relationship with the environment(Melucci, “The process of collective identity” 43).

Melucci perceives collective identity as a process which comprises cognitive definitions

pertaining to ends, means, and the field of action which develop within a system of oppor-

tunities and constrains and become expressed through a shared language of rituals, prac-

tices and symbolic artefacts. All of these, Melucci claims, point to collective identity as

a system of relations and representations which should be studied as a testament to the con-

structive process of a social movement, rather than as empirical dimensions that produce a

“reified” version of it. Melucci thinks of collective identity as a movement characteristic

which ensures its continuity and permanence over time. This is achieved by the processes

through which collective identity continually marks the limits of the actor within its social

environment. I consider five important facets of the WIB collective identity construction:

blackness, activism and body use, conceptualizing the group as a safe-haven, ideological

consistency and leadership.

Blackness: wearing a colour of political visibility

The main aim of the Belgrade anti-war feminists gathered around WIB since the very

beginning of the Yugoslav wars was to reject the notion that their anti-war engagement

stemmed from the “natural” female propensity to care, comfort and feed. They wanted

to articulate their stance not as a socially and biologically predisposed women’s role,

but as a conscious political choice and an intentional radical criticism of the dominance

of the patriarchal and the militarist in their society. Their objective was to increase the visi-

bility of women as political actors as well as to strengthen the solidarity among the women

in all former Yugoslav republics and the world arguing that the “active solidarity between

women is the force and the tenderness by which we can overcome isolation, loneliness,

traumas and other consequences of hatred” (issued in 1992, published in Women in

Black, 1993, 50). In their 1993 annual publication Women for Peace, the Belgrade-

based WIB write:

We wanted it to be clearly understood that what we were doing was our political choice, aradical criticism of the patriarchal, militarist regime and a non-violent act of resistance to pol-icies that destroy cities, kill people and annihilate human relations (23).

Wearing exclusively black during their public vigils is a crucial element in these efforts. It

draws upon the culturally shared ideas of mourning and expressing grief in an Eastern


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European/Christian context (Slapsak). Reflecting upon the use of black colour in their per-

formances, the members of the WIB claimed:

We are a group of women who stand in silence and black every week to express our disap-proval against war. We have decided to see what the women’s side of this war is. Womenwear black in our countries to show their grief for death of the loved ones. We wear blackfor the death of all the victims of war. We wear black because the people have beenthrown out of their homes, because women have been raped, because cities and villageshave been burned and destroyed (issued on 17 December 1992, published in Women forPeace, 1993, 101).

Blackness is an expression of bereavement and empathy for “all the victims of war”. It

cuts across national affiliations and works against the implicitly accepted notion that

“our” victims are more important (Fridman, “‘It was like fighting our own people’”).

This is particularly significant in the Serbian context given the fact that the country

was not officially at war until the 1999 NATO bombings. By repeatedly bringing the

colour black into the public space, these women (and occasionally also men) demonstrate

feminine power in a highly re-patriarchalized environment with a belligerent charge. The

act of silently standing dressed in black at the Belgrade central Republic Square effec-

tively subverts power relations which normally assign to women positions of marginality

and submission. Black clothes used in the protest depart from their traditionally private,

home-restricted sphere which associates them with a socially expected women’s role in

expressing grief and mourning. Black, thus, becomes a “visible, political colour”

(Women for Peace, 2007, 30). All the way to the 1995 Dayton Peace Agreement, it

also pointed to the both ideological and geographical proximity of war and denied

loyalty to the regime.

While preparing for the (non-silent) performance A pair of shoes, one life5 it was reiter-

ated within the group a couple of times that only black clothes should be worn, at least by

the core activists that have been keeping the organization alive. One of the most important

mechanisms through which social movements foster collective identity construction is

boundary work (Hunt and Benford 485). WIB’s exclusively black clothes attract public

attention, facilitate group recognition and constitute a clear separator between the protes-

tors and the audience. They strengthen the group by pointing to its members’ similarity in

a public space. As one activist says:

[. . .] we wear black because we should not represent an individual, but we demonstrate ourstrength, we show that we are one whole. . . the more of us there are in one colour, the strongerimpression of the audience will be that we are strong, potent. . . so that we can better transferthe message that we want to say (cited in Women for Peace, 2007, 31).

