Psychosocial Notebook - IOM Publications - International ...
Psychosocial Notebook - IOM Publications - International ...
Psychosocial Notebook - IOM Publications - International ...
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Chapter 5 • Giuseppe De Sario, Laura Corradi, Patricia Ruiz, Enrica Capussotti<br />
Part IV<br />
Memory: a Complex Battlefield<br />
Enrica Capussotti*<br />
Prologue<br />
The circulation between self-identification and the “external” gaze is one<br />
of the mechanisms integral to the construction of identity. In discussing<br />
memories and history, I have had to take into consideration the ways in<br />
which the interviewees presented themselves as either Kosovar Albanians<br />
or Kosovar Romany. This is a problematic point: while the sense of<br />
belonging to two different groups is often stressed during the narration,<br />
these boundaries quite often blur when the interviewees speak of languages,<br />
religions and geographic locations shared by individuals. I feel<br />
almost paralysed by the implications of the material and its analysis. In the<br />
countries that were once part of Yugoslavia, the conflicts occurred when<br />
constructed identities became “natural”, with terrible consequences for<br />
millions of people. New boundaries were and are built and previous<br />
“boundary crossings” are prevented, all in the name of historical differences.<br />
The fabrication of “one” past has played a vital role in justifying<br />
agendas based on “authentic” national roots. My worry here concerns my<br />
position as a researcher: how can I avoid returning a gaze which confirms<br />
the “selves”, their representation as members of distinctive groups, when<br />
the corollaries to this distinction are intolerance and aggression, expressed<br />
towards an “other”? How can I use a category such as “difference”, which<br />
has been such an important tool in the political agenda of radical movements<br />
in the 1960s and 1970s, without sinking into the marshy terrain of<br />
“identity politics”? Since we know that “ethnicity” is a construction created<br />
to serve specific political interests, could its alternative not be to cease<br />
invoking it by name?<br />
These concerns are not just mine, but are shared by many scholars. As<br />
Hermann Bausinger pointed out:<br />
194<br />
…ethnic cleansing has been a matter of power, interests and violence and<br />
not a pre-established national and natural order. People had to be ethni-<br />
* Ph.D. in Cultural History from the European University Institute (Florence), now research<br />
fellow at the Gender Programme of the Robert Schuman Centre, EUI.