Geographical testimony: a short history of a Yugoslav family

ABSTRACT

I attempt in this essay to travel outside of and beyond the more spectacular or established geopolitical discourses associated with research on post-conflict regions, and follow instead the trail of another more essential or everyday history and geography. Listening to and responding to the testimony of a single Yugoslav family, I draw from and write of memories of former places, initially returning to the traumatic moments of 1992, and a journey across Europe. In so doing, I reflect upon the use of testimony in geographical writing, positioning it as an inherently geographical psychoanalytic technique, which not only eases suffering in individuals and communities, but also offers new possibilities for societal change and transitional justice in post-conflict regions.

KEYWORDS:

• Testimony
• place
• war
• trauma
• Yugoslavia
• Bosnia

Acknowledgments

The author would like to thank Dr. Jessica Dubow for reading an earlier version of this essay, and Dino, Zekija and Hamdija for sharing their story.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes on contributor

James Riding is a Postdoctoral Researcher in the Space and Political Agency Research Group/RELATE Centre of Excellence, at the University of Tampere, Finland. He was previously a Leverhulme Trust Early Career Research Fellow in the Department of Geography, at the University of Sheffield, leading a project entitled New Regional Geographies (For Sarajevo).

Additional information

Funding

The author would like to thank the Leverhulme Trust for funding the project [grant number, ECF 2013-638].