Hostname: page-component-5c6d5d7d68-lvtdw Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-08-15T23:31:08.475Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

Introduction

Memory and identity in the Yugoslav successor states

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  20 November 2018

Sabrina P. Ramet*
Affiliation:
Department of Sociology and Political Science, Norwegian University of Science and Technology, Trondheim, Norway, Email: sabrina.ramet@svt.ntnu.no

Abstract

Reading the psychological literature on memory, there is little doubt who plays the leading roles on this stage. The radiant hero in the limelight is Remembering, attracting all attention, support and sympathy. The shady villain is Forgetting, the trouble maker who is lurking behind the scenes, always ready to counteract Remembering and thwart its achievement. There are various scenarios in which this plot is acted out. Typically, Remembering is forced to use all kinds of tricks to resist the villain's assaults and to guard the treasure – the accumulated wealth of past experience and knowledge. While Remembering strives to defend this precious treasure, maintaining it as untouched as possible, Forgetting never tires of trying to steal and destroy it (or at least to damage or, insidiously, to distort and falsify it). In this way, the conflict about the treasure of the past takes on still another dramatic dimension: it becomes a struggle for truth. (Brockmeier 2002, 15)

Type
Special Section: Memeory and Identity in the Yugoslav Successor States
Copyright
Copyright © 2013 Association for the Study of Nationalities 

