Memory and Identity Practices in the Aftermath of War

The contributions build on a long legacy of collective memory studies, which can be traced back to Halbwachs who coined the term in 1925 arguing that memory is not only mediated, but structured by social arrangements. He famously stated, “It is in society that people normally acquire their memories… [and] recall, recognize, and localize their memories” (1992, 38). Similarly, scholars today argue that collective memories are not disconnected thoughts, narratives, and actions, but rather context-dependent, many-voiced and ever-changing practices through which individuals and groups view themselves in history (Thelen Reference Thelen1989; Argenti and Schramm Reference Argenti and Schramm2010). On a social level, such memories refer to a symbolic order through the media, institutions, and practices “by which social groups construct a shared past” (Erll Reference Erll2008, 5). The memories and their representations can best be observed in experiences of generations, families, cityscapes, public debates on history, and the growing “memory industry,” ranging from museum trade, academic books, articles, and the memorabilia sold in antique stores, tourist boutiques, and through the Internet, and activities promoted by civil society organizations (Assmann Reference Assmann2007; Klein Reference Klein2000; Markus, Mullay and Kityama Reference Markus, Mullally and Kitayama1997).

This is not to suggest though that shared memories are homogeneous entities. On the contrary, heterogeneous perspectives based on differences in gender, age, cohort, political faction, and biography influence the local worlds in which individuals and groups remember (Kleinman and Kleinman Reference Kleinman and Kleinman1994; Brockmeier Reference Brockmeier2002) and do not necessarily merge into a shared history or a master narrative (Assmann Reference Assmann2007). According to Bloch (Reference Bloch, Maurice1996), there is no one way to inscribe memory in the public world just as there is “no generalised need of human beings to remember the past” (229). Rather, there are a multitude of ways in which people remember, standardize, and reproduce events depending on the context, the narrator, and the listener. This becomes particularly apparent with regards to wars and political violence as they may be remembered variously as mythic events, part of a political history, a traumatic experience, part of a family history, and/or a focus of bitter contestation (Erll Reference Erll2008). Thus, it is important to pay attention not only to what people remember about such events, but also to how they remember them through engagement with material objects, language, dialogue, and performance.

Sites of Memory and Commemorative Performance

Place makes memory cohere in complex ways, shapes national identity, and produces and is produced by social relations and practices (Bal Reference Bal1999; Hayden Reference Hayden1997; Martin Reference Martin1997). Places onto which war memories latch include memorials, statues, the graves of martyrs and war heroes, and museums. These sites invite a variety of public commemorative practices defined by the gestures and words of those who come together to recall particular aspects of the past (Winter Reference Winter2008). However, places are not simply screens onto which memories are projected, they can also work as memory (Argenti and Schramm Reference Argenti and Schramm2010; Ingold Reference Ingold1993). In “Making Sense of Ruins: Architectural Reconstruction and Collective Memory in Belgrade,” Gruia Bădescu explores the duality of place as receptor and enactor of collective memory by engaging with the ways in which architects, politicians, and the Orthodox establishment in Belgrade relate to the twin ruins of the former Generalštab building which had fallen prey to the NATO bombings in 1999. Centrally located, the ruins are considered an eyesore by some who argue for their rebuilding and modernization into profit driving offices and shopping malls. Others, particularly architects and artists, argued for restorative reconstruction turning the ruins into a cultural monument to engage both with its architectural style as well as a site for commemoration. Bădescu powerfully shows how objects, such as the ruins of the Generalštab, communicate as actors, messages and ambiguous emotions in relationship with the people interacting with them. Among the architects alone, the buildings evoked various conflicting perceptions including a sense of victimhood fixated on the NATO bombing that had left many economically and socially deprived; notions of guilt of and responsibility for the 1990s wars in the former Yugoslavia; and indifference, particularly among younger generations who could not relate to the built structure or the war in the same emotional ways as their parent’s generation. Interestingly, Bădescu points out, none of the contemplations dealt explicitly with the function of the building as the Headquarter of the Yugoslav army which seems to suggest that life within the buildings had never been transparent and that public concerns for their destruction or reconstruction were mainly spurred by the ruination and, related questions concerned with the war, violence, and identity formation.