Blackness has been recognized as the main symbolical feature of the Belgrade-based WIB

both internally and by the general public. In the latter case and particularly among the

opponents’ circles, it might have become associated with dark forces and obscure feminine

power (Benski). This is testified by the fact that a small group of women that gathered in

the Knez-Mihailova Street to obstruct the performance and verbally attack the activists

were dressed completely in white. While representing an extreme opposite to WIB, this

strategic choice of the counter-demonstrators drew upon the traditional notions of white

as a colour of innocence and purity. It is, then, interesting to observe how this very act

points to what Melucci (48) recognized as “the paradox of identity”, namely the idea

that the affirmation of difference from the rest of society presupposes a tacit acceptance

of it and belonging to the shared culture by which protestors can be recognized as

social actors. In this regard, re-creations and affirmations of identity always involve

certain equality and reciprocity.

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Activism: letting the body speak

The Belgrade-based WIB is the only organization, founded at the very beginning of the

wars of Yugoslav succession on the whole post-Yugoslav territory, which has preserved

its activist component up to the present day. The members of the group staged regular

weekly protests on Belgrade streets throughout the whole duration of the armed conflict

and they continued doing so even after a peace agreement was reached. In the post-war

period the frequency of public actions has, nevertheless, subsided and they are mostly

devoted to commemorations of important anniversaries or to expressions of solidarity

with civilians involved in other conflicts around the world. The regularity of public gath-

erings during the most difficult war years served as a mechanism for group maintenance

and continual rejuvenation in spite of the fact that, as one activist said, “the number of vigil

participants appreciably varied, dropping at one point to only three”.

WIB street performances, along with the colour black discussed above, are character-

ized by two important elements: silence and use of the body. The majority of WIB vigils

are strictly silent (although, on the basis of my participant observations, this does not seem

to be always the case) and they might involve activists either standing or lying on the

ground. Sasson-Levy and Rapoport claim that the human body is the vehicle of all

social protest, but theories of social movements have neglected the questions raised by

a “protesting body” of men and women. Yet feminist research has recently highlighted

the role of the body in collective political action. Bodies are turned into sites of protest

which destabilize the supposedly gender-neutral social and national-political order. By

forcing the public to appreciate their protest as distinctly ‘gendered’, WIB redefine the pol-

itical discourse pertaining to the legitimacy of political participation and the fashion in

which it is done.

[. . .] the body produces, elaborates, and articulates political ideology. It does not only serve asa medium for change, but also realises it. This leads us to suggest that female body as a text ofalternative and subversive knowledge can challenge deep social and cultural structures.(Sasson-Levy and Rapoport 399)

Moreover, silence is understood as a creation of space for concentration and thinking. It is

at the same time a culturally shared message of human dignity, bereavement and com-

passion with war victims. In their public statement, WIB write:

We chose silence because we reject superfluous words which disable thinking about ourselvesand others. Silence is a feature of the lives of many citizens, both men and women. The mediahave silenced us, but for us silence is in its entirety an expression of our disagreement with thiswar [. . .] important experiences are expressed and felt through silence. . .silence here fromwhere the war started is a protest, it is our scream and warning. With our silence and ourblackness we want to express shame and empathy. (Women for Peace, 2007, 33)

Along with its grief-related connotations, the silence of WIB in their street performances is a

means of non-violent defence. It is, similarly to exclusively black clothes, a separator from

the broader public to whose reactions the members of the organization generally attempt to

remain unresponsive. As one activist says, silence “is a method for us to show that we are

different”. It strengthens the group representation of a single actor frequently positioned

in noisy streets and squares of the Serbian capital. In the words of the group leader:

Silence is important for learning non-violence. You do not wage wars which they want todraw you into, you do not react to provocations. That is a deconstruction, you are silent,you do not want to repeat what they ask from you (cited in Women for Peace, 2007, 34).

