“Goodbye Serbian Kennedy”: Zoran Đinđić and the New Democratic Masculinity in Serbia
"Goodbye Serbian Kennedy”: Zoran Đinđić and the New Democratic Masculinity in Serbia
Author(s): Jessica GreenbergSubject(s): Gender Studies, Political history, Government/Political systems, Political behavior, Studies in violence and power, Transformation Period (1990 - 2010), Post-Communist Transformation
Published by: SAGE Publications Ltd
Keywords: Serbia; masculinity; kinship; democracy; post-socialist state transformation; Zoran Đinđić;
Summary/Abstract: In this article, the author demonstrates how representations of the assassination and funeral of Serbian Prime Minister Zoran Đinđić enacted politics, reshaping the relationship between citizen and state during a time of political crisis. The expression of citizen-state relations through public mourning grounded in intimate, familial loss produced a break between a violent, nationalist past and a possible democratic future. This process relied on the deployment of normative assumptions about gender and kinship. The figure of Zoran Đinđić represented a heteronormative, democratic masculinity that evoked a new relationship between family, citizen, state, and nation in the Serbian context. In contrast, those held responsible for his assassination were presented as antifamily and part of a clan structure based on nonreproductive, criminal connections that evoked a contrasting and undemocratic form of masculinity. Such representations masked ways that current political institutions and public figures were implicated in past state violence by focusing on a story about Đinđić and his killers as certain kinds of men, rather than about structural features of politics and government.
Journal: East European Politics and Societies
- Issue Year: 20/2006
- Issue No: 01
- Page Range: 126-151
- Page Count: 26
- Language: English
- Content File-PDF