An exchange seminar “How to Reconcile Histories” was held in Sarajevo from 20 to 24 March 2014. It was dedicated to discussing the dominant culture of memory in Bosnia and Herzegovina, Croatia and Serbia. We organised this seminar because after years of peacebuilding activities, dealing with opposing narratives about the war and concerns over where established memory policies are leading us, we felt the need to open up the channels of communication with historians. Arising from the need for dialogue and support, and primarily out of hope that if we joined forces we could achieve more in terms of social changes, apart from historians, we also invited to the seminar peace and civil activists, curators and museologists, as well as reporters we had worked with already and those we wanted to establish cooperation with. The seminar was divided into three working days, three thematic wholes, with introductory presentations that served as incentive for further discussion.
Day 1: introductory presentation by Prof Husnija Kamberović, PhD, “Historical Interpretations between Memory Policy, Memory Culture and Demythologising the Past”
Day 2: introductory presentation by Adnan Hasanbegović “A Peacebulidng Perspective of Memory Culture and Dealing with the Past (experience and practice of CNA)”
Day 3: introductory presentation by Svjetlana Nedimović, PhD, “The Past That Doesn’t Go Away as a Political Resource”
Different experiences with “dealing” with the past determined the course of very intensive discussions throughout the three days of the seminar. In peacebuilding, we deal with the past on a daily basis, to an extent that it ceases to be something that happened in the past, but crops up constantly with the full force of its diverse interpretations and has an active influence on society. For historians, however, the relevance of history as a scholarly discipline greatly depends on the capacity for approaching historical facts from a distance, interpreting them in the context of the time when they took place, and resisting revisionist interpretations this discipline is often exposed to. Revision in this case does not mean a logical course of development of history as an academic discipline (interpretation that arises out of new knowledge), but rather the selective reinterpretation catering to daily politics, historical events whose aspects are glossed over or denied (in Serbia, this revisionism is applied to the Chetnik movement, in Croatia these debates become quite harsh in assessing the socialist period or the NDH period, while in BiH debates mostly concentrate on the issue of continuity and discontinuity, including that of the state).
This does not pertain only to history policy (meaning state influence on interpreting the past[1]), but also to the culture of memory as a social construct of memory related to history policy, but also involving a set of other disciplines such as sociology, political science, cultural anthropology, etc.
This calls for an apolitical history. “History as a scholarly discipline should not be involved in any contemporary relations,” pointed out Prof Kamberović, “as a political instrument to justify certain political projects,” whether these are projects to establish nation states or reconciliation, also seen as a political project of state and other political institutions by some of the participants of this seminar.
For some of the participants, this was a rather surprising development, because it presupposed that it was possible to isolate scholarly pursuits from the totality of social conditions within which they take place. The discussion developed along two strands: history as an ideally typical scholarly discipline presupposing political and evaluative neutrality, and history as a social discipline manifested through dominant discourses in the public space. This rift between the scholarly ideal and the socio-political practice persisted throughout the seminar. The discussion showed that it was up to the scholarly discipline to insist on scientific method and be objective in its findings, independent from political influence. And it was up to the rest of us to help these voices from historiography be heard in the public arena. However, as much as scholarly work may be based on a scientific approach to facts, supported by arguments and reasoned, it simply does not reach a significant portion of the population, which is why these efforts often seem futile. Similar criticism was addressed to peace organisations and human rights organisations – that their work in the public arena is not sufficiently visible or present, and that they should consider improving public relations, media coordination and the like. The question that remains is whether media presence automatically guarantees that people will hear what you have to say. Namely, voices from civil society often contradict the dominant social narrative on the recent past.
Each national community has its own mythological interpretation of the past, not entirely divorced from some factual truths, but still a subjective interpretation of a single group. As pointed out during the second day of the seminar, at CNA, during our years of peacebuilding activity, we have experienced daily interpretations of the past as quite antagonised along the lines of the 1990s discernible in the political discourse as a way to continue the war by other means. This is perhaps most visible in Bosnia and Herzegovina, but it is present throughout the region. There is a collectivisation of guilt, responsibility is transferred to the “other side”, and the mythological interpretation of the past is reflected through victimisation (of the nation, ethnic group) and through the glorification of the warrior. This image is established through the policy, but also the culture of memory, conditioning the ways that we as a society chose to remember.
