The Silence of Dissent: Mnemonic Silences and the Yugoslav Wars

• In Event: Memory Regimes: Unpacking Contemporary Nationalist Memory Politics in Central, Eastern, and Southeast Europe

Abstract

Acts of antiwar, but also anti-ethnonational, resistance during and after the Yugoslav wars are included in, or excluded from, official memory politics of the (post )Yugoslav states in accordance with the ideological aims of diverse actors in the contemporary political struggles: through its epitomizing as an ultimate ethical act, or by purposefully forcing it into oblivion. Looking into the cases of desertion and draft evasion in four (post)Yugoslav countries (Slovenia, Croatia, Montenegro and Serbia), this paper inquires how diverse mnemonic actors create a story of the deserter from the Yugoslav wars. Moreover, the paper elucidates how do hegemonic memory regimes use and silence these stories as they find them conveniently (un)fitting within the nationalist memory regimes.

Author

• Milica Popovic, Austrian Academy of Sciences (Austria)