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Mediating international and domestic demands: mnemonic battles surrounding the monument to the fallen of the wars of the 1990s in Belgrade

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  20 November 2018

Lea David
Lea David*
Affiliation:
Department of Sociology and Anthropology, Ben Gurion University in the Negev, Beer Sheva, Israel
*
∗Email: [email protected]
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Abstract

In this article I present a decade-long affair over the erection of the Monument in Belgrade to those killed in the wars of the 1990s where the official Serbian policy was to manage its contested past through cover ups and cultural reframing rather than public acknowledgement. I demonstrate here that, though the open competitions to erect a monument dedicated to the fallen of the wars of the 1990s were an opportunity to negotiate different mnemonic agendas, the ruling political elite, as the dominant actor, promoted Serbian victimhood as it meant to bridge gaps in the opposing domestic and international demands. I suggest here that the mnemonic battle in present-day Serbia proves to be an exemplary case of how a post-conflict nation state mediates its contested past when caught in the gap between the domestic demands and those of international relations.

Keywords

mnemonic battleSerbiamonumentwar veteransBelgrade municipalityMonument Group
Type
Articles
Information
Nationalities Papers , Volume 42 , Issue 4 , July 2014 , pp. 655 - 673
Copyright
Copyright © 2014 Association for the Study of Nationalities 

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