Memory/History (Zgodovina / Spomin)
Silence, Concealment, Oblivion
Remembering
and forgetting are two sides of the same coin. Rooted in the framework of contemporaneity and the blend of various collective
solidarities, that which is of valuable historical substance is subject to the
pressures applied by individual groups, as well as the burden of social change.
In patriarchal western societies founded on gender inequality and an
ideological argument framed on the precept of women's inferiority, the ongoing
erosion of remembrance has – since antiquity – removed women from history.
Therefore the entry of women into the historical record signified not only a
disclosure of their past, but also a confrontation with this misogynistic
tradition, i.e. those social and cultural bonds which both determined and
maintained women's dependency on men. Even today, the investigation of women in
history does not imply merely discovering the significant lives and rich
experience of individuals, together with the roles that women had as members of
religious, ethnic, social and professional spheres and strata in a particular
time and place, but also dealing with the political and institutional, legal
and cultural premises that had been established by men and which facilitated
the various forms of gender discrimination.
The
extant patrilineal logic does not give way without the establishment of a new
matrilineal genealogy, and it would be completely naive to expect any radical
changes in gender relations without any such intervention. Such a stance was
contended and asserted by most forward thinking contributors to the magazine Slovenke (Slovene Women) in
the late-19th century, and became even more delineated in the
interwar period by the editors of Ženski
List (Women's Paper). Their adamant perspectives on women's emancipation
as well as equality of rights in Slovene society was indeed the revelation of a
huge misconception: that all history was created by men. In 1934 Angela Vode
wrote: ˝If we want to understand the situation of a woman today, we need two
things. In addition to knowing and understanding the phenomena of society in
which a woman lives and is a product of, we have to ascertain the underlying
causes of such phenomena – namely their succession reveals the historical
development of the society. This is the only way to identify the mutual
connection of events, and understand why this or that social form evolved in
one way or another…˝.
In
the early 1990s, when gender studies found a place in Slovene universities and
both social sciences as well as the humanities dealt with gender inequality in
education and theory, the advocacy of women’s history was kept merely at the
level of the declarative. In Slovenia,
recognition of the history of women did not merely require the recording of it,
but also its acknowledgment. It was only in the late-20th and
early-21st century that investigations into women's historical
presence became devolved and encompassed research into specific periods, social
environments, together with the numerous aspects of the lives and deeds of
women throughout history. If we complement the corpus of recent research with
all the previous studies into the history of women across Slovene territory –
and in particular those conducted during the last twenty years – we can come to
the conclusion that such a historiography is – despite its fragmentation –
rather substantial. Indeed, it records and affirms the specifics as well as the
presence and achievements of women in Slovene society, together with their
simultaneous integration into broader European history.
And
yet – unless we want to succumb to complacence – it is clear that any glance
into the extant history of this land is heavily burdened by a misogynistic
tradition – at least such can readily be assumed based on the exclusion of
women from most historical syntheses, monographies, biographies, lexicons,
chronicles, histories and textbooks – as well as through primordial amnesia,
which, by erasing prior experience and cognition, still reminds us of how
difficult the establishment of "women’s memory" truly is.
Marta Verginella
Between 26th
September and 10th October, the Klub Lili Novy will transform into a library where visitors will
be able to read or just leaf through a selection of books and magazines, and
there shall also be the possibility to buy some of them. This selection
encompasses works presented at previous editions of the City of Women Festival,
as well as a selection based on this year’s published book entitled Ženska Obrobja: Vpis Žensk v Zgodovino
Slovencev (Women’s Margins: the Entry of Women into the
History of Slovenes) by Marta
Verginella, published by Delta. These works will also be complemented by some
titles that either investigate individual themes and topics or reveal what ‘official’
historiography left aside
Organisation and production: City of Women
In collaboration with: Cankarjev dom &
publishing houses: Apokalipsa, Arhiv Republike Slovenije, /*cf., Didakta,
Drava, Društvo za kulturološke raziskave (Delta), Emzin, Fakulteta za družbene
vede, Goriška Mohorjeva družba, Institutum Studiorum Humanitatis – Fakulteta za
podiplomski humanistični študij, Krtina, Liberalna akademija: Visoka šola za
socialno delo, Litera, Maska, Mirovni inštitut, Nova revija, Slovensko
etnološko društvo, Sophia, Studia humanitatis, Študentska založba, Urad za
enake možnosti, ZAK, Zgodovinski arhiv Ptuj, Zveza zgodovinskih društev
Slovenije