Introduction
Data and Methodology
Collective Memory, Collective Amnesia, Collective Silence—A Theoretical Framework
In the following, silence will be considered in more detail. First, and following Eviatar Zerubavel, it is important to acknowledge that being silent,While acknowledging that silence is often coupled with forgetting and talk with memory, we wish to expand on the ways in which silence can also be used to facilitate recollection, while talk can be used to enhance amnesia. In other words, we suggest that silence be understood as a complex and rich social space that can operate as a vehicle of either memory or of forgetting and thus can be used by various groups for different ends. (Vinitzky-Seroussi and Teeger 2010: 1104)
That is, being silent must be considered as a social action (Winter 2010: 11f.). Like Vinitzky-Seroussi and Teeger, Winter defines silence as a “space,” or more precisely as “a socially constructed space in which and about which subjects and words normally used in everyday life are not spoken” (Winter 2010: 4). What is enclosed in this space is specified in social processes within which groups of people differentiate “between the sayable and the unsayable”; they “codify and enforce norms which reinforce the injunction against breaking into the inner space of the circle of silence” (Winter 2010: 4). The reasons for being silent are multifaceted. Within the first chapter of the anthology Shadows of war. A social history of silence in the Twentieth Century, Winter distinguishes three reasons for silence in the context of war and violence: First, the liturgical silence as a part of mourning practices, “since not speaking enables those experiencing loss to engage with their grief in their own time and in their own ways” (Winter 2010: 4). Second, the essentialist silence, which “arises from considerations of privilege. That is, who has the right to speak about the violent past?” (Winter 2010: 6).4 Finally, the political or strategic silence “in order to suspend or truncate open conflict over the meaning and/or justification of violence” (Winter 2010: 5). As a striking example for this kind of silence, Winter refers to the “pact of silence” after the fall of the Franco regime in Spain: “Not seeing what everyone saw and not saying what everyone knew became a strategy accepted by everyone at the time to ensure the success of a peaceful transition to democratic rule” (Winter 2010: 5). This conclusion applies mutatis mutandis to post-WWII Yugoslavia. By silencing the former enmity and crimes committed during and in the aftermath of the Second World War, the integration of all Yugoslavians was intended. However, Winter also points out that such accords frequently fail:involves more than just absence of action, since the things we are silent about are in fact actively avoided […] Moreover, it involves avoiding things that actually beg for our attention […] if we ignore [their] presents it can only be as a result of active avoidance, as otherwise it would be impossible not to notice [them]. To ignore the ‘elephant,’ in short, is to ignore the obvious. (Zerubavel 2010: 33)
Because this paper asks about the interrelation between silence and ethnic boundaries, political or strategic silence is at the centre of the presented analysis. However, to illuminate the connection between silence and the “(un-)making of ethnic boundaries” (Wimmer 2008), it is necessary not only to recognise that the impulse behind the political silence is the avoidance of open conflict but also to ask for the reasons for this avoidance itself. This will be considered in more detail below. Before proceeding to the empirically-founded analysis of silence in postwar BiH, a sensitisation for the different manifestations of silence is appropriate.With time, their hold over the parties begins to loosen, a new generation comes to power, and though silence is still ordained at the national level as wise and necessary, people start talking, looking, digging, writing and inevitably accusing. […] Here we can see that silence, like memory and forgetting, has a life history, and—when new pressures or circumstances emerge—can be transformed into its opposite in very rapid order. (Winter 2010: 5)
Dimensions of communication restrictions | Temporal | Material | Social |
---|---|---|---|
Uncomfortable silences | Tabooed forms of expression and style | Silence due to informational autonomy | |
Preliminary concealments | Tabooed topics | Silence by reason of secrecy | |
Tabooed issues | Status-related silence | ||
Tactful silence |
The Sounds of Silence in Postwar Bosnia-Herzegovina
Silence Within Ethnic Boundaries
During most parts of the interview, the interviewee’s speech is rather fluent and apparently coherent. Against this background, it is striking when suddenly he starts to stammer and becomes inarticulate. He is obviously not able or not willing to clearly enounce who the Ustasha were and what they did. It also would be reasonable to assume that the speaker does not want to go into details, since he supposes that the interviewer already knows all about the historical context. However, it is more plausible to assume that the interviewee introduces the Ustasha by accident or because he is needing them to explain something else—the discrimination of Croats in former Yugoslavia. He addresses the topic of the Ustasha regime and simultaneously disregards the most critical issue about it: their fascist alignment and their murdering of hundreds of thousands ‘non-Croats,’ particularly Jews, Roma, and Serbs as well as political opponents during the Second World War. Instead, he designates the Croats themselves as the main victims of the Ustasha.…that we have lost a lot because of the Ustasha. It was … that is in, in … by the manifest … by the manifestation of the Ustasha propaganda by us Croats, that is, that we were second-class citizens in that Yugoslavia. (Interview 1)