This was also reiterated a couple of times throughout the preparations for the 2010 street

performance A pair of shoes – one life. Before the group of activists actually left the WIB


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headquarters surrounded by heavy police forces, the leader of the organization emphasized

the importance of remaining calm and silent as well as of resisting the temptation to reply

to potential offensive remarks by the passers-by and especially by those who came to the

performance to interrupt it and obstruct it.

Safe-haven: WIB as a space of freedom and solidarity

Group identity is possible only through emotional bonds and feelings of solidarity which

reinforce it during the times of conflict and repression (Barr and Drury 245; Klander-

mans). Shared emotional experience, which underlines the process of collective identity

construction, gives meaning to group action and can have significant biographical impact

(e.g. Goodwin; McAdam, Freedom Summer). One of the most important functions of

participation in WIB is the idea of claiming, sharing in, co-constructing and defending

a portion of social space in which group members can escape the requirements of the

roles afforded to them by the militarized and patriarchal social environment. The

group becomes a surrounding in which members feel free to express their emotions as

well as discuss their personal concerns linked to a set of broader societal patterns

which the group tries to oppose. The organization is perceived as a site in which

members are allowed to be what they are without feeling threatened. Coming together

on the basis of shared grievances and condensing them through protest into a political

message has a significant empowering effect on the group members. As one WIB activist

says:

For us, those protests were some kind of medicine. It might appear strange, but during thishour in the street, we would build up our own space in which, at least temporarily, ourown values were valid. That space was so openly different from the pervasive formalreality. It was a space in which we were free6 and we could breathe. From time to time theaggression of the external world could be felt physically, but it is exactly because of thisthat the links among the group members were growing stronger. I was feeling strongerwithin the group. [. . .] all of those were islands of our own world and our own valueswhere we gave each other strength to proceed (cited in Women for Peace, 2007, 20).

In accordance with a lot of research done on the biographical impact of protest partici-

pation, this extract shows that the act of taking part in a collective endeavour tends to

strengthen the willingness to engage in further group undertakings (McAdam; Searle-

Chatterjee). Protesting can be a psychologically transformative experience because it con-

stitutes protestors as political actors and, thus, creates a sense of freedom and agency

(Bilic, “Staying ‘sane’” 45; Fridman, “Alternative voices in public space”). The activist

claims that the group became stronger precisely because of the instances of aggression

against it. This encouraged activists to stick even more tightly to the values they rep-

resented because they could witness them endangered in the open space. Another activist

who has been with the organization for almost 18 years says:

I joined WIB on one winter day in 1992 because among them I found, how can I tell you, Ifound a soul asylum. . . there I found everything that I was looking for for years. . . I found thatword feminism which I could not really pinpoint, I found that courage which I had, but I couldnot just stand on my own in the street. . . and however painful the whole story was, this experi-ence saved me. . . every Wednesday I was coming to the square to take a little bit of air and tobreathe. . . (Interview with the author, 15 July 2010)

The idea of perceiving civic engagement and WIB participation as a “breathing space

expansion” is quite recurrent (Terselic 20). It demonstrates that the protestors found them-

selves in a morally unbearable political climate in which only protest participation

afforded them a possibility to remain who they are and, at the same time, to make sense

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of what they were doing or wanted to do. A certain dramatic tone with which the activist

18 years later describes the moment of joining the organization gives evidence for how

psychologically potent this experience must have been.

