Gendered Histories/Memories of Labour in (Post-) Communist Romania and Former Czechoslovakia Illuminated through Artistic Production
Abstract
This paper addresses a lacuna in the history and memory of (post-) communist women's labour. It aims to investigate how and to what ends the artistic production from Romania and the former Czechoslovakia illuminate "forgotten" histories of women's labour, reclaiming at the same time a public sphere where "Her-stories" and labour-related memories can be materialized for critical-political ends.
In the cultural memory of the transition from communism to democracy and capitalism, certain lieux de mémoire (places of memory) have been preserved and materialized in official cultural formats, whereas other places of memory (both physical and mental) are disregarded and condemned to become lieux d'oubli (sites of forgetting). More often than not, both in the Romanian and the former Czechoslovakian context, the histories and memories of women's labour are deemed "unworthy" of remembrance and tend to be obscured from the official cultures of remembrance and their institutions.
As this paper argues, although the official narratives of various work environments from Eastern European regions tend to conceal the presence of women and lack a comprehensive historiography on women and gender some artistic productions enact "feminist counter-narratives" and counter-memories for political ends. We claim that the political dimension of these artistic productions should not be underestimated.
These feminist artworks attempt to combine a politics of memory, activism, a history from below, and artistry to reach political ambitions. At a theoretical level, this paper is informed by Amy Mullin's considerations on feminist artistic production and the political imagination.
In feminist art, which attempts to revive the memory of women's labour, the political imagination plays a crucial role in fostering community knowledge and experiential knowledge through simultaneously envisioning more equitable futures (economical, political, social) for both men and women.