In postwar scenarios, engagement with the past takes shape through multiplex practices which include, but are not limited to, public gatherings, ceremonies, the construction of national myths, and media events, as well as the naming of streets, squares, and towns, the bestowal of prizes and public lectures, film screenings, and exhibits (Brockmeier Reference Brockmeier2002; Roudometof Reference Roudometof2002; Winter Reference Winter2008). In “Living History? Reenacting the Past and Promoting ‘Tradition’ in the Dalmatian Hinterland,” Michaela Schäuble engages with the notion of living history by investigating the multiple ways in which people in the Croatian village of Sinj remember the attack by Turkish invaders in 1715 and, through it, more recent battles including the Homeland War in the 1990s. The story goes that at the time of the invasion, a friar with his congregation had prayed for days on end in front of a Marian painting when suddenly the Turks suffered from thirst and dysentery and a lady in white appeared floating at the fortification wall forcing the aggressors to flee. In honor of the divine intervention and successful defense, the inhabitants developed a chivalrous game known as the Sinjska Alka. Schäuble vividly describes the Alka as an annual event performed by men demonstrating their capabilities in combat and symbolizing Croatian heroism, self-defense, and national independence. She assesses the historical reenactments through various genres such as the Alka itself, folkloristic performances, film and music productions, photographic and other exhibitions, fashion shows, and academic conferences. Through each of these performances the meaning of the Alka are reshaped reflecting the appetite of the various audiences, contexts, and political sentiments. For instance, the expensive production of a monumental film directed at national and international audiences and, particularly the tourism industry, unravels the Alka’s history by connecting it to the legendary battle and, through the tournament, to the present. Indeed, today’s Alkari are presented as the direct descendants of “a historical armed formation of the territorial army of Venetian Dalmatia” (203). Different interpretations emerge at a more folkloristic restaging of the historical battle and Marian apparition with amateur actors where dominant tropes include those of self-victimization (the notion that Croatians have suffered more than any other nation throughout history), divine closeness, and national innocence. While the enactment might appear harmless on the surface, Schäuble uncovers it as strategy to comment on present socio-political grievances. Through the multiple, at times seemingly conflictual messages, the contribution brings to light how concepts such as “history,” “locality,” “economic globalization,” and “transnational political integration” become meaningful mainly in the everyday as people mobilize them to establish a sense of belonging and formulating aspirations for the future.

All contributions to this special issue make apparent how through ritual and narrative action, people inscribe memory onto the “political landscape” (Feldman Reference Feldman2003, 62) by grounding micro-practices of remembering into macro-processes of nation building. At the same time, they recognize that to grasp how communities come to terms with memories of hardship and destruction, it is not enough to focus solely on collectively performed mnemonic practices. Indeed, the authors make apparent that, in the aftermath of war, it often takes incredible individual strength to excavate the “truth” around contested violent events and, thereby, influence and shape memory on the national and international level.

The Power of Narratives and Truth-Making Practices

In the post-Cold War era individual testimonies of human rights abuses play a crucial role in truth-making, demanding justice, gaining reparations, and rescuing the memory of daily life lived under political oppression and colonialism (Grele Reference Grele2007). According to Rosenfeld (Reference Rosenfeld2009), such narratives tend to reflect “unmastered pasts” (129) characterized by diversity and contestation in that “facts” concerning violent events, the numbers of people killed and missing, the numbers of homes burnt, and state benefits and welfare cannot be verified due to a lack of reliable data. It is, thus, crucial to look at the context in which “facts” are produced by individuals and groups in order to understand what is accepted as “evidence” in support of an argument (Grele Reference Grele2007).

