Original scientific paper
What’s the Story? Transitional Justice and the Creation of Historical Narratives in Croatia and Serbia
Ana Ljubojević
; IMT Institute for Advanced Studies in Lucca, Lucca, Italy
Abstract
Fifteen years after the end of the conflict in the former Yugoslavia, discourses
about the present and future are based upon revised and reconstructed narratives
about the past. Therefore, the relationships between transitional justice,
political ideologies and historical narratives are still contested and vague. Recent
history in Serbia and Croatia is determined more by each nationality’s
collective emotional memory than by common factual history.
This paper analyses the impact transitional justice mechanisms have on historical
narratives and the creation of collective memory about the war. As the
“existing empirical knowledge about the impacts of transitional justice is still
limited”, its influence on local societies is measured through its impact on
political ideologies and historical narratives triggered by war crime trials. So
far, in Serbia and Croatia the main transitional justice tool has been the prosecution
of war crimes. We argue that transitional justice, instead of triggering
truth seeking and truth telling processes that would lead to reconciliation,
multiplied mutually exclusive historical narratives that determined national
collective identities.
Keywords
transitional justice; historical narratives; Croatia; Serbia; ICTY
Hrčak ID:
99492
URI
Publication date:
28.3.2013.
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