Historical and Socio-Cultural Aspects of the Narrative De/Construction of Female Identity in the Novels of Jasmina Musabegović

Abstract

Starting from the hypothesis that the wars of the 20th century are realized as key factors of cultural identification on the territory of Bosnia and Herzegovina and that the category of gender conditions distinctive features of cultural identity within a cultural community, the paper problematizes the narrative construction of female cultural identity in the novels Skretnice and Žene. Glasovi of Jasmina Musabegović. Based on cultural research on identity issues, the work shows that the narrative construction of cultural memory in Jasmine Musabegović's novels is dominantly linked to the intimacy of the (lost!) home and family life and that the cultural identity of the central female characters is doubly coded: on the one hand, it is determined by the patriarchal tradition, and, on the other hand, by the collective traumas of Bosnia and Herzegovina in the 20th century, in the foreground of which there are wars as key factors of cultural-identity de(con)struction.

Keywords

• cultural identity
• cultural memory
• poetics of testimony
• women's literature