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Jelena Savić in Forlì - MIREES Workshop Series
Gadjo Women’s Burden:
Critical Romany Approaches to Post-Socialist Feminism
20 February 2023 – Lecture
Roma are one of the most racialized communities in Europe. While Holocaust in Europe is known as a
genocide of European Jewish population, it is hardly remembered as such when it comes to Roma.
Color-blind politics and lack of remembrance and recognition of racist eugenics when it comes to
Roma arguably are some of the key determinants of a long-lasting systemic oppression leaving Roma
on the margins of society. Although Yugoslav feminism is built on the ideas of socialism, anti-
capitalism, multiculturalism, it has antifascist and anti-war grounding in the partisan resistance
during the WWII and peace activism during the Balkan wars. Non-alignment as an official state
politics enforces today the identification of Yugoslavia and its successor states as anti-colonial and
anti-racist states. However, Yugoslav feminism is a European social movement, struggling with the
ideology of color-blindness. Holding its presence especially after WWII in Europe, the continent
where racism was invented, color-blind policies continue to define social activism in the Balkans. As
one of rare Roma women participating in Serbian feminism for the last twenty years, and being the
only one openly criticizing its politics, I will use my personal historiography to present a critical
Romany approach to post-socialist Serbian feminism drawing mainly from the theory of whiteness,
and propose some defining features of the non-Roma Serbian feminist politics of solidarity. The
purpose of this session is to increase student’s understanding of post-socialist feminism and to
familiarize them with a critical Romany theoretical framework within it.
Jelena Savić is of Serbian Roma origin and she currently works as an Inclusive Education consultant for UNICEF in Belgrade, Serbia. She also worked for more than six years for the Open Society Foundation and Roma Education Fund on their Scholarship Programs. During the last twenty years, she has cooperated with different Roma and feminist organizations. Jelena holds an MA degree in Philosophy from Central European University in Budapest, Hungary. Her thesis was on dehumanization studies on the intersection of racism, sexism, and speciesism, while her recent focus are studies of whiteness in the European context with the focus on Roma. Jelena also holds a BA and MA degree of the Department of Adult Education from the Faculty of Philosophy in Belgrade, Serbia. She has published several papers in Critical Romany studies. She is also a blogger and writes poetry.
Published on: February 16 2023
