OSLOBOĐENO EVINO TIJELO U ROMANIMA BISERE ALIKADIĆ: LARVA I KRUG
EVA’S LIBERATED BODY IN BISERA ALIKADIĆ’S NOVELS: LARVA AND KRUG

Summary/Abstract: This work of Bisera Alikadić, the first author of the novel that tackles taboo topic of body and corporeity, scrutinizes dimension of body and corporeity. Novels Larva [The Larva] (1974) and Krug [The Circle] (1983) introduce intriguing and specific theme of liberation of woman’s body and censorship on sexuality into Muslim (now it is Bosniak) literature, as early as seventies of 20. century. Owing to this type of writing, B. Alikadić was met with a negative reception and was criticized in terms of mainstream national literature. Namely, her position of female author is defined by shifting between Islamic and masculine, as well as family and cultural authority on one hand; and the tendency to achieve woman’s right to literature-creative work and independent writing, on the other. Her novel Larva published in a specific cultural and historic moment (just a year after Erica Yong’s Fear of flying) was found to be erotic, vulgar, scandalous in a bare representation of sexuality and woman’s body, therefore damaging. In the context of internal social (patriarchal) limitations and bounds of national literature in which the work and the author occur, resistance of the community and the act of marginalization of the author is evident. Such attitude is based on public rage or more precisely, on rigid and a self-righteous stance of the Islamic Community (the case and the incident appeared in Preporod), negative and outward critic of the fathers of national literature (historians and critics). In latter field, the novel Larva was brought into disrepute by literary critics, agreeing mainly in (wrong) assessment that the literary work was viewed in a manner merely simplistic- through shameful exaggeration of sexuality and identifying the voice of main character Eva as autobiographical, labeling the work as vain and mediocre at best, erotic and romantic, and finally by means of satanizing the author, with accusation that she contributes to bad moral status of the society. In the core of this misogynist attitude towards the author and her novel, we detect double not only literary-critical standards, but also binary cultural and social standards. All-out defamation of Bisera Alikadić was followed by prying into her private life and condemnation through claims that she has not achieved motherhood and that writing served to compensate for that, which has no relevance to literature. On the other hand, although quite aware of these processes (in her interviews she talks about those incidents), her own marginalization, innate superiority of author-she thus confirms the power of resistance and importance of her choice to write, creativeness and tackling taboos. Simultaneously, authorities strive to produce the desirable model of woman-an angel from home (Virginia Woolf), in a face of which is, her, (heroine and author) with a capacity to break away from the grip of social controlwoman harlot. Such a departure from recommended model in literature leads to usurpation of literary system and patriarchal system and cultural laws in general. The aim Bisera Alikadić had on her mind with her novels Larva and Krug, was to liberate herself from social conditioning, destroying traditional stereotypes and norms of behavior, face taboos, undermine false morality and puritan conception about Islam and Muslim literature by offering an alternative version and concept of life (awareness of erotic and corporeal in oriental literature and culture in general); and finally, her aim was also to become a part of world’s revolutionary movement of liberation of woman, her body and her sexuality. It is a paradox that today’s position of the author in national literature, when she’s being forcefully canonized and declared the first Muslim woman/female author of novels-novelist, after initial outrage of public at her novels Larva and Krug, and her poetry as well, together with superficial approach and misinterpretation of her work (as being erotic and romantic novels) by most of the national critics, the works of Bisera Alikadić, receives first feminist interpretations and reading. However, in spite of affirmation for the sake of existence and mobilization of different values, inconsistence in studies based exclusively on politics of body and sexuality, still remains a problem. Therefore, the objective to this thesis is to expand the field of politically corporeal, that is, to show that Larva and Krug are actually narratives about quest for one’s self, identity and integrity, as well as the autonomy of woman’s being; in other words that both novels represent body, corporeal and sexual as a true precondition- a hotbed of freedom, creativeness and accomplishment, the autonomy of woman. Bisera Alikadić resisted rigid, misogynist, national binary matrix, as well as literary (and cultural) canon with her works; thus, placing her heroine Eva into the field of breach and struggle for taking over of power over oneself and one’s self, that is, achieving totality and autonomy of personality. The literary focus is, as symbolic titles of both novels Larva and Krug would tell, a whole path of transformation (of the author through writing) of character of Eva who reaches her full independence and freedom with completion of that path; achieved through listening to the needs of the body, and understanding and awareness of the fact that writing that is, auto-expression of creativeness is the only right way to gain freedom and transcending of social and collective cultural, stereotype limitations. This work argues two key assumptions: using body as medium to establish different cultural meanings and standpoints that, apart from the body, the mind of a woman represents a starting point in forming of totality of woman’s being. Novels Larva and Krug represent the attempt of the author to break away from nominal sphere of sevdalinka associated with