“Truth-making” endeavors flourished in the aftermath of the wars in the former Yugoslavia particularly through oral history projects documenting the atrocities and providing firsthand testimony of oppression as evidence at international tribunals. The International Criminal Tribunal of the Former Yugoslavia (ICTY) in fact relied, in part, on the detailed testimonies of survivors, first-hand witnesses, and expert witnesses in order to convict and develop legal cases against war criminals. However, despite the fact that individuals were encouraged to speak out, the tension between victims and lawyers was often palpable due to different perceptions of evidentiary value whereby lawyers focused on “the where, when, who and how of events” while cutting the witnesses short who put emphasize on “emotions, impressions, general reminiscences, renditions of atmosphere, [and] interrogations of philosophical and ethical nature” (Luebben Reference Luebben2003, 163; Dembour and Haslam Reference Dembour and Haslam2004). Those who were wronged thus need to create their niches beyond the courtrooms to remember, tell, and disseminate their stories and establish truths about what they have experienced and witnessed. The creativeness to which survivors resort is limitless. One such example is the extraordinary account by the special issue contributors Stephanie Schwandner-Sievers and Melanie Klinkner of the “House Museum” of Ferdonije Qerkezi in Gjakova, Kosovo. During the Kosovo War, Serbs had intruded into her family home kidnapping and later killing her husband and sons. The remains of her youngest and oldest sons were returned to her for burial in 2005 while she continues to fight for the search and identification of the others. Feeling betrayed by the international community and the Kosovar State, she started on her own initiative to educate the public about the atrocities committed during the war by turning her home into a museum. In this context, everyday objects of daily living such as furniture, clothes, and childhood toys receive great meaning. On the one hand, they seem to create a “permanent duality” (Langer Reference Langer1991) in which Ferdonije resides, as the stories connected to the objects refuse historical linearity placed in time with a beginning, middle, and end (van der Kolk and van der Hart Reference Van der Kolk and Van der Hart1991, 448). It is as though she has followed her objects into a “crypt” (Derrida Reference Derrida1976) where they joined and built a living with the dead. On the other hand, Schwandner-Sievers and Klinkner show that the same objects are not static, but a means to transmitting key arguments for the impossibility for reconciliation in the face of injustice. Ferdonije’s fight for truth clearly goes against the government’s attempt to achieve some form of transitional justice highlighting the importance of prioritizing interethnic reconciliation to prevent the recurrence of violence. While this may be so, Schwandner-Sievers and Klinkner eloquently argue that her position is not one in contradiction to transitional justice per se considering that her right to know, justice, and reparation has not been fully met.

The struggle for memories and truth has been shown to be problematic as people like Ferdonije do not recall the past solely for its own sake, but “as a tool to bolster different aims and agendas” including political propaganda, manipulation, and denial (Hoelscher and Alderman Reference Hoelscher and Derek2004, 349). Of course, this does not just apply to the victims of violence, but especially also to the perpetrators. Sontag (Reference Sontag2003) illustrates this with reference to the Serbian siege of Sarajevo. She points out that a majority of Serbs living in Serbia and abroad clung to and passed on accounts that the Bosnians themselves perpetrated the horrific “breadline massacre” in May 1992 and “market massacre” in February 1994 by shelling the center of their capital or planting mines in order to create gruesome sights for foreign journalists and receive more support from international governments and organizations. This and the previous examples show that narrative accounts of past and present forms of violence touch very significantly on questions of identity, nationalism, power, and authority, and are to a large extent nationalist efforts to construct “desirable loyalty to and insider’s understanding of one’s country, tradition, and faith” (Said Reference Said2000, 176). So as to not fall prey to such dominating and, at times, distorting accounts of past events, it is crucial to pay attention to counter-memories and counter-powers which aim to negotiate well-established versions of history and sometimes even undermine the “ratified versions of reality” (Butler Reference Butler2010).

The Dynamics of Counter-Memory and Disqualified Knowledge

The scholarly literature on collective memory often suggests that such memory is shared and agreed upon by large social groups. Such perceptions ignore the fact that people do not necessarily live out long-standing traditions or traditions that are presumed to be of such nature. Instead, they belong to different groups with different, sometimes conflicting agendas, and may not feel represented by the official display of their communities (Fritzsche Reference Fritzsche2001). They are themselves actors and narrators in history (Trouillot Reference Trouillot1995) who profit from, negotiate, and transform the “stock of stories” available to them (Wertsch Reference Wertsch2002). Accordingly, memories may be highly contested, contributing to the critique of power and even perceived as a threat to officially accepted versions of historical accounts (Werbner Reference Werbner1998).

