On the Culture of Violence and Female Experience: Prose and Poetry by Tanja Stupar Trifunović

Abstract

The paper analyses the portrayal of the culture of violence in the prose (i.e., the novels Clocks in My Mother’s Room (2014) and Since I Bought a Swan (2019)) and selected poetry by Tanja Stupar Trifunović. In the selected works, violence is directly related to
patriarchal cultural and political power and particularly impacts culturally marginalized groups: women, mothers, and homosexuals. Drawing on theoretical perspectives from anthropology of violence, feminist anthropology, and literary anthropology, the paper systematically examines various forms of violence in selected works – including symbolic matricide, war, sexual violence (in this regard, I discuss rape, sadomasochism, and pornography), and suicide / self-destruction – and proposes the potential significance
of studying these selected works and others alike for anthropology, especially in terms of conceptualizing 1) the invisible forms of violence, such as symbolic or psychological violence, and 2) sexual violence. The paper begins by discussing the theme of symbolic matricide, elaborated in some of the selected poems and the novel Clocks in My Mother’s Room. Present in the earliest myths, the symbolic matricide implies a cultural murder and suppression of the woman and mother to establish a phallocentric order. On the other hand, the novel Since I Bought a Swan focuses on physical violence – family and sexual – but also explores its influences on female emotional and sexual development and insightfully raises questions about the implications of conflating love with violence, as well as sex with violence. The novel also extensively touches on the problem of female suicide or self-destruction and implies its inseparability from social structures that hinder women from attaining full autonomy and freedom. Both novels and several poems examine the repercussions of war on women, mothers, and children. In exploring the theme of violence, the novel Since I Bought a Swan also touches upon the Yugoslav Wars of the 1990s and their impact on contemporary society in the postwar era. After emphasizing the anthropology-related value of the analyzed works, the paper concludes by discussing their significant optimistic messages.