KAMEDA Masumi (University of Tokyo)
“Ethnic Identity Worn on the Body: the ‘Yugoslav’ and the Minority Community”

This presentation comparatively analyses the ethnic identities in the former Yugoslavian region. I apply the methodology of gender identity in the field of queer studies such as theories by Michel Foucault, Judith Butler and Simon Watney to the problem of ethnic identity. This research attempts to answer questions such as: when does a certain community require ethnic identity? What does it bring to the community? How would the origin of the ethnicity be constructed? What tensions may inadvertently arise through co-existence?

Firstly, I examine the historical and social background for constituting the “Yugoslav” as ethnic identity, and I suggest that the characteristic of the “Yugoslav” identity is “ethnic permeability.” Secondly, I discuss the process of the foregrounding of “pure” ethnic identity in communities in the former Yugoslavian region, which was caused by Yugoslavian Wars. The breakup of the former Yugoslavia in 1991 was led by the rise of ethno-centrism within the newly established states through the exclusion of specific ethnicities. In new nation-states, especially during the Yugoslav Wars, “bodily permeability” among ethnic groups meant a dangerous crossing of borders. In this social context, minority communities were required to choose one state for their co-existence out of two or several states, and this often causes the internalization of the inter-state boundaries. Finally, I focus on the means of constructing the ethnic identity through the “surface politics of body” such as wearing folk costumes and having “language” as an accessory which socially marks ethnicity, and the process whereby an outer boundary among states becomes an inner boundary for a community when co-existing with one community means the abjection of the other community.



return to program
return to home