Challenging the discourse of Bosnian war rapes

This chapter challenges the existing discourses on the Bosnian war rapes by capturing nuances that have been omitted in many, especially earlier, analyses.¹ When I use the word "discourse," I use it in Foucault's sense, designating "practices that systematically form the objects of which they speak."² These discourses have formed the object of the powerless raped Bosnian women, and they have framed the domain and knowledge of this object. I group these discourses into three types: ethnic and gender group approaches, postcolonial approaches, and medical approaches. I argue that there is a need to challenge, individualize, and heterogenize the category powerless raped Bosnian women, which is casually employed in the existing discourses and analyses of the Bosnian war rapes. Earlier analyses of the war rapes overlooked the nuances of suffering, coping, and resistance that were part of individual women's experiences. I argue that women's suffering, coping, and resistance must be seen against the complex interrelation among women's multiple identities, such as religious, ethnic, urban or rural, ³ generational, educational, and personal-a point also overlooked in most previous analysis. In order to begin to rethink the discourses of the Bosnian war.