Belgium
Austria
BiH, Croatia, Serbia and “Republika Srpska”
Genealogy of Amnesia: Rethinking the Past for a New Future of Conviviality focuses on three territories and their specific histories and experiences of collective amnesia in regard to traumatic events of their proper and generally wider European past. These are Belgium, Austria, and the territory of three states that were once a part of Yugoslavia: Bosnia and Herzegovina, Croatia, and Serbia, as well as a fourth central element, the “Republika Srpska” (“Serb Republic”). It is important to stress that in contrast with Austria and Belgium, or even Serbia, “Republika Srpska” is not a state, but an ethnically homogeneous territorial entity within Bosnia and Herzegovina, with aspirations for separation.
Genealogy of Amnesia: Rethinking the Past for a New Future of Conviviality concentrates on amnesia and politics of silence and oblivion that have shaped the constitution of identities and communities in Europe and the globalized world. We address colonialism (Belgium), anti-Semitism (Austria), and turbo-nationalism (“Serb Republic”), all of which are central but not the sole factors for the construction of the past and the present in these territories. Their genocidal histories are interconnected throughout the territories and Europe.