New Episode of Memory Cultures in Dialogue: Exiting the 1990s

Public memory of war victims is often dominated by ethnocentric narratives as a national strategy, emphasizing the scale of crimes of Other while marginalizing one’s own. What’s missing seems to be not only a moral reckoning but also a continuous historical-didactic, pedagogical, media, museological, and aesthetic debate as the foundation for creating a memory culture that includes remembering the crimes committed in our own name.

Memory culture is not necessarily a process aimed at reconciliation with crimes or forgiveness. Rather, it is about learning how to live with memory, recognizing that crimes are a part of our history and collective identity. It is also a process of learning that shared ways of living before the crimes existed and that such ways can be rebuilt through the effort of all actors and socio-political engagement aimed at dismantling identity politics that focus solely on ethnic-national identities.

In this episode, we discuss the aesthetics of activism in acts, practices, and works connected to memory culture and contemporary political and social activism in post-Yugoslav societies with Dr. Igor Štiks. Dr. Štiks is a professor at the Faculty of Media and Communications in Belgrade and has taught at universities in Edinburgh, Graz, Ljubljana, and Sarajevo. He is the author of the monograph Nations and Citizens in Yugoslavia and the Post-Yugoslav States: One Hundred Years of Citizenship. Dr. Štiks has also authored two award-winning novels, The Castle in Romagna and Elijah’s Chair, as well as plays that have been adapted into theatrical productions.

The author and host of the podcast is Dr. Olivera Simić, an associate professor at the Griffith University Law School in Australia and a visiting fellow at the Transitional Justice Institute at Ulster University in Belfast. The conversation was conducted in BCS language.

Episode 28, „Exiting the 1990s“ is available in BCS at the following link, as well as on Spotify, Apple Podcast, Podcast.rs, Podcast Addict, accounts of the HLC.