Ideological consistency: unwavering clarity of a political stance

The Belgrade-based WIB, from very early on, have perceived Serbian nationalism as the

engine behind Yugoslavia’s dissolution. They argue that Belgrade was the ideological

centre of a project which wanted to keep all the members of the Serbian nation within a

single state while infringing upon the territorial integrity and national sovereignty of

other ex-Yugoslav peoples. As early as June 1992, while many anti-war activists still

talked about a civil war on the Yugoslav territory,7 in a public statement issued in

Belgrade, the WIB argued:

We say that the Serbian regime and its repressive structures (Federal Army and paramilitaryformations) are responsible for all three wars, in Slovenia, Croatia, and Bosnia-Herzegovina.The Serbian regime leads wars in the name of all citizens of Serbia. This way all the citizensbecome hostages of their imperialistic politics. (Women for Peace, 1993, 50)

Although they do condemn nationalism and combative patriarchy generally, the WIB con-

stantly highlight the appreciable unevenness of power distribution in the former Yugosla-

via in which the Serbian political elite had the easiest access to both political institutions

and military means. This gave the regime a substantive amount of leverage in the conflict

and enabled it to attack Croatia and support the Serb forces in Bosnia-Herzegovina. Thus,

WIB see the armed conflict as an act of Serbian aggression on Croatia and Bosnia-

Herzegovina which “abused the idea of Yugoslavia and turned it into a Great Serbia

project”. The members of the organization have for two decades now clearly stayed

away from denouncing war crimes “done on all sides” – a formula which is often

adopted by the Serbian officials and which, in the WIB’s opinion, relativizes the

notions of guilt and responsibility. This attitude earned the group members many

friends outside and many enemies inside the country.

Ideological consistency is the most important group unifier which neutralizes or at

least decreases the importance of many other differences among the group members. As

one activist explains:

What attracted me to WIB? We were of different ages, different education, but we all sharedthe same political convictions – we were all against Milosevic’s belligerent politics and infavour of a peaceful solution to the problems. I liked it very much that the differenceswithin the group were not relevant, either on a national or religious basis – that was alsothe way in which I was brought up within my own family [. . .] for me personally, thevigils on the Belgrade streets and squares were very important. The WIB were the onlygroup that constantly, from month to month, from year to year, publicly and openly mani-fested its political, anti-militarist stance. (cited in Women for Peace, 2007, 58)

One of the most important political objectives of the Serbian WIB is to raise public aware-

ness, break the state of denial and force society “to come to terms with” the criminal past

(Fridman “‘It was like fighting a war with our own people’”). An essential element in this

endeavour is the recognition of the 1995 Srebrenica massacre – in which the Bosnian Serb

forces killed around 8,000 Bosnian Muslim boys and men – as genocide. Although the

International Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia has unequivocally referred to this as

an act of genocide, the Serbian authorities still resist such a label.8 That no relativization

of this position is conceivable among WIB was demonstrated during the preparations for

the Knez-Mihailova Street performance in July 2010. The group asked a designer to come


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up with a leaflet which would give the public some basic information about their street

action. However, when the leaflet was finished and brought to the organization’s headquar-

ters, the members of the group realized that it read Srebrenica massacre instead of geno-

cide. All the copies of it were withdrawn and new ones with the right word had to be

produced.

This aspect of the Women in Black operation is illustrative of the concept of plausi-

bility structures which was developed by Berger (1969). Berger claims that views

which are at odds with mainstream society would necessarily weaken under social

pressure. In order to keep normative commitment to the group, members must “huddle

together with like-minded fellow deviants – and huddle very closely indeed. Only in a

counter-community of considerable strength does cognitive deviance have a chance to

maintain itself” (Berger 19). Plausibility structure, formed by intimately interacting

group participants, can sustain socially untenable perspectives by enabling constant inter-

action with “confirming others” (Erickson Nepstad 51) who legitimate beliefs and assuage

doubts. This affective commitment to the group can be maintained only if the individual

remains within the structure. It is depleted through a lack of communication or infrequent

interaction (Erickson Nepstad).

The Belgrade-based WIB has managed to preserve its plausibility structure at the

expense of assuming a particularly marginal position on the Serbian political scene.

