THE ROLE OF AFFECTS IN THE CONSTRUCTS OF GENDER IDENTITIES IN CROATIAN POSTMODERN DRAMA (ON THE EXAMPLE OF IVANA SAJKO’S "WOMAN-BOMB"
THE ROLE OF AFFECTS IN THE CONSTRUCTS OF GENDER IDENTITIES IN CROATIAN POSTMODERN DRAMA (ON THE EXAMPLE OF IVANA SAJKO’S "WOMAN-BOMB"

Summary/Abstract: According to S. Tomkins’ classification of affects, the paper explores the role of disgust, anger, sadness and fear in the gender identity constructs in the Croatian postmodern drama Woman- Bomb (2004), written by the playwright Ivana Sajko. The methodological framework relies on the affect theories by S. Tomkins and A. Lucas, which are used to investigate the emotional communication between characters in the drama. Based on the research of N. Govedić, the affective reaction is hypothesized to result in communication, i.e., in revealing one’s own emotional states to others. Reception and the reshaping of the charge of the other are inherent to the affects themselves. They may also subject to political scrutiny and function as moral guides. Thus, this research focuses on the socio-affective (non) communication between the characters of the drama, constructed by the socially and symbolically marked feminist body of the ‘bomb-woman’ (‘terrorist-woman’). The body of a terrorist resonates with that of a ‘queer body’ (“the unfortunate one”, “the source of affliction”). By examining the construction of the gender identity of the ‘bomb-woman’ in postmodern drama, we conclude that Sajko’s literary strategies move away from stereotypical representations of gender identities, i.e., the role of women was regularly represented through motherhood in the literary practice of the 19th and most of the 20th century, while their potential for the social or “street-activist” engagement was overlooked. In accordance with postmodernist practice, through irony, paradox, intermediality, fragmentation, culture of performance and self-referential actions, in the character of the female terrorist – ‘bomb-woman’, the author expresses resistance to the traditional gender identity ‘conventions’, and this is especially evident in the analysis of disgust as the negative affect. Therefore, along with anger, sadness and fear, disgust becomes apostrophized in the feminist manner as the main affect in this monologic tragicomedy. The disgust with the stereotypical representation of women symbolically results in the identity of a “woman as a time bomb”.

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