The dissertation studies feminist knowledge production through translation in the context of post-communist Eastern Europe. It focuses on one case study, the Serbian translation of the American feminist health classic Our Bodies, Ourselves (OBOS) through the lens of the politics of translation and reproduction. The translation, Naša tela, mi (NTM), was published by a group of feminist activists from the Autonomous Women’s Centre (AWC) in Belgrade, Serbia in 2001. By focusing on this one case study, my dissertation offers an in-depth analysis of the political, social, linguistic, and feminist dimensions implicated in the transfer of a Western feminist project from one geopolitical location to another, to a post-socialist, post-conflict Eastern European country in the 1990s. Against the background of the Yugoslav wars and the influence of ethno-nationalism in the 1990s, I examine the development of domestic and transnational feminist networking, including the Belgrade feminists’ work with victims of domestic and sexual violence and refugees. I assess the extent to which NTM serves as oppositional discourse to the changing politics of reproduction and pronatalist discourses around abortion and fertility in Serbia in this period. Furthermore, I analyze NTM’s contribution to local feminist knowledge on women’s reproductive health, rights, and sexuality. I emphasize the importance of the local context, including the history of abortion access and traditional gender relations. Methodologically, the dissertation is based on interview data, archival documents, and comparative textual analysis. The dissertation draws attention to feminist knowledge production across uneven geopolitical borders, translation flows across the East-West divide, and the role of English in transnational feminist networking. The dissertation brings together the politics of translation and the politics of reproduction and calls for further studies into the role of translation in transnational feminist patterns of knowledge production.

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[pt] Esta dissertação analisa como a Organização das Nações Unidas (ONU) tenta estabilizar e justificar um significado ambivalente de proteção e seus papéis sociopolíticos na agenda de Proteção de Civis (PoC). Atravessada por diferentes noções de tradução, esta pesquisa toma os Assistentes de Ligação Comunitária (CLAs) como um prisma analítico para complexificar os esforços para construir representações de proteção. Os CLAs, criados juntamente com a Missão das Nações Unidas para a Estabilização da República Democrática do Congo (MONUSCO), são funcionários locais encarregados de melhorar o engajamento da missão com a população local nas atividades de PoC, dadas as suas supostas habilidades linguístico-culturais. Assim, os CLAs também são parte do movimento das missões de estabilização na doutrina da ONU. Essa virada sinaliza a utilização de táticas de contra insurgência, cujo entendimento sobre linguagem e a cultura como armas objetiva obter inteligência e o apoio da população local. Seguindo uma abordagem pós-estruturalista e pós-colonial particularmente inspirada nas obras de Jacques Derrida e Homi K. Bhabha, esta dissertação se propõe a desconstruir as representações aplicadas aos CLAs por meio da análise dos discursos presentes nos relatórios e documentos doutrinários da ONU. Para tal, investiga-se como se espera que os CLAs traduzam linguisticamente e/ou culturalmente a visão de proteção da ONU para a população local. Nesse sentido, esta pesquisa promove diálogos com os Estudos de Tradução e Interpretação ao explorar o caráter político da tradução para as Relações Internacionais ao mesmo tempo que se aprofunda em um ator geralmente negligenciado na doutrina da ONU e nos Estudos de Operações de Paz. / [en] This thesis analyzes how the United Nations (UN) attempts to stabilize and justify an ambivalent meaning of protection and its sociopolitical roles in the Protection of Civilians (PoC) agenda. Traversed by different notions of translation, this research takes the Community Liaison Assistants (CLAs) as an analytical prism to complexify the efforts to construct representations of protection. The CLAs, created alongside the United Nations Stabilization Mission in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (MONUSCO), are local staff tasked with improving the mission s engagement with the local population in PoC activities, given their supposed linguistic-cultural skills. Thus, the CLAs are also part of the stabilization missions movement in UN doctrine. This turn signals the use of counterinsurgency tactics, whose understanding of language and culture as weapons seeks to obtain intelligence and support of the local population. Following a poststructuralist and postcolonial approach inspired mainly by the works of Jacques Derrida and Homi K. Bhabha, this thesis proposes deconstructing the representations applied to the CLAs through the analysis of the discourses presented in the UN reports and doctrinal documents. To this end, it is investigated how the CLAs are expected to translate linguistically and/or culturally the UN vision of protection to the local population. In this sense, this research promotes dialogues with Translation and Interpretation Studies by exploring the political character of translation for International Relations while delving into a generally denied actor in UN doctrine and Peace Operations Studies.