They advocate a radically anti-nationalist stance in an environment which has often

been charged by a strong nationalist sentiment. By positioning the responsibility for

the wars of the Yugoslav succession exclusively with the Serbian regime, these

women provide a rather simplistic interpretation of the Yugoslav conflicts which pre-

vents them from having a stronger impact on their own social environment. They do

not seem to fully appreciate the complexity of the mutually perpetuating antithetical

forces operating within the post-Yugoslav political arena which have their long-term

trajectories.9

Leadership: strength of an untiring charisma

WIB is an organization based on the principle of horizontality and solidarity. In their street

vigils, group members are dressed in the same way, they often stand in (semi-)circles

which equalize their position or they, alternatively, lie on the ground while (occasionally)

holding each others’ hands. This public side of protest promotes group cohesion, presents

it as an exclusively collective undertaking and obscures the role of the organization’s

leader. It actually makes the leader of the group invisible, indistinguishable from the

rest of the vigil participants. In a horizontally-oriented collective, any explicit discussion

of the leader’s role is absent from the group publications. This particular aspect of the

group’s operation, therefore, can only be accessed through interviews and participant

observation.

The Serbian WIB have had the same leader since the very foundation of the organiz-

ation. This person has a rich activist background going back to the first feminist initiatives

in the former Yugoslavia. She is a co-founder of WIB and tends to be perceived as the

engine behind the group’s survival. She enjoys the highest amount of respect and admira-

tion among the group members; she coordinates all group activities and represents it in

public and abroad. The organization leader is clearly the one most frequently interviewed

by journalists and researchers alike. She chairs group meetings, silences or gives word to

those present and takes decisions when these cannot be consensually reached. The inter-

viewed WIB activists are unanimous in attributing the endurance of the organization to

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their charismatic leader. One of them says that the two decade long existence of the group

has been possible:

. . .thanks to Stasa Zajovic and to her incredible energy which from time to time becomesunbearable, it can be burdensome, but she is a creator and she gave birth to the WIB inBelgrade. It is in any case thanks to her capacity for inventing and creating a certain philos-ophy, a certain ethic of WIB that the group has managed to survive until the present day.(Interview with the author, 20 July 2010)

This activist suggests that the organization has, in a certain way, been a life project in which

its leader has become identified with it to the extent of rendering it almost meaningless to

separate them. This project or style (“philosophy”) is essentially characterized by a

corpus of ethical values which has been a two decade long constant in the group’s existence.

Note how the activist perceives the organization as its leader’s offspring when claiming that

she, as a “creator”, “gave birth” to it. Similarly, a very intimate pairing of the organization

with its leader became obvious in an interview with an older activist:

When I look at her I am amazed by the passion with which she explains a certain idea orargues for some kind of proposal. . . for example, if we sit in a bar somewhere and hermobile rings in relation to a WIB engagement, she cannot sit, she goes around the bar,people look at her. . . but she cannot help it, she goes on talking, she is so much into it. . . Ioften tell her ‘you must be less passionate, you must put less heart into all of this’. . . some-times I am afraid that so much effort might not do her good. . . (Interview with the author,10 July 2010)

Even very rhizoid structures concerned with ‘de-hierarchization’ and power de-centraliza-

tion have central figures whose leadership stems from their organizational skills, charisma,

ambition, political agency and courage which make them opt for unusually high energy

investments into their cause. This commitment gives group members an impression that

the group is kept together and that its objectives are worth struggling for. It, thus,

serves as a powerful incentive for further engagement.

Discussion

Melucci (“The process of collective identity” 55) claims that “to understand how a social

movement succeeds or fails in becoming a collective actor is [. . .] a fundamental task for

sociologists”. This paper set out to explore the surprising survival and two decade long

existence of the Belgrade-based anti-war activist group WIB while focusing on the

elements that are most important for the process of their collective identity construction.

The analysis of my interviews and participant observations as well as of the WIB publi-

cations shows that the organization has devised specific strategic options that strengthen

group cohesion and promote collective identity.

