Psychosocial Notebook - IOM Publications - International ...

Chapter 5 • Giuseppe De Sario, Laura Corradi, Patricia Ruiz, Enrica Capussotti
The body, taken in the context of war, can also be the body of the “other”,
the frightening man in uniform (It is the uniform of the Serbian police that
creates terror in the Kosovar Albanian experience, and the UCK Kosovo
Liberation Army uniform that does so in the Romany experience). At
times, the body of the “other” is a masked body, and this increases the
subject’s fear:
They were all masked, with foulards, they made you feel the fear, you
couldn’t see where they had face or hands. [Ajse]
They used to come inside the houses and kill those who happened to be
there. Yes, near me an elderly woman and two small children were found
with their throat cut, thrown in the backyard, two houses near me, and I
saw… This slaughtering lasted so long… so long lasted the violence of
the Serbian, with no judgement, without knowing anything, even during
the day, because they used to wear masks, and we didn’t know who they
were… They were drunk or drugged, they didn’t know what they did…
and you used to find people dead or wounded in the street, dead and left
there, cut with knives or rifles, with the throat cut. One thing I saw: I was
on a bicycle and a man got out from a car, came close to another man,
pulled out a knife and sliced him under the throat – and he fell down… I
was just going by with the bicycle… [Rexhi]
Body and emotion
Much of the recent debate surrounding the body in sociological studies of
emotions and health looks at the ways in which our emotions shape our
body (Kemper, 1990), and how this process affects our identity (Kunnen,
2001). Here, however, we find a clear example of the opposite situation:
when our emotions are shaped by our body, or more precisely, by what
happens to it.
In a comparative analysis of two interviews held with a husband and wife
who had shared the same experience and spoke of the same subject, their
two accounts seemed to contradict one another. While the husband stated
“I cannot be who I was any more” [Agim] at the end of the painful revival
of his experience, his wife, referring to the same facts, said: “We want to
become as before” [Bahrije]. I believe this divergence of feelings is related
to a different perception, quality and level of bodily damage suffered by
these two victims of ethnic cleansing:
Perception: Bodily perception in general, and during a traumatic situation
in particular, is affected by age (Papageorgiu et al., 2000: 255-261) and
gender roles (Wolmer et al., 2000: 409-15). The mother’s perception of
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