Collective victimhood of individual survivors: reflecting the uses and impacts of two academic narratives two decades after the war-rapes in Bosnia-Herzegovina

ABSTRACT

The author argues that engaging with the legacy of war rapes that happened two decades ago allow us to observe, reflect and analyse the impact of past research, and in doing so to revise methodologies and theoretical approaches in the future research projects in the field. To reflect on the use of the pas knowledge production in her own ethnographic work, she reflects on two most persuasive academic narratives in the context of war-inflicted rapes in Bosnia-Herzegovina: (1) the victim-survivor name argument and (2) the idea of collective victimhood.

KEYWORDS:

• War-rape narratives
• academic knowledge
• survivors
• Bosnia-Herzegovina
• war-rape legacy
• ethnography

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes on contributors

Nena Močnik is a researcher and lecturer at Université de Cergy-Pontoise, France. She is the author of “Sexuality after War Rape: From Narrative to Embodied Research” (Routledge, 2017).

ORCID

Nena Močnik http://orcid.org/0000-0001-9991-1469

Notes

1 For literature reviews of the studies and research published prior to 2000, please see Snyder et al. (2006). Some of the latest studies focusing on long-term consequences and stigma include Delić and Avdibegović (2015), Clark (2018) and Simić (2018).

2 For instance, the Global Summit to End Sexual Violence in Conflict, held in London, UK, in 2014 was the largest event dedicated to this subject. In March 2019, the Grand Duchess of Luxembourg and her Foundation hosted an international conference in Luxembourg called Stand, Speak and Rise Up! which focused on sexual violence in fragile environments.

3 All conversations quoted were conducted in local languages; all translations into English are the work of the author.

4 The Women’s Court, Feminist Approach to Justice in the context of the former Yugoslavia was held from the 7th to the 10th of May 2015 in the Bosnian Cultural Centre, Sarajevo, Bosnia-Herzegovina. For more information, see http://www.zenskisud.org/ (last accessed September 8, 2018).