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