Theorizing Interracial Communication in the Former Yugoslavia

Abstract

Whiteness and nationalism underlie configurations of race globally, yet “race” is often recognized and performed as hierarchies of ethnicity in nations where skin color is not optically differentiated. This paper examines this phenomenon in the former Yugoslavia in order both to contextualize these shifting dynamics of power as well as to theorize how postsocialism and postcolonialism might figure into the construction of ethnicity as the primary marker of difference. Our central concern is how these constructions and performances of ethnicity, in turn, impact the ways we might study interracial communication nationally and globally. In other words, we analyze the racialization of identity in a space without bodies of color in order to ask what is or can be interracial? How might such analysis posit possibilities for interrupting power in transnational and global contexts? Drawing on the Bosnian genocide and experiences from living in the former Yugoslavia, we point to a few contexts to ground the discussion. We draw parallels between the former Yugoslavia and the US to analyze how interracial communication travels, often violently, across borders. We argue that critical analysis of the manifestation of race on bodies is integral to resisting the precarious effects of global capitalism.

Keywords:

• Postsocialism
• property
• perfomance
• transnational
• feminisms
• Whiteness

Notes

1. For example, the Trump 2016 presidential campaign capitalized on this logic in their campaign slogan, “Make America Great Again.” This phrase was a thinly veiled rallying cry to White Supremacists who conflate US nationality and citizenship with Whiteness ( See: Coates, 2017). Another example of the conflation of Whiteness with US citizenship is Trump’s use of racist birther discourse to attempt to claim that President Obama was not from the US because he was black and from Hawaii (See: Pham, 2015).

2. For example, the Roma, who claim neither land nor nation, are rendered invisible through both geographical and symbolic displacement. While it is outside the scope of this paper to discuss in any depth the treatment of specific marginalized groups, it is important to note that, although some Roma have been able to escape the precarious conditions of life without ownership of property, their displacement from capital and citizenship is perhaps most explicit. Their disenfranchisement from social, cultural and economic values held to be important to citizenship allow them to be undifferentiated targets of discrimination across otherwise divided social, occupational and ethnic groups. While the history of the Roma throughout Europe is layered and complex, it is also important to acknowledge that some of the new Roma are Bosnian Muslim refugees from the Bosnian War. Nationally dispossessed from Bosnia and from property, many women and children refugees-cum-Roma are marked second class through this dispossession, suggesting that the racialization processes of the Roma be read in relation to the interaction between capital and Whiteness as discourses of nationality, stability, and power.

3. The Serbian aim of making a child from rape is well documented in the Helsinki Watch (1993) report on War Crimes in Bosnia-Herzegovina. See also: Thomas and Ralph’s (1999) analysis of wartime rape.

4. “You committed rapes and/or failed to stop a rape being committed by your subordinates and, in this way, you have perpetrated a crime against humanity. Now, what is meant by a crime against humanity?… a serious attack on human dignity—a very serious attack on human dignity, which may take the form of murder, rape, enslavement, extermination and so on, in this case rape, which has a target of civilians, so not committed against soldiers but against civilians. This is the second legal ingredient… having as a target one or more civilians, and the third legal ingredient of this offence is that this serious attack on human dignity is part of a widespread or systematic practice in the area or in the country where the offence has allegedly been committed” (Kunarac, p. 37).

5. “The charge of rape is based in the indictment on various provisions – Article 7(1) of the Statute, direct participation in rape, 7(1) of the Statute again, but in a different respect, allegations of aiding and abetting rape; 7(3) of the Statute, namely, an allegation that he is responsible as a commander forrapes committed by subordinates and, again, then under Article, rape as a crime against humanity, widespread assault, rape as a part of a widespread assault on the Muslim population of Foča” (Kunarac, p. 31).