First, wearing exclusively black clothes and silently presenting their bodies at regular

weekly intervals turns a moral and political grievance into a programme which constantly

challenges and reaffirms commitment to the movement’s cause. Participation in the WIB

public performances constitutes body as “an alternative political and gendered knowledge”

(Sasson-Levy and Rapoport 400). The resulting sense of collectivity and solidarity serves

as a discouragement for disengagement because it reduces the cognitive dissonance which

appears as a result of the need to oppose the regime’s belligerent policies, on the one hand,

and the (traditionally patriarchal) lack of political agency to do something about them, on

the other. Movement participation re-produces a portion of political and social reality in

which thoughts and emotions can be freely shared and in which ethical values are con-

ceived as universal rather than national. In such a way, the organization becomes a


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safe-haven where group members can count on unconditional support which – possibly

counter-intuitively – turns a social movement into a more static societal element (Bilic,

“Staying ‘sane’” 45). The pre-agreed cyclicity of protest, characterized by a straightfor-

ward ideological undercurrent throughout the wars of Yugoslav succession and beyond

(in spite of the appreciable fluctuations of the number of activists) downplays the edu-

cational, professional or age variety within the group and produces a set of expectations

to which its members are supposed to conform, thus creating a sense of responsibility

for the organization’s survival.

In this regard, collective identity appears as an interactive and relational process which

is constantly re-negotiated while both preceding and following collective action. Collec-

tive identity does not simply emerge as an aggregate of individuals’ identities. It is, rather,

a fluid meta-concept or a relational overarching category within which particularistic iden-

tities, life histories, emotional states and political values come across important conver-

ging points. Private grievances find their way into the public space given that group

participation articulates them as political acts inseparable from the broader societal/cul-

tural behavioural patterns, values and concerns. This points to a highly politicized

nature of the organization, and invites a further examination of a plethora of political

options that can be identified among the (post-)Yugoslav anti-war activists which

inform the dynamics of their complex interactions (Walder 393).

Some researchers attempted to extend and correct Melucci’s insistence on the proces-

sual nature of collective identity by pointing to a distinction between identity process and

product which supposedly appears at the end of this development (e.g., Snow 4). Product

would, then, constitute “the constructed social object to which the movement protagonists,

adversaries and audiences respond” (e.g., Snow 4). However, as Flesher Fominaya (378)

argues, collective identity as an internally unfolding process taking place and drawing

information from a broader social milieu, on the one hand, and the visible projection

and expression of political content (the “product”), on the other, are two conceptually

different phenomena. In other words, movement opponents do not react to the collective

identity as it is experienced and constructed by group members, but to a publicly projected

movement representation. The extent to which movements are interested in closing the

gap between their collective identity and its public manifestation depends also on their

orientations and political objectives.

In the case of WIB, the distinction of collective identity as a process and collective

identity as a projected “product” (Snow) is blurred. This is due to the fact that WIB

mobilizes collective identity as a political tool – the group’s cohesion and operation

revolve around the convergence of personal, social and collective identities which con-

denses them into a political message (Flesher Fominaya 377). The organization is here

approached 20 years after its establishment, a more than sufficient period of time for

testing various strategic options and developing an easily recognizable collective identity.

Thus, what we can today empirically capture as identity construction and maintenance

strategies is the ‘sublimate’ of a long process of identity building. Moreover, this organ-

ization is not characterized by ideological heterogeneity which would make such a process

more difficult. On the contrary – unassailable ideological consistency is one of its staple

features.

In addition, at least a part of the reason for the survival of the Belgrade-based WIB lies

in the fact that recurrent collective identity articulations comprise a specific combination of

the requirement of consensus, on the one hand, and strong and charismatic leadership, on

the other. A group that is so heterogeneous in terms of its members’ age, educational level,

political experience and social ties would be paralyzed if it were based solely on consensus

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decision making. It would also generate a lot of internal resistance and would not be able to

create a sustainable collective identity if it were to be single-handedly run. By successfully

combining these two elements – consensus and leadership – and by giving them different

weights at different stages of group operation, the organization manages to preserve its both

expressive-emotional aspect and its strategic logic. In other words, the collective succeeds

in perpetuating itself by maintaining strategic elements reflective of its expressive

requirements.

