Waste, Memory, and the Environment in Former Yugoslavia: A Historical Perspective

• In Event: Memory, Ignorance, and Forgetting: Recent Environmental Histories of Romania and Former Yugoslavia

Abstract

This paper seeks to bridge the gap and show noteworthy parallels between the seemingly disparate concepts of waste/discarding and memory/forgetting. It posits that both waste and memory are not merely incidental byproducts of human activity but are deeply entrenched within the cultural, social, and historical context. They not only mold sensory experiences but are also instrumental in crafting identities, landscapes, and environmental frameworks. Conversely, the juxtaposition of discarding and forgetting as mechanisms serves to illuminate how these practices perpetuate and reinforce prevailing systems of power, engendering environmental injustice and upholding an existing repressive social, political, and cultural order. The paper's objective is to explore how these conceptual intersections can be fruitful for a historical political ecology that considers the political implications of human-non-human relations. To this end, the paper employs historical examples of waste disposal practices, sites, and discourses in the former Yugoslavia to examine the political and cultural role of the environment and embedded mechanisms of forgetting and remembering. When waste is inscribed in space, it can offer new or overlay other memories, configure altering relations to the environment, change the perception of places, or it can be used as a form of environmental violence – not only against nature but against populations. The objective of this exploration is twofold: first, to bring waste to the forefront of existing scholarship in memory and environmental studies, and second, to reveal the multifaceted relationship between waste, memory, and power dynamics.

Author

• Hanna Stein, U of Graz (Austria)