Ethnic Conflict and War Crimes in the Balkans The Narratives of Denial in Post-Conflict Serbia

by Obradovic-Wochnik, Jelena

• ISBN13: 9781848850033
• ISBN10: 1848850034
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 2013-09-26
• Publisher: I. B. Tauris

Summary

In the years following the fall of Slobodan Miloševic, Serbian social, cultural and political responses to the wars of the 1990s have fallen under intense international scrutiny. But is this scrutiny justfied, and how can these responses be better understood? Jelena Obradovic engages with ideas about post-conflict societies, memory, cultural trauma, and national myths of victimhood and justified war to shed light upon Serbian denial and justification of war crimes -- for example, Serbia's reluctant cooperation with the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY). Rather than treating denial as a failure to come to terms with the past or as resurgent nationalism, Obradovic argues that the justfications of atrocities are often the result of a societal need to understand and incorporate violent events within culturally acceptable boundaries.

Author Biography

Jelena Obradovic is a Researcher at the Centre for Russian and East European Studies, European Research Institute, University of Birmingham, UK.

Table of Contents

*Introduction * Nation and Myth in Public and Political Discourse * The Rise of the ‘National We’: Reconfiguring Serbian Nationalism * Kosovo and ‘Heavenly Serbia’: National Mythology in Culture and Politics, 1980s-Present * ‘Coming to Terms with the Past’ Twelve Years after Ethnic Conflicts * Part 2: National Mythology and Common Sense in Conflict Narratives * Narrating Ethnic Conflicts and the NATO Air Strikes * Victimhood and Threat in Conflict Narratives * Blame Attribution and Conspiracy Theory as Causes of Conflicts * Part 3: ‘The Nation’ and Denial of War Crimes * Aspects and Mechanisms of Denial * Milosevic and Mladic as Defenders of the Nation * Conclusion