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Bergholz, Max. 2010. “The Strange Silence: Explaining the Absence of Monuments for Muslim Civilians Killed in Bosnia During the Second World War.” East European Politics & Societies 24 (3): 408434.Google Scholar
Blahović, Boško, and Mihajlović, Bogoljub. 1997. Priroda i drustvo, za 3. Razred osnovne skole. Belgrade: Zavod za udzbenike i nastavna sredstva.Google Scholar
Brockmeier, Jens. 2002. “Remembering and Forgetting: Narrative as Cultural Memory.” Culture Psychology 8 (1): 1543.Google Scholar
Buchenau, Klaus. 2011. “Orthodox Values and Modern Necessities: Serbian Orthodox Clergy and Laypeople on Democracy, Human Rights, Transition, and Globalization.” In Civic and Uncivic Values: Serbia in the Posts-Milöević Era, edited by Sabrina P. Ramet, Ola Listhaug and Dulic, Dragana, 113142. Budapest: Central European University Press.Google Scholar
Cohen, Stanley. 2001. States of Denial: Knowing about Atrocities and Suffering. Cambridge: Polity Press.Google Scholar
Dworkin, Ronald. 1996. “Objectivity and Truth: You'd Better Believe It.” Philosophy & Public Affairs 25 (2): 87139.Google Scholar
Eyal, Gil. 2004. “Identity and Trauma: Two Forms of the Will to Memory.” History and Memory 16 (1): 536.Google Scholar
Festinger, Leon. 1962. A Theory of Cognitive Dissonance. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press.Google Scholar
Freud, Sigmund. 1964. The Future of an Illusion. Translated from German by W. D. Robson-Scott; revised and newly edited by James Strachey. Garden City, NY: Doubleday.Google Scholar
Halbwachs, Maurice. 1980. The Collective Memory. Translated from French by Francis J. Ditter, Jr. and Vida Yazdi Ditter. New York: Harper & Row.Google Scholar
Heisler, Martin O. 2008. “Challenged Histories and Collective Self-concepts: Politics in History, Memory, and Time.” The Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science 617 (May): 199211.Google Scholar
James, Beverly. 1999. “Fencing in the Past: Budapest's State Park Museum.” Media, Culture & Society 21 (3): 291311.Google Scholar
Kardov, Kruno. 2007. “Remember Vukovar: Memory, Sense of Place, and the National Tradition in Croatia.” In Democratic Transition in Croatia: Value Transformation, Education & Media, edited by Ramet, Sabrina P. and Matic, Davorka, 6388. College Station: Texas A&M University Press.Google Scholar
Kattago, Siobhan. 2009. “Agreeing to Disagree on the Legacies of Recent History: Memory, Pluralism and Europe after 1989.” European Journal of Social Theory 12 (3): 375395.Google Scholar
van der Kolk, Bessel A., van der Hart, Onno, and Marmar, Charles R. 2007. “Dissociation and Information Processing in Posttraumatic Stress Disorder.” In Traumatic Stress: The Effects of Overwhelming Experience on Mind, Body, and Society, edited by van der Kolk, Bessel A., McFarlane, Alexander C. and Weisaeth, Lars, 303327. New York: The Guilford Press.Google Scholar
Kramer, Roderick M., and Messick, David M. 1998. “Getting By with a Little Help from Our Enemies: Collective Paranoia and Its Role in Intergroup Relations.” In Intergroup Cognition and Intergroup Behavior, edited by Constantine Sedikides, John Schopfler and Insko, Chester A., 233255. Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates.Google Scholar
Lazić, Sladjana. 2011. “The Re-evaluation of Milan Nedic and Draza Mihailovic in Serbia.” In Serbia and the Serbs in World War Two, edited by Ramet, Sabrina P. and Listhaug, Ola, 265282. Basingstoke: Palgrave.Google Scholar
Lindaman, Dana, and Ward, Kyle. 2004. History Lessons: How Textbooks from Around the World Portray U.S. History. New York: The New Press.Google Scholar
Mataušić, Nataša. 2008. Koncentracioni logor Jasenovac. Zagreb: Spomen-područje Jasenovac.Google Scholar
Matković, Hrvoje, and Mirošević, Franko. 2003. Povijest 4, udžbenik za 4. Razred gimnazije. 2nd ed. Zagreb: Skolska knjiga.Google Scholar
Molnár, Miklós. 2001. A Concise History of Hungary. Translated from Hungarian by Anna Magyar. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Nikolić, Kosta, Žutić, Nikola, Pavlović, Momčilo, and Spadijer, Zorica. 2005. Istorija za 3. i4. Razred gimnazije. Belgrade: Zavod za izdvanje udzbenika.Google Scholar
Petkova-Campbell, Gabriela. 2009. “Communism and Museums in Bulgaria.” International Journal of Heritage Studies 15 (5): 399412.Google Scholar
Pogány, István. 2010. “International Human Rights Law, Reparatory Justice and the Re-ordering of Memory in Central and Eastern Europe.” Human Rights Law Review 10 (3): 397428.Google Scholar
Ramet, Sabrina P. 2006. The Three Yugoslavias: State-Building and Legitimation, 1918–2005. Washington, DC Bloomington: The Woodrow Wilson Center Press Indiana University Press.Google Scholar
Ramet, Sabrina P. 2007. “The Dissolution of Yugoslavia: Competing Narratives of Resentment and Blame.” Südosteuropa 55 (1): 2669.Google Scholar
Sahdra, Baljinder, and Ross, Michael. 2007. “Group Identification and History Memory.” Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin 33 (3): 384395.Google Scholar
Schwartz, Barry, and Schuman, Howard. 2005. “History, Commemoration, and Belief: Abraham Lincoln in American Memory, 1945–2001.” American Sociological Review 70 (2): 183203.Google Scholar
Stojanović, Dubravka. 2011. “Value Changes in the Interpretations of History in Serbia.” In Civic and Uncivic Values: Serbia in the Post-Milosevic Era, edited by Sabrina P. Ramet, Ola Listhaug, and Dulić, Dragana, 221240. Budapest: Central European University Press.Google Scholar
Talvet, Jüri. 1998. “Literature as a Nation's Emotional Memory.” Interlitteraria, no. 3: 122135.Google Scholar
Tileaga, Cristian. 2012. “Communism in Retrospect: The Rhetoric of Historical Representation and Writing the Collective Memory of Recent Past.” Memory Studies 5 (4): 462478.Google Scholar
Vertzberger, Yaacov Y. I. 1997. “The Antinomies of Collective Political Trauma: A Pre-Theory.” Political Psychology 18 (4): 863876.Google Scholar
YUCOM. 2010. “Declaration on Srebrenica.” Peščanik (Belgrade). 1 April 2010. Accessed 9 April 2012. http://pescanik.net/2010/04/declaration-on-srebrenica/.Google Scholar