Memory abuse, violence and the dissolution of Yugoslavia
A theoretical framework for understanding memory in conflict
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 12530955 |
|---|---|
| Authors | Taylor McConnell (University of Edinburgh, corresponding author) |
| Year | 2018 |
| Volume | 32 |
| Issue | 3 |
| Pages | 331-343 |
| Publication date | 2018-08-09 |
| Open Access | No |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | Innovation The European Journal of Social Science Research (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 1351-1610 • E-ISSN: 1469-8412 |
| Publisher | Taylor & Francis (PUBLISHER • GB) |
| DOI | 10.1080/13511610.2018.1508334 |
| OpenAlex | W2885886106 |
| Language | EN |
| Citations received | 4 |
| References cited | 14 |
This paper explores the term “memory abuse” as an analytical framework to understanding politically constructed mnemonic tensions in the years preceding Yugoslavia's violent dissolution. Here, “memory abuse” represents an intersection between the literatures of memory and conflict studies and refers to the intentional manipulation of memory beyond an intangible threshold, past which violence inevitably results. Drawing on the typologies of collective and cultural memory by Aleida and Jan Assmann, I argue that the political mobilisation of both distant and recent memories in the Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia in the late 1980s to a significant degree contributed to the outbreak of war in the early 1990s, and contemporary political actors have perpetuated an abuse of memory that has limited reconciliatory outcomes in the region since the end of conflict. In reformulating the memories of, inter alia, the 1389 Battle of Kosovo and the atrocities of the Second World War to fit nationalist narratives, political actors across Yugoslavia's republics sought to profit from forced divisions that ultimately brought about the country's end
Battle · Cognitive psychology · Collective memory · Criminology · Mnemonic · Nationalism · Political economy · Political science · Political violence · Politics · Sociology · Traumatic memories · Balkans: History, Politics, Society · History · Italian Fascism and Post-war Society · Law · Memory, Trauma, and Commemoration · Psychology
Memory and Political Change
The Sociology of Nationalism
Cultural Memory and Early Civilization
Nations and Nationalism
Self and Nation
Social Identity
Geschichtsvergessenheit, Geschichtsversessenheit
Memory and Power in Post‐War Europe
Imagined communities
The mirage of Balkan Piedmont
Culture in Action
Halbwachs' studies in collective memory
| Citations per year | 0.67 |
|---|---|
| Citation span | 2020 - 2026 (7) |
| Highly cited | No |