Abstract
This paper discusses a number of stories about loss, grief and genocide in Bosnia-Herzegovina and the attempts by the survivors to construct intimate archives about their shattered lives. In addition to the loss of human lives, the deliberate destruction of documents, photographs, books and official records has been deeply felt by the genocide survivors and other victims of ‘memoricide’ in Bosnia as a very personal loss, an aggravated trauma and a metaphor for annihilation of their personal, family and communal existence. Subsequently, for them, the recreation of personal records and communal archives ultimately becomes an attempt to reclaim their own past and, in the process, to reaffirm their identities and recreate and sustain a sense of continuity in a post-genocide context. Using a series of ethnographic vignettes from Bosnia and the Bosnian refugee diaspora, the paper highlights the importance of the survivors’ emotional (and embodied) attachment to various forms of records and archival material. It also demonstrates the potential for research in memory and archival studies to actively engage in the creation of historical narratives about violations of human rights, thus contributing to truth-finding, social healing and reconciliation processes in post-conflict and post-genocide communities.
Similar content being viewed by others
Notes
I use the shorter and more commonly used name of the country ‘Bosnia’ and the acronym ‘BiH’, instead of its full name.
Stana’s story features in my book Places of Pain (2013).
Fatima’s story features in another article I published in Archival Science (cf. Halilovich 2014a).
References
Bakaršić K (1994) The libraries of Sarajevo and the book that saved our lives. New Combat. J Reason Resist, pp 13–15 http://www.newcombat.net/article_thelibraries.html. Accessed 20 Oct 2014
Becirevic E (2014) Genocide on the River Drina. Yale University Press, New Haven
Belaj M (2008) Family photography as creation and archiving of (desirable) reality. Narodna umjet Croat J Ethnol Folk Res 45(2):135–151
Caswell M (2014) Archiving the unspeakable: silence, memory, and the photographic record in Cambodia. University of Wisconsin Press, Madison
Čečo A (2008) O destrukciji, András J Riedlmayer, ekspert za kulturno naslijeđe: Džamije su nestajale kao staljinovi komesari. Slobodna Bosna 604:58–61
Cigar N (1995) Genocide in Bosnia: the policy of ‘ethnic cleansing’ in Eastern Europe. Texas A&M University Press, College Station
Cushman T (2004) Anthropology and genocide in the Balkans. Anthropol Theory 4(1):5–28
Damasio A (2000) Descartes’ error: emotion, reason and the human brain. Quill, New York
Dever M, Newman S, Vickery A (2010) The intimate archive: journeys through private papers. Arch Manus 38(1):94–137
Doyle M (2001) Experiments in deaccessioning: archives and on-line auctions. Am Arch 54(2):350–362
Geertz C (1973) The interpretations of cultures. Basic Books, New York
Gilliland AJ (2014) Moving past: probing the agency and affect of recordkeeping in individual and community lives in post-conflict Croatia. Arch Sci 14:249–274
Gilliland AJ, Caswell M (2015) Records and their imaginaries: Imagining the impossible, making possible the imagined. Arch Sci. doi:10.1007/s10502-015-9259-z
Grenfell D (2015) Of time and history: the dead of war, memory and the national imaginary in Timor-Leste’. Commun Politics Cult 48(3):16–28
Halilovich H (2011) Beyond the sadness: memories and homecomings among survivors of ‘ethnic cleansing’ in a Bosnian village. Mem Stud 4(1):42–52
Halilovich H (2013) Places of pain: forced displacement, popular memory and trans-local identities in Bosnian war-torn communities. Berghahn Books, New York-Oxford
Halilovich H (2014a) Reclaiming erased lives: archives, records and memories in post-war Bosnia and the Bosnian diaspora. Arch Sci 14(3–4):231–247
Halilovich H (2014b) Behind the emic lines: ethics and politics of insiders’ ethnography. In: Voloder L, Kirpitchenko L (eds) Insider research on migration and mobility: international perspectives on researcher positioning. Ashgate, Farnham, pp 87–102
Hoare MA (2008) Genocide in Bosnia and the failure of international justice. Kingston University Helen Bamber centre for the study of rights and conflict working paper series no. 8. http://eprints.kingston.ac.uk/5511/1/Hoare-M-5511.pdf. Accessed 24 May 2014
ICMP—International Commission on Missing Persons (2015) http://www.ic-mp.org/. Accessed 4 May 2015
ICTY (1996) Gang rape, torture and enslavement of Muslim women charged in ICTY’s first indictment dealing specifically with sexual offences. ICTY, The Hague. http://www.icty.org/sid/7334. Accessed 24 May 2014
Lovrenović I (1994) Hatred of memory. In Sarajevo burned books and murdered pictures. N Y Times 143:15–19
Lynch M (1999) Archives in formation: privileged spaces, popular archives and paper trails. Hist Hum Sci 12(2):65–87
Mavor C (1995) Pleasures taken: performances of sexuality and loss in Victorian photographs. Duke University Press, Durham and London
Nettelfield LJ (2010) Courting democracy in Bosnia and Herzegovina: the Hague Tribunal’s impact in a postwar state. Cambridge University Press, New York
Nettelfield LJ, Wagner S (2014) Srebrenica in the aftermath of genocide. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge
Pearce-Moses R (2005) A glossary of archival and records terminology. Society of American Archivists, Chicago
RDC-Research and Documentation Centre (2007) Human losses in Bosnia and Herzegovina 1991–1995. RDC, Sarajevo
Riedlmayer A (2002) Destruction of cultural heritage in Bosnia-Herzegovina, 1992–1996: A post-war survey of selected municipalities. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge
Shouse E (2005) Feeling, emotion, affect. M/C J, 8(6). http://journal.media-culture.org.au/0512/03-shouse.php. Accessed 20 Oct 2014
Tumarkin M (2005) Traumascapes: the power and fate of places transformed by tragedy. Melbourne University Press, Melbourne
Wagner S (2008) To Know where he lies: DNA technology and the search for Srebrenica’s missing. University of California Press, Berkeley
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Rights and permissions
About this article
Cite this article
Halilovich, H. Re-imaging and re-imagining the past after ‘memoricide’: intimate archives as inscribed memories of the missing. Arch Sci 16, 77–92 (2016). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10502-015-9258-0
Published:
Issue Date:
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10502-015-9258-0