Ana Devic

My research

MemorAct - Remembering as Activism after Extreme Atrocities: Competing Victimhoods and Inclusive Memory in the Post-Yugoslav Space

What role do commemorations play in the construction of collective memory in places afflicted by extreme war violence? How do different forms of commemoration create or hinder inclusive remembrance of the violent past? This project aims to find out, first, what happens when the emotional and physical bond with communal heritage is distorted by intergroup violence, taking the case of the Yugoslav wars of the 1990s. What happens, for example, when a village cinema theatre becomes a place of torture and detention, and is then abandoned, keeping the traces of extreme violence and yielding only traumatic memories? The project investigates how such memories can be re-integrated within the social life through commemorative practices, zooming in on several sites of extreme war atrocity in the post-Yugoslav space. At these sites nationalist elites at public ceremonies regularly evoke competitive victimhood, inflaming “enemy” images and obstructing possibilities for inclusive reconstruction of the past and revival of multi-ethnic living, mixing the memories of WWII, socialism and the atrocities of the 1990s - such divisive agendas underpin nation-state identities in the region. The project creates a “conflicting” map of memorializations, where the dominant/ official commemorations, which exclude significant portions of the community, are juxtaposed to the grassroots commemorative practices seeking inclusive forms of remembrance. Grassroots commemorations will be examined as social movement activities that seek to recognize the atrocities committed by “our own,” and the suffering of victims of the “enemy” side. A significant part of the project’s interdisciplinarity includes artistic memory activism - the visually striking, also virtual tools of approaching memory, focusing on actors, communal and broader mobilizations, and significance in reclaiming spaces of war atrocities as inclusive places of memory. The project’s unique micro-level participatory method unravels the search for active forms of memory, stimulating citizens to deal with polarizing political forces in relating to the war violence. The project is placed in a comparative-historical perspective, linking post-Yugoslav remembrance frames to the broader European revisionisms of the Cold War.

Date started – Date End

01.03.2024 au 28.02.2026