Introduction to the Special Issue: Powershifts, Practices and Memories of Violence in the Balkans

Abstract

When the editors of this volume, Jovo Miladinović and Franziska Zaugg, contacted me and requested that I write this introduction, they referred to my approach in terms of « time, space and trajectories » that I was using and promoting in my most recent research. Indeed, the texts collected here represent a set of studies that aim at better understanding the issue of cycles of violence or sequences seen as continuities of violence in South-Eastern Europe. When read through such a prism (time/space/trajectory), they offer a new way of seeing the social mechanisms that lead to such cycles, be they experienced or perceived.

Keywords

• violence
• memory
• power

References

1. Bergholz, Max. Violence as a Generative Force: Identity, Nationalism, and Memory in a Balkan Community. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2016.
2. Höpken, Wolfgang. "Performing Violence: Soldiers, Paramilitaries and Civilians in the Twentieth-Century Balkan Wars." In No Man's Land of Violence: Extreme Wars in the 20th Century, edited by Alf Lüdtke and Bernd Weisbrod, 211-49. Göttingen: Max-Planck-Institut für Geschichte / Wallstein Verlag, 2006.
3. Kienzler, Hanna, and Endkelejda Sula-Raxhimi. "Collective Memories and Legacies of Political Violence in the Balkans." Nationalities Papers: The Journal of Nationalism and Ethnicity 47, Special Issue: Collective Memories and Legacies of Political Violence in the Balkans, no. 2 (2019): 173-81.