Feminist Cross- Mainstreaming1 within ‘East–West ’ Mapping

ABSTRACT The article addresses the tempting questions around feminist cross-mainstreaming, keeping in mind that the feminist movement and feminist critical studies are deeply challenged by globalized marketing, boundary changes and displacements, and ‘over-genderization’. Taking feminist cross-mainstreaming into consideration not only as a concept and/or ‘act of normality ’ at the threshold of the 21st century but also as a provocative stand for claiming authority across diverse worlds and boundaries, the author explores this through the problem of the globality of feminism in its contextualization and complexity; the status of feminism from a postsocialist perspective; and implications and potential obsta-cles of gender mainstreaming. KEY WORDS contextualization ◆ ‘East’–‘West ’ feminism(s) ◆ exoticism ◆ gender mainstreaming ◆ global feminism ◆ Lady Rosa of Luxembourg ◆ politics of location ◆ postsocialism I recently gave a lecture at the Centre for Women’s Studies, Zagreb on Marxist feminism and on the key figures of Marxist feminism in the 19th and 20th centuries. Apart from my curiosity whether the new generation of students knew anything about Marxism – which was one of the indis-putable academic subjects in former Yugoslavia before 1990 – I wondered whether the students were familiar with any of the women who were exposed in revolutionary times as Marxist theorists or activists who fostered ‘the woman’s question’. Two names finally emerged: Clara Zetkin and Rosa Luxemburg, both formatted into a narrow and sparse context of information and knowledge. Coincidentally, this lectur