Princess on the road

We more or less knew that Princess Ksenija Petrović knew how to drive a motor vehicle even before the highway was named after her. This piece of information from her private life, which slipped through the margins of stories about the Petrović dynasty, was recently thrust into the very center of public interest. The fact that Princess Xenia drove a car became a fact of first-class importance for Montenegrin society and its self-identification.

First, for months around Podgorica, we came across billboards with her large portrait and a small car in the background ("Femininity and Courage" campaign). And then the Kolašin DPS councilors agreed and proposed that the highway be named after her, in honor of that fact. Everyone approved it: from the prime minister and the parties to the citizens whom the journalists chased around the streets in order to acquaint the public with the opinion of the "ordinary people". So everyone, from top to bottom, was in favor. No one was against it. If he was, he was not heard from alive.

Porridge recipe

The proposal received the blessing of all regions, nations, parties, genders, sexual orientations, minorities and majorities. For Montenegrin circumstances, such unison is unique, even spectacular. And that in itself is worth the effort to think about it - we can't wait to see what it is that we will all love and recognize as our own.

One could, for example, expect the North to raise its head - after all, this road crosses their territory, it cannot be that they could not propose one of their own candidates for eponyms. All those who frown on everything that has to do with the Petrović dynastic family for their own reasons, mostly national ones, could have opposed it. Representatives of parties that like to promote themselves as inheritors of the "left", anti-fascist and socialist heritage, like the DPS, for example, and how could they find a reason for dissatisfaction - it's not like someone can't get out of that (left) heritage a female name (if it was supposed to be female) that is more significant for the historical development of Montenegro than a princess whose political contribution is linked exclusively to failed lateral attempts to preserve the dynasty. Feminists could also come up with proposals for female names that are far more significant for the history of women's emancipation in Montenegro (if this is what we are talking about).

But, no - no one rebelled. Everyone was happy. Princess Xenia with a hat on her head in her old-timer managed to amortize all those differences and make everyone happy.

We can bang our heads and interpret the reasons for such a broad consensus one way or another, but that's a waste of time: it's the simplest equation. We just have to listen to what people tell us: the princess deserved to have the highway named after her because "she was the first in the Balkans to drive a car", but also because "she deserved it" (due to her dynastic lineage).

That's it. It is, therefore, the simplest recipe for papazjania that everyone will be happy to try: a little reverence for the monarchist heritage plus a little respect for the emancipation of women. Just two delicious ingredients, in the most easily digestible version, ground into a mush, so that no one gets a stomach ache.

Tractor driver or princess?

There is not even an e from the emancipation of women here. Neither the fact that Princess Xenia drove a car is a fact of importance for the history of the emancipation of women in Montenegro, nor do those who cite it as a reason for emancipation care at all.

Among the men who smoothly raised their hands or expressed (in polls) unreserved enthusiasm for this idea, there are certainly not a small number of those who made life miserable for their wives when they wanted to buy a dishwasher (it is true, there are men who, under various pretexts, are looking for a way to keep their wives slavishly tied to housework) and who cringe every time they sit next to a woman driving. But, they are still ready to repeat like parrots that Princess Xenia deserved to have a highway named after her only because she was "the first woman in the Balkans to sit behind the wheel".

The catch is that they don't take the princess behind the wheel seriously. They do not connect that image with real emancipation, real women and real life. And they are absolutely right when they think so: Princess Xenia behind the wheel is a monarchist fairy tale that has nothing to do with the "real emancipation of women".

The moment when the first woman sat behind the wheel of celebration is a worthy event in the history of women's emancipation. In a symbolic sense, it was a classic knockout. The dependence of male dominance on access to the steering wheel (steering wheel!) does not need to be specially proven: the fervor with which decently intelligent men are even today ready to claim that women have motor deficits that limit their driving abilities is probably a sufficiently convincing argument.

But not all women's driving is the same. Not every female driver is equally important to other women and to the community. And that means it is not equally emancipatory. And that it is not equally worthy of cluttering the public discourse.

When the emancipated women of late socialism grabbed the steering wheel, they did it for the sake of their own emancipation. If the revolution did not liberate them from domestic exploitation (as they were promised) and if they could not wrestle with invisible housework, they could at least jump in the car, go to the market or the supermarket, save their spines from too heavy loads and save some udder. Before that, we had even more "emancipatory" cases of women mastering the skill of driving motor vehicles. In the archive of the digital museum of women there is a photo of a young tractor driver from 1947: the girl passed the driving course, sat nicely in the tractor and went to the field to increase grain yields and contribute to the reduction of post-war hunger.

There were many more such women, who deserved more to have a new highway named after them (if driving and women's emancipation were key words when choosing a name). The fact that Princess Xenia took the wheel in her hands benefited no one but her and the dynasty, which could show other dynasties that it was not as backward as it seemed. At least there is no record that she used the car to visit villages and educate children; that she used her skill in any public interest, that she tried to teach any woman to drive, that she served as a role model to any woman.

Aside from the fact that she didn't earn the money for the car herself, which makes her look like the modern tycoon's daughters who, on the ground floor, look at us harshly from the first floors of their "jeeps". Even the fact that she was "the first in the Balkans" (if she was at all) is not a fact that deserves attention and can be linked to (female) heroism, as suggested by the campaign "Women and Heroism". It was easy for the woman to be among the first to get into the car. And she sat down and then drove around for her pleasure and for the prestige of the dynastic family. And that's the end of the story.

Monarchist kitsch

What, then, is the iconization of the princess - the driver?

Actually, it's kitsch. The emancipatory moment in this story is as devoid of content as the monarchist one. The princess behind the wheel has no capacity to take either the emancipatory or monarchist message seriously. Since she is a princess, therefore a celebrity, her emancipatory message does not cross the boundaries of a monarchist fairy tale. That's why the princess is behind the wheel and nice to men who care about the emasculation of women as much as last year's snow. Since she is not a man, Princess Xenia does not even have the capacity to take the monarchist idea seriously politically (it would be nice to know what would happen if the highway was named after a male member of the dynasty) and thus anger anyone.

The promotion of Princess Xenia is basically, therefore, classic monarchist kitsch. The princess behind the wheel is a picture without content. In other words - it's nothing. A sign on the road that doesn't point to anything. Superficiality itself sweetens to overshadow the simplicity, popular imagination that for centuries revolves around sweetened monarchist fairy tales. That's why no one minded that the highway was named after her. That's how kitsch it is - everyone likes it.

And that's where we all found ourselves: in a complex, wanting to show the world that our old dynasty, with which we no longer have anything, which we don't even think about reconstructing, which no one in the world cares about anymore, had a woman who knew to drive and that once upon a time we were not the last hole in the pipe. Wow!

(normalize.me)