'Unsettling' women's studies, settling neoliberal threats in the academia: A feminist gaze from Croatia

This article critically engages with the effects of the neoliberal turn on the complex position of feminist agency within the Croatian academia, taking the 'unsettling' Women's Studies within the academic framework as a point of departure. By focusing on the neoliberal impact on the status of feminist scholarship, politics of feminist epistemology within/crossing the academic framework and the role of feminist scholars, the analysis shows various shifts and contradictions on how the neoliberal procedures operate within this distinctive context and to what extent specific geopolitical contingencies matter in this regard. It also explores the modes of how an emerging neoliberal 'rationality' enhances not only the depoliticisation of the discourse on sex/gender issues but also new moments of coercion around areas of dependency and academic neo-colonialism that queries the self-critical referential stand of local feminist scholars and shifting perspective in understanding the different positions of feminists towards neoliberal claims.