Scholars emphasizing the competing agendas of groups and individuals who have unequal means to generate powerful historical narratives have often referred to Foucault’s work on discursive practice, subjugated knowledge (2003), and the relationship between power and knowledge. In his lectures held at the College de France, Foucault (Reference Foucault2003) suggested the “insurrection of subjected knowledges” (7) in order to make historical critique possible and, thereby, counter the power of repressive forces in society. Subjected knowledges combine two distinct and seemingly contradictory types. The first refers to historical content of confrontational and dismantling character that has been buried or disguised by historical accounts, which attempt to preserve “functional coherence or formal systematizations” (7). For instance, Bădescu in this special issue analyzes power struggles over the ruined Generalštab building between Serbian politicians who would prefer the damaged buildings to be removed and, thus, recent violent past to be swept under the rug; the clergy of the Orthodox Church who favored the ruins to remain as such to serve as testimony of the destruction brought about by Europe; and city makers who opted for the preservation of the building to allow for a multiplex engagement with the city’s history and present grievances. Through careful analysis, Bădescu highlights how these multiple threads of collective memories are mediated by functional and lucrative concerns, reflecting the importance of political economy, investment, and funding in the overall reconstruction process rather than a primacy of an engagement with the memory of the bombings and the Balkan wars.

The second type of subjected knowledges, as outlined by Foucault, includes knowledge that has been disqualified as nonconceptual or insufficiently elaborated that is, naïve, hierarchically inferior, and below the required level of erudition, or scientificity. It is claimed that such disqualified knowledge has no public arena and, consequently, has to be sought among and made visible through discontinuities in stories (Foucault Reference Foucault2001). In “Reading the Present Through the Past: The Roma in Postwar Kosovo,” Enkelejda Sula-Raxhimi carefully engages with Roma memories and narratives that inhabit, like their narrators, an ambiguous place in Kosovo as they are rejected by both the Albanian majority and Serbian minority. Thus pushed into “brackets” (Povinelli Reference Povinelli2011), their memories are at odds with dominant modes of being while, at the same time, shaping domineering socio-political discourses around victimhood, culpability, national identity, and justice. To use Povinelli’s (Reference Povinelli2012) words, their memories, like forms of life, “[emerge] contrary to the dominant modes of social being” and, consequently, the dominant mode “experiences this form as inside and yet foreign to its body” (1). Sula-Raxhimi engages with these tensions by showing how fear connected to discrimination and societal violence is not only reflective of present-day practices of racism and marginalization, but deeply rooted in nationalistic interpretations of Kosovo’s complex history during Tito’s Yugoslavia and the war in 1998–1999. Caught between the Albanian and Serbian factions during the armed conflict, Roma had no choice but to choose sides. Many of them were enlisted into the Serbian army where they were often used as human shields and forced to perform degrading tasks such as digging mass graves, carrying corpses, and looting and pillaging Albanian properties. With the end of the war, the Albanian population considered the Roma as “Serb collaborators” and, during spontaneous and orchestrated retaliation attacks drove thousands of them out of their communities. Many of the Roma never returned from exile while others congregated in enclaves where they tried to reestablish their identity vis-à-vis shifting demographics and international agendas promoting interethnic dialogue despite a refusal by the Albanians to engage in “normalization” agendas in the absence of justice. While the oral histories told by Roma do not enter into the public domain of Kosovar society, it would be wrong to assume that they had no impact. Indeed, Sula-Raxhimi highlights that they are increasingly captured and promoted by human rights and international organizations that have administrative power in Kosovo and, inadvertently, shape politics on the ground.

It is important to stress that disqualified knowledge such as Roma oral histories do not unfold exclusively along ethnic lines. The case of Ferdonije’s House Museum (Schwandner-Sievers and Klinkner in this special issue) shows another facet of gendered disqualified knowledge whereby her efforts to memorialize have only been officially recognized in 2016 when the mayor of Gjakova formally inaugurated the museum. By then, countless memorials dedicated to male freedom fighters, community leaders, and politicians had been erected all over the country with only one collective monument entitled Heroinat honoring the sacrifice of Kosovar women during the war. Thus, Ferdonije’s achievement is an important lesson in terms of victims’ agency on collective memory, demonstrating how gaps in the attainment of justice can be filled by truthful individual, but non-conciliatory forms of remembrance. In order for such social narratives not to become meaningless, fall prey to relativity, and lose their importance in the understanding of war, it is crucial to analyze them in relation to the changing historical and cultural contexts, social relations, and identities.

