Paper short abstract:

The paper focuses on the practices of restoring women’s memory and heritage in three contemporary cities: Cracow, Belgrade and Sarajevo. Many of them include creating new maps from the perspective of women and performances, which contest the dominating symbolical orders in the urban spaces.

Paper long abstract:

The history of the women in the Balkans and Poland is not sufficiently represented in urban spaces due to the lack of symbols and signs with which they may identify. Cracow, Belgrade and Sarajevo are the "cities without women". Through decades, the memory about the women's history, activism and their heritage was suppressed and marginalized. It is rather difficult to find feminine streets names, whilst monuments and memorial plaques have masculine names. The city is seen primarily as men's place, where women, as well as other marginalized groups, are not present in the dominant discourse of memory and public space. Facing this reality many women's organizations and independent activists develop projects and take actions in order to restore the forgotten and unknown feminine past, describe their lives and symbolically connect them with specific spaces. One of such actions is a process of creating new maps, which introduce the women's perspective. It opens a space for women's histories, narratives by revealing the hitherto concealed stories of forgotten characters and places. Through their activities, the women want to rephrase the heritage and contest the existing maps that not only show the world in a certain way, but also reflect power relations. The activists' practices of bringing back the women from urban and social-cultural oblivion are significant in the debate on culture and politics.