By emphasising the fact that, in the parish he is talking about, there was no war (he refers to the 1990s war) and only the Serbian revenge, the interviewee differentiates unambiguously between the Croatian victims and the Serbian perpetrators, since—in contrast to war—revenge is a one-sided action. However, it does not make any sense to talk about revenge if there is nothing to be vengeful about. In light of this, it is reasonable to assume that the speaker is omitting something—the obvious candidate for this omission being the atrocities carried out by the Croatian Ustasha against the Serbs during Second World War.The Serbs wanted to take revenge on the Croats, but I don’t know why […] there was no war in this parish (3) it was just open vengeance. It was just the Serb revenge. (Interview 2)
The comment “[w]hether we want to admit it or not” implies that something which in fact exists—an uncomfortable truth—is typically not admitted and that people remain silent about it. The interviewee suggests that members of the Croatian in-group will most likely not admit that at least “freedom was ensured” in former Yugoslavia. It is reasonable to assume that the recognition of the positive aspects of the former Yugoslavia would contradict the in-group-narrative according to which Yugoslavia must be considered a repressive system dominated by the ethnic others. In this respect, the speaker implicitly confirms that such a narrative exists—a narrative which does not necessarily have to be ‘true’.Whether we want to admit it or not, at least our freedom was assured back then [in former Yugoslavia]. (Interview 1)
The speaker seems to be aware either about the fact that there are other perspectives on the Yugoslavian past or that there are people whose lives “under the Socialist system” has not been as beautiful as his own. Nevertheless, he considers the divergence as irrelevant for himself and diminishes it. In order to effectively ignore alternative reality perspectives and therewith protect one’s own worldviews, it is necessary to avoid people with differing perceptions, i.e., to remain within the boundaries of the in-group, or to avoid controversial topics when it comes to interethnic encounters, as the following reflections show.I was born in 1953 under the Socialist system, where life was easy-going and beautiful—I don’t know how to describe it—without any physical or mental burdens. During the Tito years, life was beautiful. For me. I am speaking just for myself. For some people, probably not. But that doesn’t bother me. (Interview 3)
Silence Beyond Ethnic Boundaries
Therefore, the question of—for example—why non-Serb inhabitants of Banja Luka had left during war is typically not addressed: “According to the returnees, the Serbs usually acted as if nothing bad had happened to them, asking questions like ‘Oh, have you had a good time in Scandinavia?’ as if the refugees had merely been away for a holiday” (Stefansson 2010: 67).some level of interethnic co-existence and tolerance had developed […] among other things based on economic interdependence, an emerging sense of solidarity, and a pragmatic need to avoid conflict in everyday life. In the absence of a genuine atmosphere of reconciliation at the political or national level, peaceful co-existence between these communities in Banja Luka was brought about by collectively silencing sensitive political and moral questions related to the recent war that could lead to renewed conflict. (Stefansson 2010: 66)
As the further course of the interview shows, his private life is, however, to a large extent mono-ethnic. He confesses that he prefers to socialise with people from his own ethnic group (“sa svojim ljudima”), that he feels “safer” and “more comfortable” when spending his holidays in Montenegro than in Croatia, and reveals not just that almost all his relatives are Serbs but also that ethnically diverse families are quite extraordinary:It happens that people ask me ‘Who are you?’ I say ‘I am a driver’. ‘And what are you?’ and I say ‘I am a purchasing agent’. You get it? I am avoiding that topic […] There are people who are nationalists and people who are not. However, I am only interested in money. Money and profit, that’s capitalism. (Interview 4)
In almost every interview, people emphasise that they feel “more comfortable” and “free” within their own ethnic community, that they “do not trust” members of the ethnic out-groups in the same way, and that there are “visible” or “invisible boundaries” or “walls” separating them. These findings were also mirrored in a quantitative survey. In his study about Interethnic friendships in postwar Bosnia-Herzegovina, John O’Loughlin establishes that 41% of his respondents (n = 2000) declare that all or most of their friends are from their own ethnic community (O’Loughlin 2010: 40). According to Berger and Luckmann, this can be attributed to the fact that “in situations where there is competition between different reality-defining agencies, all sorts of secondary-group relationships with the competitors may be tolerated, as long as there are firmly established primary-group relationships within which one reality is ongoingly reaffirmed against the competitors” (Berger and Luckmann 1966: 172).In my family, there is even one case, you know, where a Serb, one of those cousins of mine, has married a Muslim or a Croat, and it doesn’t matter at all. (Interview 4)
