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Chapter 5 • Giuseppe De Sario, Laura Corradi, Patricia Ruiz, Enrica Capussotti
Through these aspects, the interviews collected represent an overview of
wartime emotions. The narratives bore evidence of shock that such conflict
could erupt amongst people who had once been bound together by ties
that went beyond differences of blood. The prevalent tone was one of
disappointed surprise, that people who were once brought together by the
pattern of their day-to-day existence, and who lived together in close proximity,
could be thrown into a civil war that opposed neighbours, friends
and co-workers.
Naturally, it is not only the individuals involved in the conflict who have
difficulty understanding what happened. As researchers, our “position” in
the field and our perception of the conflict, as constructed through our
research, are also significant and carry important consequences. Observers
and scholars should admit to the difficulty of finding categories or definitions
that might be applied to contemporary conflicts. Unease and a desire
to rationalize or escape these events run throughout the observations of
historians and students of social sciences, particularly when war and conflict
do not break out between “nations” or between so-called “peoples”,
but rather between subjectivities arising suddenly and unexpectedly. 5
As many definitions of the enemy
as there are participants
If we can, for a time, put aside the nationality-based aspect of the conflict
and think instead, for a brief instant, of the differences between opponents
without reducing them to the level of birth, language and religion, we
might find that a new cultural diversity emerges, one with internal complexity,
and which would prevent us from easily drawing borders between
the various groups involved. In the accounts gathered, religion and language
appeared to be the starting points, the first details of differentiation
that made each person stand apart from others, even within their own community.
Despite this seeming preference for language and religion, none of
these characteristics appeared, in the accounts, as the last and decisive reason
for diversity; there was always a point, just further from language or
religion, where rupture took place and the “other” separated from the
“same”. This point also shifted: The deeper an account ventured into the
conflict and into the rifts between people, the further the point of rupture
moved, while, common ground and impartial solidarity unexpectedly
appeared.
According to the interviewees’ descriptions, the most important characteristics
of the borders between groups were their fluidity and movement.
One factor that appeared irremediably to differentiate Albanians and Serbs
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