Between Human Rights and Nationalism: Silencing as a Mechanism of Memory in the Post-Yugoslav Wars’ Serbia
Abstract
Just as norm-complying states adapt their practices to expected behaviors, post- conflict states are forced to adapt their practices and rhetoric to better resist pressures to comply with particular norms. Building on this insight, this paper analyzes three mechanisms through which the ruling elite in present day Serbia strategically constructed commemorative arenas for the purpose of dealing with the opposing demands and norms made both on the international as well as the national level: 1) de-contextualization of memory contents, 2) creation of social narratives of suffering and 3) promotion of the Holocaust memory as a screen memory. These are strategies of silencing which prevent public debate, representation, negotiation and are intended to reduce the tension between the contradicting demands at the international and the domestic levels. I suggest that the gap between the local and global forces and the changing role of the state, makes it possible for memory content to become a currency, a means of achieving certain real or symbolic benefits.
References
Assmann, Aleida. 2007. “Europe: A Community of Memory?” Bulletin of the German Historical Institute (40): 11−25.
Blustein, Jeffrey. 2012. “Human Rights and the Internationalization of Memory.” Journal of Social Philosophy 43(1): 19−32.
Borer, A. Tristian. 2003. “A Taxonomy of Victims and Perpetrators: Human Right and Reconciliation in South Africa.” Human Rights Quarterly 25(4): 1088−1116.
Byford, Jovan. 2006. “Serbs never hated the Jews’: The denial of antisemitism in Serbian Orthodox Christian culture.” Patterns of Prejudice 40(2): 159−179.
Byford, Jovan. 2007. “When I say “the Holocaust” I mean “Jasenovac” – Remembrance of the Holocaust in contemporary Serbia.” East European Jewish Affairs 37(1): 51-74.
David, Lea. 2015. “Dealing with the Contested Past in Serbia: De-contextualization of the War Veterans Memories”, Nations and Nationalism, 21(1): 102−119.
David, Lea. 2014a. “Mediating international and domestic demands: Mnemonic battles surrounding the monument to the fallen of the wars of the 1990s in Belgrade.” Nationalities Papers, 42(4): 655-673.
David, Lea. 2014b. “Impression Management of a Contested Past: Serbia’s Newly Designed National Calendar.” Memory Studies, 7(4): 472-483.
David, Lea. 2014c. “Fragmentation as a silencing strategy: Serbian war veterans against the State of Serbia.” Contemporary Southeast Europe, 1(2) Forthcoming.
David, Lea. 2013. “The Holocaust Discourse as a Screen Memory: the Serbian Case.” in (Mis)Uses of History: History as a Political Tool in the Western, Srdjan Jankovic and Veran Stancetic (eds.) CSDU: Belgrade. Vol.1: 63-87.
Franović, Ivana. 2008. „Dealing with the past in the context of ethnonationalism – The case of Bosnia Herzagovina, Croatia and Serbia.“ Bergof Occasional Paper 29: 1-59.
Freeman, Lindsey, Nienass, Benjamin. and Melamed, Lilav. 2013 “Screen memory.” International Journal of Politics, Culture and Society 26: 1-7.
Grinberg, L. Lev. 2010. Politics and Violence in Israel/Palestine, Democracy vs. Military Rule. London: Routledge.
Kovač, Senka. 2003. “Poruke predlagača novih državnih praznika Srbije.” Posebna izdanja Etnografskog instituta SANU 49: 101−109.
Levy, Daniel and Sznaider, Natan. 2010. Human Rights and Memory, The Pennsylvania University Press: Pennsylvania.
Levy, Daniel and Sznaider, Natan. 2005. The Holocaust and Memory in the Global Age. Philadelphia: Temple University Press.
Macdonald, B. David. 2005. “Globalizing the Holocaust – a Jewish usable past in Serbian nationalism.” Journal of Multidisciplinary International Studies 2(2): 2−31.
Subotić. Jelena. 2013. “Stories States Tell: Identity, Narrative, and Human Rights in the Balkans.” Slavic Review 72(2): 306−326.
Sztompka, Piotr. 2004. “The Trauma of Social Change: A case of Postcommunist societies.” in Alexander J, Eyerman R, Giesen B, Smelser N, Sztompka P (eds.) Cultural Trauma and Collective Identity. University of California Press: Berkeley.
Verdery, Katherine. 1991. National Ideology under Socialism: Identity and Cultural Politics in Ceausescu’s Romania. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press.
Weiss, Brent and Feldman, S. Robert. 2006. “Looking Good and Lying to Do It: Management Strategy in Job Interviews.” Journal of Applied Social Psychology 36: 1070−1086.
Zerubavel, Eviatar. 2004. Collective Memory and the Social Shape of the Past: Time Maps. Chicago and London: The University of Chicago Press.
Zerubavel, Eviatar. 2003. “Calendars and History: A Comparative Study of the Social Organization of National Memory.” Olick J (ed.) Continuities, Conflicts and Transformations in National Retrospection. Durham and London: Duke University Press. 315−337.
Authors retain copyright of the published papers and grant to the publisher the non-exclusive right to publish the article, to be cited as its original publisher in case of reuse, and to distribute it in all forms and media.
The published articles will be distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License (CC BY). It is allowed to copy and redistribute the material in any medium or format, and remix, transform, and build upon it for any purpose, even commercially, as long as appropriate credit is given to the original author(s), a link to the license is provided and it is indicated if changes were made. / The published articles will be distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution ShareAlike 4.0 International license (CC BY-SA). It is allowed to copy and redistribute the material in any medium or format, and remix, transform, and build upon it for any purpose, even commercially, as long as appropriate credit is given to the original author(s), a link to the license is provided, it is indicated if changes were made and the new work is distributed under the same license as the original.
Users are required to provide full bibliographic description of the original publication (authors, article title, journal title, volume, issue, pages), as well as its DOI code. In electronic publishing, users are also required to link the content with both the original article published in Journal of Regional Security and the licence used.
Authors are able to enter into separate, additional contractual arrangements for the non-exclusive distribution of the journal's published version of the work (e.g., post it to an institutional repository or publish it in a book), with an acknowledgement of its initial publication in this journal.
Authors are permitted to deposit author’s pre-print / author’s post-print (accepted version) / publisher's version (PDF) of their work in an institutional repository, subject-based repository, author's personal website (including social networking sites, such as ResearchGate, Academia.edu, etc.), and/or departmental website prior or during the submission process / at any time after the acceptance of the manuscript / at any time after publication.
Full bibliographic information (authors, article title, journal title, volume, issue, pages) about the original publication must be provided and links must be made to the article's DOI and the license.