Psychosocial Notebook - IOM Publications - International ...

Epilogue • Luisa Passerini
What I see as relevant in this endeavour is first of all the direct link
between the psychological engagement with people experiencing grave
trauma from war, on the one hand, and the particular interaction of history
and anthropology on the other. The potential novelty results from a combination
of factors: the situation of the researcher who is sharing a dramatic
emergency; the effort to simultaneously use socio-psycological and
anthropo-historical tools, and the decision to treat narratives, considered
both as resources as well as sources of problems, as a priority of the
research. As Natale Losi writes, the dominant story in Kovoso was based
on the constellation of aggressor/victim/saviour, but new “starting points
[were found], even in clinical work, to begin ‘re-narrativizing’, ‘re-storying’
in the communities and families damaged by unhealed wounds and
deaths”. They offer less restrictive and more vital alternatives to the
fossilized story frozen around the dominant constellation.
This attention to narration and narratives is coupled with attention to a
multiplicity of languages, not only the spoken local idioms (which
explains the importance given to the role of the interpreter in the interview),
but also legends, disciplinary languages, and gestures. In fact, the
IOM work in Kosovo included a theatre performance, of which Annie
Lafontaine says, “The performance was a language”. This part of the experience
– which will give rise to a future publication – produced not only a
performance, but also a video. One is moved watching it and seeing how
an initial awkwardness develops into mastering an individual and collective
technique which makes political use of the body. The work of the
theatre group, as well as the interviews and their elaboration, testify to the
efforts made to develop a new and shared language.
In fact, the tension between experience and narration seems to get stronger
as the closeness between the two increases. The impression that the
researchers had of finding themselves in a Babel of languages is a sign not
merely of factual confusion, but of the effort to find new forms of expression
which obliged them to re-discuss their own languages, both national
and disciplinary. I have a strong feeling that this type of trilateral engagement
(psychology, anthropo-history, narratology) should be continued on
a larger scale, as it can be very fruitful for many of us. For the moment,
impressive results are shown in this regard by Nicola Mai’s contribution.
Mai has earnestly tried to pose at the centre of his research the question of
what it means to be Serb-Yugoslav today, and has used for this purpose a
combination of psychoanalytical and political concepts:
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In Serbia a collectivist identity sustained by a narcissist libidinal economy
was hegemonic and was articulated by narratives of self-victimization,
moral superiority and omnipotence. These narratives were