Interestingly enough, the incentives for the WIB collective identity maintenance have

remained practically the same in two appreciably (but not fundamentally) different politi-

cal contexts, those during and after the Milosevic regime. In the former case, WIB were

seen as outright national traitors and their street vigils were not protected by police

forces. They were claiming and feminizing public space by silently presenting their

black-clad bodies to passers-by, many of whom were verbally offensive or physically

threatening (Devic; Fridman). In such an environment, the group members could easily

perceive their difference from the wider public.

However, once the authoritarian regime was overthrown, the WIB vigils have become

heavily policed as the state realized that it could draw political legitimacy through a heavy

police protection of non-aggressive dissenting voices. This has significantly changed the

nature of WIB performances as it has enclosed them within the public space, thus severing

interaction possibilities for physical and verbal attacks, but also for emotional exchanges,

contributions or participations. Protest militarization makes the group exotic by obstruct-

ing communication channels while concurrently perpetuating the idea, both externally and

internally, that the group members are ideologically and also physically separate from the

rest of society.

This paper revolves around the question of how collective identity, appearing as a

combination of both stable and continually renegotiated elements, contributes to the sur-

vival of a social movement. Recent social movement research demonstrates that the

notions of movement success or failure are complex, given that they comprise political,

cultural and biographical facets (Bosi and Uba, 2009). Although these are worth exploring

also in the case of the Serbian WIB, what is at stake here is a broader relationship between

the Serbian state and society, on the one hand, and the nature, experiences and legacies of

the extra-institutional engagement that appeared immediately prior to and during the wars

of Yugoslav succession. This issue is intimately related to the processes of NGO-ization

which have not only enabled many people to stay in activism professionally for two

decades, but have, to a different extent across the “alternative” sphere, led to an accumu-

lation of financial, social and symbolic capital which might start obstructing the appear-

ance of grassroots initiatives and hinder their access to institutions and sources (Bilic,

“A concept that is everything and nothing”; Stubbs; Vetta 26). It would be of interest to

see in more detail how it is possible for WIB to concurrently perpetuate and resist this

trend. What are the strategies upon which they draw to remain non-exclusive and maintain

their strong activist orientation which prevent them from completely giving in to the

necessities of professionalization and bureaucratization? Are the challenges of resisting

this trend on a par with those of surviving during the heyday of the Milosevic regime?

In this regard, Melucci (“The process of collective identity” 54) insists that the collec-

tive identity “level of analysis cannot explain everything, and the concept of collective

identity is a permanent warning about the necessity of recognizing a plurality of levels

in collective action”. My analysis has not done justice to what seems nowadays to be at

the very heart of social movement research, and that is mobilization into protest partici-

pation. WIB is a group that combines various political, historical, social and personal


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threads and networks, and one of the crucial questions in this regard has to do with the

processes and mechanisms that facilitate or obstruct political mobilization in a highly

volatile climate in which this kind of engagement can seriously put one’s health or

even life at stake (Baiocchi; McAdam “Recruitment to high-risk political activism” 64).

A more sophisticated biography-oriented account is needed to illuminate the issues of

who actually joins the organization and who decides to stay or leave and why. Given that

the group has existed for almost two decades now, it could also lend itself to a more genera-

tional approach which would contribute to our knowledge about those who join the organ-

ization 15 years after the end of the armed conflict and whose pre-existing identities cannot

be directly linked to the history of the Yugoslav civic engagement. Another possibly inspir-

ing research path would be to recover participation patterns and engagement mechanisms

while associating them with the stages of repression outlined above.