And while we agreed that the memory matrix based on the glorification, heroisation and victimisation of the past was inherited from the period of socialist modernisation, and as such is not a local curiosity but a general rule within international relations, the discussion insisted on the difference between the socialist narrative and the narrative established within post-Yugoslav nation states, especially when it comes to memorialisation processes. It was pointed out that Yugoslav memorial art has an emancipatory function, it celebrates the heroic sacrifice, but the monuments also symbolise the value of cooperation and solidarity (as opposed to the present-day basic value of compassion), aiming towards a “better future” (as opposed to the present-day orientation towards the past, “never forget”), and the establishment of a more just social order than that which produced the violence in the first place. However, this narrative is also based on exclusion (of those “not with us”), and is also established from above, by imposing a prescribed policy of history.
There was a lot of discussion about how the animosity fostered in a large part of our societies finds its justification precisely in national history. Myths in history are not outright lies, but rather the extraction of events from their contexts, or the foregrounding of only a single aspect of the event that supports a certain vision of the past. Mere determination of facts will not prevent the repetition of violence, instead, the justification for that violence must be questioned. It is based in a tragic past that often becomes the justification for future (preventive) violence. How do we “relax” these relations, make room for creating a culture of memory with multiple perspectives, because, as pointed out the day before, our experiences are different, and there can be no consensus on historical events, but in this way, we can open up a dialogue on conflicting interpretations of the past. “Our” particularity is determined through difference from “those others”, what we remember determines who we are. This is the point where intervention is necessary, trying to find ways of memorialisation and commemoration that will be inclusive, not based on a hierarchy of victims (military, then civilian, “our” victims juxtaposed to “theirs”), but primarily set up as a warning against the destruction of humanity.
However, the past can essentially be very important for the transformation of society, and not as some sort of repository of conclusive messages, a warning. It can be part of a self-creating social process and become part of constituting society and new networks of meanings. We discussed this during our final, third day of the seminar, focusing on the recent protests in Bosnia and Herzegovina.
These protests were essentially defined as social. Throughout the duration of the protests, the reaction of the ruling structures tried to pull this social rebellion back into the ethno-national register as the basic paradigm of BiH society. It is not a matter of overcoming the recent violent past in order for us to be able to deal with social and economic issues. Quite the opposite, overcoming the past would be an injustice in itself, even if the society were to implement what is mandated by transitional justice processes. The mechanisms of transitional justice pertain to a limited time period. The relationship of society towards the past in its totality is much more important. Prosecuting, vetting, reparations, these transitional justice mechanisms may still potentially represent perpetuating historical injustices. By displacing our relationship towards the past, we leave room for social controllers (the political elite) to create our present out of touch with what is being established through processes of dealing with the past and of transitional justice. As long as it disrupts, resists becoming routine and normalising relations, as long as society is somehow not allowed to make peace with what it had done, that past is a source of political pedagogy. Only then does it become a resource for a political dealing with the injustices of the past and the injustices of the present. In this case, political responsibility would entail, as Svjetlana Nedimović said, “that all those participating in the production and reproduction of structural relations resulting in injustices are responsible for collective transformative action.” In practice, this means that the past cannot be conceived as something that has passed, but must be viewed in relation to the present and the moral and existential needs of the community. The foundation of this model of responsibility is social cohesion. “It is not a position for a neutral liberal state, it is a position for a socially responsible state, even when its functionality is as problematic as that of BiH.”
These were the main highlights of a very intensive three-day discussion. This was also the greatest benefit of the seminar, since we were able to talk within a circle of people from Bosnia and Herzegovina, Croatia, and Serbia that have been active in the public arena for a long time and with considerable results, whether it be within history as a scholarly discipline, public policy issues related to the culture of memory, or activism to incite social change. The diversity of perspectives, strategies of action and experiences in these processes provided us with a very broad overview within which the processes of dealing with the past in these post-Yugoslav countries can be viewed within a wider social-in this case European-context. We did not come up with any recipes for success. On the contrary, at times the topic seemed all-pervasive and almost irresolvable. However, we hope this is the first step. The participants expressed the need for cooperation and networking, as well as finding new strategies and ways into the dominant discourse.
We will be publishing extensive documentation on the seminar. To see photos, click here.
[1] The most vivid recent examples of state intervention in interpretations of the past are the resolutions and declarations adopted by parliaments in post-Yugoslav countries representing the official position of the state about the nature and meaning of historical events. In this way, states participate in establishing the framework within which historiography is bound. Because of these efforts, school textbooks present a particular problem.