Unsettled landscapes: traumatic memory in a Croatian hinterland

ABSTRACT

This paper examines the role of landscape in the local experiences of traumatic events in a rural hinterland of the Croatian-Serbian border. We study how landscape sets conditions and affords particular opportunities for local memory practices in response to traumatic events in a former clover field in the village of Lovas in Croatia. Like urban environments rural areas may be physically scarred by conflict, yet the effects are often less explicit, particularly to the external gaze. Like cities, rural landscapes may be ‘wounded’ and remain unsettled as sites of trauma. Landscape presents a significant medium and lens through which to study how hinterland communities cope with the legacies of violence. Often local communities are subject to state-led memorialization that tends to perpetuate conflict. However, under particular circumstances local actors may also harbour the distinct potential of landscape to enact the work of memory in closer correspondence to their needs. Recent scholarship has revealed the importance of place in the memory culture and politics of traumatized communities in urban borderlands. We argue that landscape settings in the hinterland of state borders play no less significant a role in mediating the complex dynamics of conflict and its aftermath for local commemorative practice.

KEYWORDS:

• Landscape research
• borders
• memory studies
• violence and trauma
• ethno-national contestation
• Balkan studies

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes on contributors

Jessie Fyfe is an architect and doctoral candidate at the Department of Architecture at the University of Cambridge. She holds a March from Carleton University Canada and a MSc in Political Theory from the LSE.

Maximilian Sternberg is Senior University Lecturer in the History and Theory of Architecture at the Department of Architecture in Cambridge University. Sternberg is a fellow of Pembroke College and deputy director of the Centre of Urban Conflicts Research.

ORCID

Jessie Fyfe http://orcid.org/0000-0002-7808-3390

Maximilian Sternberg http://orcid.org/0000-0003-0205-8073

Notes

1 This article situates itself within the growing literature analysing the aftermath of conflict through the lens of place. Although acknowledging the value of recent contributions of Necropolitics (Barker, 2018; Bednar, 2013; Mbembe, 2003) and Necrogeography (Lesham; Kniffen, 1967) to interrogate contested meanings, cultural politics, and power relations of violent sites this article diverges in a number of key respects from the primary content of those studies, namely that the dead to which the Lovas field memorial commemorates are not buried there and the field itself is not contested space as it is communally owned.

2 The Croatian national discourse on post-war memory is framed and officially defined by the Croatian Declaration on the Homeland War (Deklaracija o Domovinskom Ratu) in 2000: ‘The Republic of Croatia led a just and legitimate, defensive and liberating war, which was not an aggressive and occupational war against anyone, in which she defended her territory from the great Serb aggressor within her internationally recognised borders.’

3 Urban studies has also increasingly recognized the limitations of ‘city-bounded’ theorization. For recent developments including urban political ecology studies and other responses to the city as a functional category: Rickards, Gleeson, Boyle, and O’Callaghan (2016).

4 The Judicial Records and Archives Database (JRAD) provides access to all IRMCT public judicial records, as well as to the public judicial archive records of the ICTY. The ICTY was the United Nations court of law that dealt with war crimes that took place during the conflicts in the Balkans in the 1990s. Its mandated was from 1993–2017.

5 Indictments for war crimes alleged in Lovas were brought against senior officials Slobodan Milošević the then President of the Republic of Serbia on 24 May 1999 and Goran Hadzić on 22 March 2012 President of the self-proclaimed breakaway region of Serbian Autonomous Oblast (Sao) of Eastern Slavonia, Baranja and Western Syrmia. Both Milošević and Hadzić died before the completion of the trials. See: The Prosecutor of the Tribunal against Slobodan Milošević Second Amended Indictment Case No. IT-02-54-T (23 October 2002); The Prosecutor of the Tribunal against Goran Hadzić Indictment Case No. IT-04-75-I (21 May 2004).

6 On 20 June 2019 the specialized War Crimes Chamber of the Belgrade District Court sentenced eight of the ten remaining indicted former Yugoslav Army soldiers and Paramilitaries to serve between four and eight years for committing war crimes against civilians in Lovas in October and November 1991. This is an initial ruling and the defendants have the right to appeal.

7 The use of the singular highlights the perception of the city not as a site of victimhood but as itself a victim.

8 Balkan Insight Protest in Vukovar for more effective War Prosecutions (2018) www.balkaninsight.com/2018/10/13/protest-in-vukovar-for-more-effective-war-crimes-prosecutions-10-12-2018/ (accessed 18 November 2018).

9 Ivan Mujić and Antun Ivanković Interview, December 2018.

10 The War Crimes Chamber of the Belgrade District Court: Indictment War Crimes Prosecutor Vladimir Vukčević, 28 November 2007.

11 Ivan Mujić interview, 18 October 2017.

12 Ivan Mujić interview, 18 October 2017.

13 Vukovar resident interview, 9 December 2018.

14 Two days after the fall of Vukovar on the 20th of November 1991 Serb paramilitary and Territorial Defence soldiers are alleged to have killed at least 200 Non-Serbs and buried them in a mass grave near the Ovčara farm 5 kilometres south-east of Vukovar. See Prosecutor v. Mile Mrksić, Miroslav Radić and Veselin Slijivančanin, ICTY Trial Chamber Judgement, Case No. IT-95-13/1 (27 December 2007), 26.

15 Ivan Mujić interview 17 October 2017.

16 In 2009 Sandra Vitaljić began taking photographs of ‘the places that in various ways construct the national history and identity’ of former Yugoslavia. She identified the field in Lovas as one such place. Her research produced the book Infertile Grounds (2012, 0029).

17 Ivan Mujić interview, 18 October 2016.

18 The field on the edge of Lovas has been marked as agricultural land in landownership atlas’ as early as 1733. See the following selection of atlas and cadastral maps: Atlas vukovarskog vlastelinstva, 1733, Map production by the imperial engineer Johann Philip Frast, Vienna, original located in the museum of Slavonija in Osijek (Facsimile edition 2006) p. 57 ‘Louas/Lovas’; Habsburg Empire Cadastral map Lovas, 1863 and Kotar Lovas Detaljni List br. 12, 1960.

19 Women in Black is an international ‘antimilitarist peace organisation’ that engages in non-violent actions including direct action and public vigils. Women in Black Belgrade (2018) Confronting the Past. Available at: www.Zeneucrnom.org/index.Php?option+com_content&task+view&id=18&ltemid=17 (accessed 12 February 2018).

20 Antun Ivanković interview, 18 October 2017.