CEU Electronic Theses and Dissertations, 2025
| Author | Vilkeviciute, Melita |
|---|---|
| Title | "It's a Big Torch to Carry": "Place-Based Trauma" in the Postmemory of the Bosnian War |
| Summary | In Bosnia and Herzegovina, diaspora communities have emerged as prominent claim-makers, particularly due to the limited success of transitional justice processes following the Bosnian War at both institutional and societal levels. This is especially evident in Republika Srpska, where official narratives often deny wartime crimes committed against non-Serbs. Understanding how the second generation in the diaspora relates to these events is crucial for assessing the long-term legacy of the war. However, academic literature on postmemory—defined as the second generation’s relationship with their parents’ traumatic past—remains limited and yields conflicting conclusions, particularly in the Bosnian context. This thesis addresses this gap by focusing on the Prijedor region, known for its notorious network of concentration camps during the war, yet understudied in terms of its impact on second-generation diasporans. Using a qualitative approach, the study conducted ten semi-structured interviews, incorporating elements of biographical narrative interviews, with second-generation individuals with at least one parent from the Prijedor region. Findings suggest that postmemory is transmitted through familial verbal narratives, embodied communication, and visual materials, creating a “living connection” to the past among second-generation diasporans. However, postmemory does not develop in a linear or predictable way; extensive storytelling by parents does not necessarily lead to a deeply internalized memory of the war in their children. At the same time, participants demonstrated agency in reshaping inherited meanings of the war. Ultimately, the shared postmemory of Prijedor’s “place-based trauma” functions as a generational bond, despite participants’ geographical dispersion. |
| Supervisor | Mijić, Ana |
| Department | Nationalism Studies MA |
| Full text | https://www.etd.ceu.edu/2025/vilkeviciute_melita.pdf |
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