CONTRADICTING HISTORICAL REVISIONIST MEMORY POLITICS, ETHNONATIONAL COLLECTIVISM, AND ANTI-TRANSFORMATION OF CONFLICTS IN FORMER-YUGOSLAVIA

Abstract

The paper analyzes the normative-formative framework that denotes the connection between memory and identity as a crucial origin of conflicts. In addition to concerns about memory politics, historical revisionism and ethnonational identity collectivism, the paper dissolves the connection between phenomena highlighting outcomes of the peace process, transitional justice, and its ethical/moral connotations. The study argues that Western Balkan’s sociopolitical stability depends on declining conflicting and contradictory memory order within radical sociopolitical processes. The revisionist contention memorializes conflicts and wars as the fundamental concept of ethnicity/religion/nation. It overlaps with the neoliberal and neoconservative reduction of all competitive relations, in which only the stronger have the right to existence. Discarding dominant ethnopolitical narratives is essential for conflict transformation and transitional justice for all ethnoreligious communities. The Balkan historical events and conflicting memory (WW2, Yugoslav wars) caused sociopolitical dominion shaping the collective behavior of ethnic groups. The damaging ethnic/religious practice of genocide denial and honoring war crimes within people’s social lives can become a matrix for future conflicts. Placing memory politics with radical populism is a critical condition of collective identity politics in the former Yugoslavia. Scientific rationality can provide a solid path through the anomalies in the form of political ideologies.