Tamara Šmidling, an anthropologist, was born in Belgrade and lived for two decades in Sarajevo. Her main activist and professional focus is in the field of politics of memory and on the ways in which societies address specific periods of their history, especially those periods of massive violence from the past. She has worked in numerous organizations and groups in the post-Yugoslav region and participated in many research and the creation of different educational programs. She is currently a program coordinator at Kvinna til Kvinna Foundation where she is dealing with questions of gender-based violence, women’s economic rights, sustainability, and strengthening of women’s and the feminist movement.
You have spent many years in activism and philanthropy. Your work on the culture of peace and remembrance in Sarajevo has contributed to the creation of new communities with these values at their foundation. You have spent several past years in Belgrade working on feminist initiatives through Kvinna til Kvinna Foundation. How do you see these two directions overlapping with each other? Philanthropy, on one hand, and peace and feminist approaches, on the other?
The part of my life I spent in Sarajevo, for me, was a period of true activism and political work, the only sensible one to me. Upon returning to Belgrade, my work is mainly focused on the above-mentioned foundation. And even though I am aware of the political work that is present in that kind of engagement, I do hesitate to name it activism; that is, I only name it in specific instances when I am completely sure that what I want for society in which I live in is aligned with the consequences my work produces in that same society.
I try for that balance often and completely, but the reality of global systems makes it difficult. The effects of such activism either backlash or take us on different unwanted roads.
For me, peace and feminist activism are connected and indivisible; both of them need to come from (and return to) progressive, leftist and emancipatory politics. Part of such politics is the material and „symbolic“ appropriation of the concept of philanthropy from the dominant association with mercy, where those who have a lot give to those that barely have anything while bypassing the division of „haves and haves not“ and not questioning those divisions. The best and the only way to make philanthropy feminist is to politicize it and provide the critical edge.
Supporting movements, initiatives, actions and experimental approaches to political participation often go unnoticed in the wider community while philanthropy, unless it is associated with humanitarian work, remains in the shadows or is reduced to ne homogenous field. How do you see the culture of support and donations in Serbia?
First of all, mostly, I learn from you in RWF from your experiences and the information you share. My impression is that the situation is getting better and better, that people of different backgrounds are deciding to donate to different actions and initiatives. It seems to me that those kinds of donations do not come from the impulse „i have money but I need a reputation so I will donate to some hungry children“ but it comes from a conscience need to contribute to some political processes, situations, and awareness raising. I do have to say that I am not against purely humanitarian reasons when they make a crucial difference in people’s lives: to survive the winter, to buy medication, to clean the house after floods, and when they do not serve the purpose of guilty conscious and an excuse for not acting. It seems to me that we need more group, solidary actions for awareness raising of what and how philanthropy should be.
Philanthropy culture in Serbia is still within big foreign foundation and agencies whose resources are often used for pacifying and disciplining resistant voices. And those voices are usually the ones that have a true potential for progressive change.
What aspect of the philanthropic field annoys you the most and that can easily be changed but presents itself as the most difficult thing in the world?
The most annoying thing is the indestructible attitude (that I often fall into) „my contribution will not change anything “. After that, the famous other „others will do it, I will board the second chance “. To change these present attitudes I do not think we need miracles or some supernatural effort but more work in the field that will contribute to people seeing that even „peanuts“ make a huge difference and that some people cannot afford second chances. By this, I do not want to empower the kind of voices who romanticize personal initiatives and self-indulgence in demanding the government to do something. On the contrary, I think it speaks to the fact that we remind ourselves that there is a society, that we need it, and that we as „we“ exist. Government, of course, needs to do a million things, and to struggle for such a government, that knows how to do it, is a very feminist thing.
If feminist solidarity is inseparable from trust and solidarity, what do they mean to you?
Trust and solidarity are for me key feminist principles that can produce powerful political impulses. As a category, trust is constantly undermined by our existential fears, our precarious positions, deep and cruel inequalities (within the feminist community as well!), the insecurity we feel at every step, and the cacophony of theories of every important question on the planet. How do I trust the other when I do not know what I trust in? We laugh at solidarity because we see it as an empty meaning and purpose, as a dead letter, used by those among us who are well off.
For me, the first thing to do is to return dignity to these concepts, their meaning, and depth. One of the roads is to really think through cynicism, indifferences, and skepticism. Critique and self-critique are good ways to establish solidarity. To start with a question – what it is that I have done for solidarity to not be a dead letter? Or, alternately, how did I make it senseless?
To sum up, we need to tackle difficult and uncomfortable questions, understand privileges, inequalities, and their roots, and return to love and fellowship. Because, as Bel Hooks says “To love well is the task in all meaningful relationships, not just romantic bonds.”
Interview by Đurđa Trajković