The Selective and Constructive Nature of (Collective) Postwar Memory

All contributions to this special issue highlight how people as relational beings select and assemble memories of the past by silencing and excluding knowledges and perceptions while imagining others to create new forms of nationalism and national identity, bolster moral economies, and influence social relations. Exclusion is a powerful means, even a prerequisite to constitute identity; indeed, Butler (Reference Butler2010) notes that antagonism and exclusion are constitutive for identity formation in that “no particular identity can emerge without presuming and enacting the exclusion of others” (31). For example, Schäuble (this special issue) highlights very clearly how tropes of self-victimization allow her interlocutors to present themselves not only as victimized but also as innocent in relation to past battles as well as the most recent Homeland War. Through the analysis of a popular Croatian musical performance by the former army volunteer Thompson at an academic conference organized by the Croatian Academy of Science and Arts she demonstrates how difficult it is to separate the Alka narrative from traditionalist, right wing political connotations. While the conference was to contribute to a better understanding of the theological interpretation of the Turkish siege, the Alka in the Communist period, and art historical discussions of the image of Our Lady of Sinj, Thompson gave it an additional note with his patriotic folk-rock songs. The lyrics combined religious rhetoric, historical symbolism with a celebration of Croatia’s fascist legacy as well as its aggressive nationalism. As such, Schäuble notes pointedly, the performance was one of “commemorating a violent past as heroic self-defense and preservation of one’s ‘culture’ despite centuries of oppression which is finally rewarded with the creation of an independent Croatian state.” What the glorification of the homeland and its male war heroes omits is the latter’s involvement in war crimes as well as the shabby treatment of those who returned from the war disabled as they receive insufficient support, often living at the brink of poverty (see also Schäuble Reference Schäuble2014).

Closely linked to the selective nature of collective memory is also the concept of imagination—rather than perceiving it as a form of escapism or means to fill memory gaps due to forgetting, Appadurai (Reference Appadurai1996) reminds us that it is “a staging ground for action” (7). Imagination or “fabrication” is achieved by ignoring crucial events, interjecting one’s own, subversive meanings into “rhetorically accomplished texts,” and paying attention to only those contents and commemorative practices that fit one’s own (Irwin-Zarecka Reference Irwin-Zarecka1994). Sula-Raxhimi (in this special issue) highlights, for instance, the creative use of collective understandings of what had happened during the war by linking it to particular locations where violence was remembered as more prevalent than elsewhere reflecting various degrees of loyalty connected to different localities and communities. What becomes apparent is that memories are used variously as reminders of what happened in the past, as a tool to navigate the socio-political system, and to adapt to the current political, social, and economic climate which requires high adaptability and flexibility from minority groups.

While some scholars have referred to such selective remembering as strategic forms of forgetting, others have highlighted that considering forgetting a choice or strategy is rather paradoxical (Espoisto Reference Esposito2008). While it may be possible to forget accidentally as a consequence of repression, drunkenness, drugs, and cerebral lesion, there are “no voluntary devices for forgetting” state Eco and Migiel (Reference Eco and Migiel1988, 259). Thus, although forgetting is mostly used metaphorically in collective memory studies, the exclusion of psychological categories is short-sighted as it fails to take into account the socially produced “unspeakability of suffering” (Hackett and Rolston Reference Hackett and Rolston2009). Survivors of extreme violence, including genocide, are often unable to articulate their experiences partly due to a sense of shame and fear of humiliation for having to beg for mercy or for having acted less than heroic in the face of suffering, feelings of guilt for having survived while others have died, or seeking to protect others, especially their children from the horrors that they had experienced. Silence thus, does not necessarily reflect forgetting since there are both psychological and social factors at play which determine whether people decide to tell their story or to remain silent.

Yet, not only in the case of sheer brutality, memory is always transitory, unreliable, and haunted by forgetting, and cannot be stored for eternity no matter how hard we try to secure it with monuments and digital retrieval systems (Huyssen Reference Huyssen2000). In response to this, the contributions to this special issue are attentive to the constructive nature of remembering and commemorating as well as to the enactment of the past through the engagement with the built environment, various media, and narrativity. The authors are sensitive to canonizing forces that strive to achieve nationalistic agendas related to independence, identity formation, and strategic exclusion. At the same time, all of them pay attention to accounts that fail to find a place in the present partly because the people engaged in such memory work lack confidence in the erudition of their own stories; partly because they are effectively sidelined and excluded by larger historical and nationalistic projects; and partly because they reveal uncomfortable truths about both the past and the present.