Conceptualising Feminism(s) at War: The case of Kosovo in the 1990s

Feminist ontologies and epistemologies have long been questioning the premises of traditional IR on the underbelly of violent conflict and war. In times of war, women’s and feminist activism is often shifted, reinvigorated, transformed, co-opted, erased, and marginalized. In times of ethnic conflict especially, the entanglement between feminism and nationalism becomes even more complex as gender is co-opted in the name of the nation. The case of Kosovo has received immense scholarly attention on the multiple dimensions of state-building, peacebuilding, and peacekeeping missions in the country since the war in 1998-1999. As the last sequence of the violent breakdown of Yugoslavia, there has been a multitude of disciplines dissecting the multilayered efforts from war to peace in Kosovo, however, leaving behind encounters of "women" and the "local". The current literature has largely ignored local parallel state-building endeavors in the 1990s in Kosovo as well as women’s and feminist contributions and the genesis of these struggles. This paper reflects upon these gaps by conceptualising feminism(s) at war in Kosovo during the 1990s through the utilization of the intersectionality framework. The goal of the paper is to juxtapose the feminism(s) that were articulated in Kosovo during its struggle for national liberation with (other) Yugoslav feminism(s). The paper intends to showcase how the configuration of feminism in Kosovo differed from other branches of Yugoslav feminism legacies, as it relied upon a cozy relationship with nationalism directed at self-determination. This paper conceptualizes the different strands of feminism that were articulated in Kosovo through the ranks of women’s and feminist activists, parallel state politicians, and Kosovo Liberation Army guerilla fighters through centering the intersections between ethnicity, gender, socio-economic position, and urban/rural localities. Consequently, this paper contributes an often-overlooked historical perspective on Yugoslav feminism and local state-building initiatives within Kosovo, predating the international intervention in 1999.