By using the subjunctive, the speaker indicates that something actually had happened, that the hole and the lines had existed. However, they act as if all of that hadn’t happened, they ignore the facticity of what has been, they don’t talk about it. The omission of the war-torn past makes the resumption of contact after the end of war actually possible. However, the quality of contact has changed. It is striking that the interviewee is speaking about “former friends”: Most likely, these former friends had once been significant others but, due to the war and the consolidated ethnic boundaries, they were “downgraded” and lost their “central position in the economy of reality-maintenance” (Berger and Luckmann 1966: 170). The interviewee emphasises that it “doesn’t feel right, it isn’t the same anymore,” and explains that the topics they are talking about are not the same anymore. Asked to give an example, he continues:After a short period, just a few months after the end of war, we began to visit each other. As if nothing had happened […] As if this hole had never existed. As if the lines had never existed […] I go there and sit with my FORMER friends. We sit together and talk about this and that. We make jokes about this and that. But it doesn’t feel right, it isn’t the same anymore. Somehow we have fallen out. The topics we are talking about aren’t the same anymore. (Interview 1)
As mentioned previously, the interviewee identifies the interviewer as ‘one of his kind’. In the paragraph above, it becomes clear that he is conceiving ethnic homogeneity as presupposition to true “mutual understanding” and common objectives. To him, interethnic encounters are characterised by a lack of significant commonalities and by very diverse and incompatible perspectives on what has happened. For this reason, the topic of war should be completely excluded from any interethnic conversation. According to Stefansson,The topics, the topics … how shall I put it to you? These stories lead us to political issues and both of us have a mutual understanding, since we are on the same page. We have … we could have different opinions about something, but we also have a common objective, the objective we are aiming at is the same. However, it’s not the same with them, since they only see that somebody else is guilty. Whenever we talked about war, he would always say that somebody else imposed it on us. However, I know that it wasn’t somebody else but them alone. (Interview 1)
However, while tact could indeed be a reason for silencing the past in interethnic encounters, it is not the most important one. As the aforementioned paragraph (where Interviewee 1 describes the expected behaviour of his former friends when confronted with the subject of war) suggests, and the analysis of further interviews and observations reveals, people do not primarily remain silent in order to protect the feelings of the ethnic Other or to “downplay differences” (Stefansson 2010: 70).6 They actually do remain silent to avoid conflicts. In her research about the impact of the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia, Clark reaches a similar conclusion: “Interviewees consistently maintained that they avoid speaking about the past with members of other ethnic groups due to fear of provoking arguments and creating new problems and tensions” (Clark 2014: 115).the phenomenon of collective silence on specific issues in interethnic social life is a sort of unarticulated existence of empathy. It shows that ordinary Bosnians of different nationalities were generally keenly aware of the different attitudes and worldviews of the Other and, with some exceptions, abstained from challenging those feelings in direct interaction with the Other. If they had been lacking in empathy, they would have been unable to know on which subjects to keep silent in order not to hurt the feelings of the Other, or be unwilling to do so. (Stefansson 2010: 70)
As a part of the ethnic narrative, the knowledge about the Other’s attitude is simplified and biased and characterised by moral alchemy, i.e., a process within which in-group virtue is transformed into out-group vice (Merton 1948: 201; Mijić 2014: 398–401; Elias and Scotson 1965). However, it must also be considered a result of the “understanding of the Other” (fremdverstehen), which according to Alfred Schütz is made possible in everyday life by two idealisations: the interchangeability of standpoints and the congruence of relevance systems (Schütz and Luckmann 1973: 60). It is reasonable to assume that both idealisations are working rather well in this case, since for all the ethnic groups discussed in this paper, the ethnic narrations share the same purpose: preserving victim status in order to sustain one’s own positive we-image and one’s own positive self-image. Only in that very specific sense is it possible to talk about “a deep-seated cultural knowledge of living with difference” (Stefansson 2010: 66).Just go to the Serb [sic!]. He [sic!] will say to you that Muslims and Croats started the war. You know, because they wanted their own nation-state. They will certainly respond that way. They will claim that we attacked, but then they should also find just one town that was first attacked by us. (Interview 3)