Psychosocial Notebook - IOM Publications - International ...

Introduction • Natale Losi
which the contributions of these historians and anthropologists also represent
a precious support to the individual, family and community therapeutic
work that the Psychosocial and Trauma Response programme
(PTR) proposed in Kosovo.
Constellations of violence
The conversations, the stories that people exchange and construct in situations
of conflict, are clearly important, whether they influence the conflict’s
resolution or, on the contrary, contribute to its perpetuation. When
these stories are woven in an international conflict situation such as that
which overcame Kosovo, even international players, often unwittingly,
figure amongst the individuals active in their construction. This is especially
the case for those sent to work “on the ground” (Pandolfi, 2000).
Aside from these co-producers and co-narrators of conflict situation stories,
the constellation, the set, the essential typology available and necessary
to actually give meaning to the conflict, is made up of three principal
players: the aggressors, the victims and the authorities. In the particular
case of Kosovo, the international players placed in this last role of the trilogy
were in fact perceived, according to different points of view and independently
from their intentions, as saviour/aggressors. Many of them
indeed risked contributing to the domination of a constellation, which
alone was advantageous to the perpetration of the premise for conflict.
In other words, by their intervention, the international actors risked perpetrating
the narrative scheme contained in the trilogy: aggressor/victim/
rescuer, an integral part of the conflict.
The pervasion of this trilogy in conflict situations has become an object of
observation in many different disciplines. Anthropologist R. Thornton suggests
that:
Narratives of violence have a specific social and cultural function. By
narrating events, we link a series of actions – whether by chronology,
conspiracy or psychological predisposition – into a comprehensible
framework. In this way the violent event that has radically disrupted the
flow of normality appears to have been predictable, and the moment of
chaos that has challenged order is tamed (Thornton, 1999).
In other words, when we “clothe” an experience or a situation of chaos
with a story or narrative, we transform it, give it sense. We tame chaos.
This does not happen alone however, as A. Feldman notes, “Narratives not
only explain events; they are integral to how we decide what is an event
and what is not” (Feldman, 1991).
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