VIRTUAL WORLDS IN CONTEMPORARY SERBIAN WOMEN’S FICTION

Text topic: Culture Studies

Text author: Владислава Гордић Петковић

The paper is an attempt at illustrating the radical changes in the way in which gender, media and literature interact. Its intention is also to examine the ways in which the media and new digital technologies contribute to representations of gender-linked communication in the novels written by Vida Ognjenović, Ljubica Arsić, Tamara Jecić and Dunja Radosavljević. The new informational technologies have managed to capture the voices lingering at the margins, helping women transcend their real-life grounded identities and explore new narrative practices. The process of identification of women’s social self as depicted in contemporary Serbian women’s writing (such as Dunja Radosavljević’s Life After America, Tamara Jecić’s Stinky Onion, Vida Ognjenović’s The Address is Correct and Ljubica Arsić’s All Inclusive) lavishly uses computer mediated communication. These books introduce different kinds of women’s narratives, ranging from intimate confessions in letters and journals to experimental practices involving different points of view and focalisation. The aim of the paper is to analyze the ways gender is redefined in the cyberrituals of womanhood.