How We Attended a Feminist High School

To celebrate the publication of How We Attended a Feminist High School
by Vlasta Jalušic and her colleagues, the publishing house /*cf. and the City of
Women Festival have prepared a special book presentation.
First things first: Where did the title come from? When the wars broke out in
the former Yugoslavia, the author and some of her friends from were invited to
visit Germany. There they listened to many lectures, mostly on war, violence
and nationalism. Jalušic gave an interview for the Berlin paper Die TAZ, along
with two friends from Croatia and Serbia. One of the questions was posed, with
(typically European) amazement, was: How can these women speak to each other on
friendly terms despite the wars that were tearing their former country apart?
One of the women replied: ‘Don’t you know we attended a feminist high-school
together?’ Indeed, in the eighties and nineties, at a time when feminism was no
more welcome than it is today, quite a few women attended a feminist high
school and practised feminism and its ‘mortal sins’ in public. This book speaks
of that time and those women.
The book is divided into two parts. The first part consists of an overview and
analysis of women’s groups and their political, social, and cultural
activities. The author establishes that, during the period discussed,
independent women’s groups in the former Yugoslavia encouraged and carried out
many more activities than one might think, judging by the little attention
these groups received. In the ‘transitional period’, they played an important
activist and conceptualising role, and their actions produced, among other
things, truly practical and more or less enduring achievements: for instance,
intervention in the political pluralism and constitutional regulation of the
Republic of Slovenia (Women for Politics group); organisations against violence
(a hotline for women and children who are victims of violence);
institutionalised results (the Women’s Policy Commission in the National
Assembly, the Governmental Office for Women’s Policy); and the sensitising of
the broader public to politically important questions that had previously been
marginalised or even stigmatised (such as homosexuality and same-sex
communities). The working methods, structure, and durability or transience of
these groups reveal that they engaged in the same kinds of innovative activity
that characterised the Western feminist groups that so influenced the methods
and structures of other social and socio-cultural organisations.
In the second part of the book, interviews with fourteen women leaders from
various feminist groups active in the eighties and nineties include questions
about the beginnings of New Feminism in Slovenia, their personal feminist
engagement, the formation of groups, new identities, conflicts, differences,
and these groups’ influence on the broader political context. But these
interviews constitute much more than just another historical sourcebook; they
reflect the part of the past that wasn't making history and recall a time when
it was impossible to believe that defeats could ultimately lead to victory.
The discussion with the author of the text and interviewees will be held by Zoja Skusek.

interviews: Milica G.
Antic, Nives Brzic, Andreja Cufer, Mojca Dobnikar,
Vlasta Jalusic,
Metka Mencin, Mirjana Nastran Ule, Tanja Rener, Natasa Sukic, Dora
Skerjanc Batelli, Renata Sribar, Suzana Tratnik, Lili Vucenovic, Darja Zavirsek.

In cooperation with: Cankarjev dom, Založba/*cf., Mirovni institut / The Peace Institute