“Running into Madness to Stay Sane”: the Spirituality of Nature in the Autobiographical Texts of Female Prisoners from Goli Otok Prison Camp

Abstract

The text concerns the camp for political prisoners established in 1949 in Yugoslavia on Goli Otok island. This theme was almost entirely absent from public discourse before the 1980s, and real changes and developments in discussions about this part of the history of postwar Yugoslavia occurred only after Tito’s death. Goli Otok as the largest and most infamous camp in communist Yugoslavia is considered a symbol, its name recognized as a synonym of a physical and psychological system for destroying people. In the text I analyze autobiographical texts written by women prisoners (such as Milka Žicina and Vera Cenić). A large number of female inmates were sentenced just for being related to or keeping close contact with a male “enemy of the state”. Thus women were treated not as independent subjects, but as mothers, sisters and wives subordinate to male family members. The social exclusion of women prisoners and their families exacerbated the feeling of isolation and continued after leaving the camp. I am interested in the detail of the strategies of storytelling which are related to spirituality (focusing on nature) both during the period of isolation, when they searched for a way to survive it, as well as after release when the women tried to start a new life.