Notes

1. This paper is a part of a broader research project on the post-Yugoslav anti-war activism forwhich my interview sample included 60 activists in Serbia, around 20 of whom have been atsome point during the last twenty years associated with WIB. The participants were recruitedthrough snowball sampling – an approach for locating information-rich respondents whosenumber increases as they themselves suggest additional informants. In order to increase variance,I interviewed group members who took part in the earliest street performances as well as thosewho joined the group recently. Whereas the majority of women included in the sample comefrom Belgrade, I also talked to those members who live in other parts of Serbia. Data collectionwas conducted in December 2009 as well as in January and July 2010 by means of mp3-recordedsemi-structured interviews lasting between 40 minutes and three hours. All participants wereinterviewed face-to-face, mostly at the WIB headquarters in Belgrade.

2. Feminist initiatives on the Yugoslav territory, which can be traced back to the second half of the19th century, were coloured by socialist ideology from the very beginning (Slapsak). In 1919Croat and Serbian women founded the Secretariat of Women Socialists which operated withinthe Socialist Workers’ Party. They could, thus, rather quickly establish ideological linkageswith young communists and anti-fascists who in 1941 initiated the People’s Liberation War.

3. Although the Yugoslav partisans mostly counted on women’s material and logistic support (col-lection and distribution of food, finding accommodation for refugees and children, etc.) manyYugoslav women were active fighters and a few of them were also declared national heroes bythe post-war Tito regime.

4. It is important to note that WIB nowadays represents a loose world-wide network of women acti-vists committed to peace and justice.

5. The public performance A pair of shoes, one life took place in July 2010 in the Knez MihailovaStreet in downtown Belgrade. It was jointly organized by the members of WIB and independentBelgrade artists (e.g., DAH theatre) to mark the 15th anniversary of the Srebrenica genocide. Theorganizers invited Serbian citizens and the international public to donate a pair of shoes with asigned message to the survivors of the Srebrenica genocide and members of the victims’ families.The purpose was to collect a pair of shoes for each genocide victim. The collected shoes were puton the WIB banners extended along the street and the accompanying messages were read inSerbian and other languages.

6. Note that Serbo-Croatian, like other Slavic languages, has grammatical gender. This means thatall the associated words (adjectives, verbs etc.) must have specific inflections reflecting the genderof the noun which they accompany. WIB challenges the “gender-neutral” language usage whichtraditionally applies masculine nouns when referring to both genders. Thus, the word free here isslobodne (in the Serbian original) meaning free women.

7. The Yugoslav armed conflict did have some civil war elements. For example, the people of the so-called Republika Srpska Krajina, a self-proclaimed Serb entity within Croatia (1991–1995), werefighting against the Croatian state. See also Bolcic (1992) and his idea of “internal war”.

8. The International Court of Justice also based in The Hague, the Netherlands, has recentlyabsolved Serbia from responsibility for the Srebrenica massacre, to which it also referred as an

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act of genocide. The Court, however, did rule that Serbia was responsible for failing to exert itsinfluence to attempt to prevent it and punish its perpetrators (Summary of the Judgment, 2007).

9. The need for maintaining unquestionable ideological consistency has sometimes made Women inBlack choose rather problematic strategic options. For example, in the summer of 2010 the leaderof the organization along with a few other members took part in the Peace March (from theBosnian village of Nezuk to the Memorial Centre in Potocari) which takes place every year tocommemorate the victims of the Srebrenica genocide. The March participants, however, weregreeted by Naser Oric, a Bosnian military officer sentenced by the International Crime Tribunalfor the Former Yugoslavia for failing to prevent the murder of Bosnian Serb detainees.

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Women in Black, 1993. 29–35. Print.Zajovic, Stasa. “Dis/continuity of Repression Towards Women in Black.” Zene za mir. Ed.

Stasa Zajovic. Belgrade: Women in Black, 2007. 65–70. Print.


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Not in our name: Collective identity of the Serbian Women in Black