Post-Yugoslav Constellations: Archive, Memory, and Trauma in Contemporary Bosnian, Croatian, and Serbian Literature and Culture (Media and Cultural Memory, 22)

Memory in the Balkans has often been described as binding, authoritative, and non-negotiable, functioning as a banner of war. This book challenges such a one-dimensional representation and offers a more nuanced analysis that accommodates frequently ignored instances of transnational solidarity, dialogue, communal mourning and working through a difficult past. Exploring a broad range of memorial practices, the book focuses on the ways in which cultural memory is mediated, performed and critically reworked by literature and the arts in the former Yugoslavia. Against the methodological nationalism of works that study Serbian, Croatian, or Bosniak culture as self-contained, this book examines post-Yugoslav literature, film, visual culture, and politicized art practices from a supranational angle. Not solely focusing on traumatic memories, but also exploring how post-Yugoslav cultural practices mobilize memory for a politics of hope, this volume moves beyond the trauma paradigm that still dominates memory studies. In its scope and approach, the book shows the relevance of the cultural memory of Eastern European citizens and the contribution they can offer to the building of Europe's shared cultural memory and transnational identity.

Im Kontext der kulturwissenschaftlichen Gedächtnisforschung widmet sich diese interdisziplinär ausgerichtete Reihe dem Verhältnis von Medien und kultureller Erinnerung. Die hier vorgestellten Studien behandeln die ganze Bandbreite der durch Medien konstruierten, tradierten und verbreiteten Erinnerung. Schrift und Bild, das Kino und die ‘neuen’ digitalen Medien, Intermedialität, Transmedialität und Remediation sowie die sozialen, zunehmend transnationalen und transkulturellen, Kontexte der mediatisierten Erinnerung gehören zu den Forschungsinteressen der Reihe. Ziel ist es, eine internationale Plattform für die interdisziplinäre Medien- und Gedächtnisforschung zu schaffen. Eingereichte Manuskripte werden im peer review Verfahren durch externe Experten begutachtet.

Den Herausgebern, Astrid Erll (Goethe-Universität Frankfurt am Main) und Ansgar Nünning (Justus-Liebig-Universität Gießen) ist ein internationaler Beirat aus renommierten Wissenschaftlern assoziiert:

• Aleida Assmann (Universität Konstanz)
• Mieke Bal (University of Amsterdam)
• Vita Fortunati (University of Bologna)
• Richard Grusin (University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee)
• Udo Hebel (Universität Regensburg)
• Andrew Hoskins (University of Glasgow)
• Wulf Kansteiner (Binghamton University)
• Alison Landsberg (George Mason University)
• Claus Leggewie (Kulturwissenschaftliches Institut Essen)
• Jeffrey Olick (University of Virginia)
• Susannah Radstone (University of South Australia)
• Ann Rigney (Utrecht University)
• Michael Rothberg (University of Illinois)
• Werner Sollors (Harvard University)
• Frederic Tygstrup (University of Copenhagen)
• Harald Welzer (Kulturwissenschaftliches Institut Essen)

Acknowledgements 5 Table of Contents 7 Introduction 9 Part 1: Entangled Legacies of Extreme Violence: Traumatic Memories in the Aftermath of the Yugoslav Successor Wars 29 “Read and Remember”: Ozren Kebo’s Sarajevo for Beginners as Ironic Guidebook and Narrative Memorial 31 Remembering Nowhere: The Homeland-on-the-Move in the Exile Writing of Saša Stanišic and Ismet Prcic 53 The Art and Craft of Memory: Re-Memorialization Practices in Post-Socialist Croatia 73 The Evidence of Srebrenica: Oliver Frljic’s Theater Court in Cowardice 91 Intersecting Memories in Post-Yugoslav Fiction: The Yugoslav Wars of the 1990s through the Lens of the Holocaust 107 Part 2: Reclaiming the Past: Artistic and Literary Representations of Socialist Yugoslavia 135 What Remains of Mostar?: Archive and Witness in Marsela Sunjic’s Goodnight, City 137 Post-Socialism Remembers the Revolution: The Comedy of It 157 Yugoslavia in Post-Yugoslav Artistic Practices: Or, Art as ... 177 Part 3: Reconfiguring the Post-Yugoslav Present: Towards New Forms of Community and Identity 199 Garbage Heap, Storehouse, Encyclopedia: Metaphors for a Post- Yugoslav Cultural Memory 201 Small Town as the Scene of a Memory Encounter: Portraits and Commemorations of Radomir Konstantinovic 217 Recollecting an Alternative Modernity: Aleksandar Zograf’s Flea Market Archaeologies 245 A Public Language of Grief: Art, Poetry, and Transitional Justice in Post-Conflict Bosnia 267 Digital Afterlife: Ex-Yugoslav Pop Culture Icons and Social Media 287 Notes on Contributors 309 List of Illustrations 315 Index of Names 319 This volume analyzes new articulations of cultural memory in the wake of Yugoslavia's dissolution by engaging with diverse media, such as literature, cinema, comics, visual art, monuments, and the internet. Understanding cultural memory as a mediated and performative engagement with the past, the collection foregrounds art's power to record unofficial histories, critically delve into historical traumas, and imagine radical forms of solidarity.-- Provided by Publisher