interpretations of feminine, home as a sphere of privacy, ambiguity of censorship and hints of erotism. In that sense Bisera Alikadić overtakes the field of novel, offering a different poetics in respect to traditional understanding of feminine (in transgenerational aspect of her female family tree- for example in a symbol of para-grandma’s dimije/fundamental part of traditional clothes of Muslim women; the garment which consists of baggy pants lavishly folding down to be tied at the ankles/ wrapping in between the legs; the author sees as distracting factor for unobstructed writing; to the spite of which she wrote Larva). Following the emancipation of Muslim woman, after the end of World War II and the policy of social organization of Socialist Federative Republic Yugoslavia, women got rights and women/female authors were in a position to appear on the literary market and write freely, as well as test genres. Heroine’s readiness to defend the right for existence of woman’s being in totality is entangled into Larva and Krug. Decolonizing her body away from social practice of conquer, dominance and utilization and dominant constitutions in culture as well, the author takes the body of her heroine as a stronghold of the very revelation of the woman’s being as a whole. Deciding to forego desirable materialization of body, the heroine Eva trespasses the realm of using her reason to boost her own potential so as to reach the phase of revelation and gratification of inner desires of her being, that is, subversion, the idea of transformation and articulation of subject of woman. Through action and place of reason and function of cognizance, woman gets an option to discard coded sensitivity and censorship of corporeity, put her body liberated from patriarchal shackles on its place, as well as show awareness of her own creativeness. Bisera Alikadić rounds up Eva’s personality by discussing her decision, from the position of librarian, (symbolic guardian of male knowledge and epistemological order) to transcend limitations and become a female author; that confirms in the chapter about Eva’s browsing of library file. In this manner, the author expresses her doubt about the choice of heroine’s calling, with which the novel Larva ends. The novel ends in pessimism and in Krug it evolves and problematizes process of writing as discouragement. Apart from an assault at Eva’s wish to realize herself as writer, that came from her intimate circle-her lover Lazar and family-she is immanently faced with a fear of authorship (Sandra Gilbert and Susan Gubar). Acceptance of her writing in her social circle entails some questionable practices: refusal and criticism, skepticism toward publishing of her novel (Eva’s novel), and a certain form of support. Eva gives her novel’s rough draft to Lazar to read and instead of desired understanding and fellowship she receives disapproval and criticism of her work. It is interesting how the main character of the novel Eva is placed in the house chores setting (patriarchal oppression), while Lazar is reading her rough draft; thus underlining more dramatically differences between men and women. Her choice is to either emulate traditional roles and accept her lover’s discouragement, or oppose everything for the sake of writing. Eva throws away romantic love and returns to herself and her mission of writing. Level of reaching final freedom cannot be withheld on the level of corporeal, sexual and gender; it certainly has to be lifted to the level of spiritual and rational. Process of writing helps the heroine to understand and take stock of the world, deliberate the existence and in relation to herself, with and through herself, she writes, updates the self, yet processes her identity as well. The end of Krug, and Larva when observed together-will mark (not a controversial act of writing as a compensation for marriage and inability to become a mother, as some critics claim) a basic need to explore body and expression of creativity, and finally to defend the subject, self and identity from a normative of patriarchal society. Moreso, writing will make her visible (both Eva and Bisera Alikadić), and make her name enter the books of a culture that rejects her on the account of difference and woman’s disobedience. Finally, process of writing marks recapitulation of one’s own life: “When I looked deeper into my soul and asked myself what to do, and not wilt just like that, I came to a solution: write” (Alikadić Krug 36). Novels Larva and Krug represent a path to integrity of woman’s being. Bisera Alikadić managed to create a full-fledged character in Larva and Krug - in a developing process from larvae/caterpillar to a butterfly Eva, setting up coordinates of the body as buckles and triggers of social negotiation over social agreements and positions, models, features and roles, that is, the body as a place where both freedom and meaning are achieved. Through body as a medium and a tool to negotiate freedom in general, the heroine abandons dominant and controversial patterns of culture which aim on re-shaping her and allocate a proper meaning, specifically and profoundly determined by a special specter of stereotype and negation, as well as a censorship of woman and her being. Eva, with her doing, offers resistance to patriarchal tradition, opts for self-erotization under her own conditions of circulating (hearing out inner desires of her body), thus resisting a viewpoint and control of the society. Eva acquires new experiences from the position of a liberated woman, and Eva, librarian and woman writer, steps into a field of text production and becomes a subject of the text, same as Bisera Alikadić did it in her novels and poetrythrough experience and revelation of body and usurpation of family, society and culture. With a view of that, phenomenon of body and corporeity appears to be a key prerequisite/trigger and a powerful medium to a birth of a woman as social, autonomous subject.

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