The Communitas of Mourning: Women in Black and Dah Teatar between War protest and Theater

Sandra Biberstein

sandra.biberstein@access.uzh.ch
Univeristy of Zurich (Switzerland)

Abstract

In wartime and post-war situations, the opposition of friend and enemy—based on national divisions—often condemns the dead “enemies” to be ungrievable. To grieve for the excluded others in such times means to break with the friend-enemy opposition. This article examines how the friend-enemy opposition is broken in the case of the actions of Women in Black and Dah Teatar in the context of the civil war in Yugoslavia. By analyzing the vigils of Žene u crnom (Women in Black) in Belgrade and the play Priča o čaju (The Story of Tea) by Dah Teatar, the author discusses the particular strategies through which grief was made possible beyond the friend-enemy opposition and how these strategies open a communitas of mourning. The term “communitas of mourning” refers to the concept of grievability, proposed by Judith Butler in Frames of War.

Supporting Agencies

The Swiss National Science Foundation (SNSF), research project: “Crisis and Communitas,” Grant No. 100016_182586, https://crisisandcommunitas.com/.

Keywords:

communitas, grievability, Women in Black, Dah Teatar, response-ability, war, protest

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Published
2021-10-13

Cited by

Biberstein, S. (2021) “The Communitas of Mourning: Women in Black and Dah Teatar between War protest and Theater”, Pamiętnik Teatralny, 70(3), pp. 99–121. doi: 10.36744/pt.838.

Authors

Sandra Biberstein 
sandra.biberstein@access.uzh.ch
Univeristy of Zurich Switzerland

Studied History, Theory and History of Photography and Sociology at the University of Zurich and will complete her master’s degree in Cultural Analysis in 2021. Since February 2019 she is project assistant in the SNF project Crisis and Communitas led by Prof. Dorota Sajewska, and in charge of the interactive archive of the project. She is also editor in chief of Coucou, a culture magazine based in Winterthur, Switzerland, which she co-founded in 2010. Since 2008 she is working as a freelance author and editor for newspapers and different publication projects. From 2008 to 2014 she was co-editor of Der Elfenbeintürmer (etü), the historian magazine of University of Zurich.



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