WOMEN WRITERS ON THE LITERARY LEFT: FROM PROLETARIAN TO POST-YUGOSLAV LITERATURE

Abstract

By interpreting the fiction of Dubravka Ugrešić (1949) and Biljana Jovanović (1953–1996), two Yugoslav and feminist authors whose first prose works coincided with the development of Yugoslav neofeminism and transformations brought by the artistic practices of the Neo-Avant-garde, the paper focused on the possibilities, but also on the relevance of reviving the notion of the literary left. What Aleksandar Flaker theorized as the literature of emphasized social functions, oriented towards “the ultimate goals of the workers’ movement”on one hand, and on the other as the avant-garde aesthetic transformation has been employed as the main axis of the analysis. However, though reflecting some of the ideological-poetic aspects of the dynamic (proletarian vs. avant-garde practices), the literary realities of the two authors also moved this established theoretical paradigm. Whereas Ugrešić’s fiction, which is predominantly read inside the transnational and feminist discourses in fact covers/produces many of the (Neo-)avant-gardists literary structures, Jovanović’s literary world could be theorized as the variation of the proletarian literature, with its specific ideological and aesthetic materialities, and a particular, anti-nostalgic relationship towards the past.Conclusions of the analysis lead to identifying the links among these literary realities and the post-Yugoslav literature, as a possible inheritor of the traditions of the literary left.