The Communitas of Mourning: Women in Black and Dah Teatar between War protest and Theater

Abstract

In wartime and post-war situations, the opposition of friend and enemy—based on national divisions—often condemns the dead “enemies” to be ungrievable. To grieve for the excluded others in such times means to break with the friend-enemy opposition. This article examines how the friend-enemy opposition is broken in the case of the actions of Women in Black and Dah Teatar in the context of the civil war in Yugoslavia. By analyzing the vigils of Žene u crnom (Women in Black) in Belgrade and the play Priča o čaju (The Story of Tea) by Dah Teatar, the author discusses the particular strategies through which grief was made possible beyond the friend-enemy opposition and how these strategies open a communitas of mourning. The term “communitas of mourning” refers to the concept of grievability, proposed by Judith Butler in Frames of War.