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Chapter 4 • Nicola Mai
Through this process, the refugees could be given a chance to share their
experiences with a community gathered in a common space of socialization.
Our work began with a definition of identity in processual and relational
terms. In other words, identity was not considered a fixed entity, but a continuous
process of construction and redefinition of the self from resources
belonging to different and intersecting social and cultural contexts. In this
never-ending construction, memory plays an essential creative role by
reinterpreting the past through a dialectical procedure that examines identity
and diversity in relation to the experiences and needs of the present.
In these pages, our contribution to the Archives of the Memory project, we
have interpreted the refugees’ experiences of antagonism, war and exile,
collecting their memories in order to identify common discursive strategies
used to shape and understand these experiences. In particular, we
attempted to trace patterns in methodologies of interpreting and understanding
the past in relation to present conditions, in order to acknowledge
the “subjective transformation” (Passerini, 1988) engendered by that experience,
rather than focusing on the event alone. This transformation cannot
occur in a void, but tends to be effected a posteriori, in light of the new
needs and difficulties of the present condition. It is in the face of these
needs that new discourses emerge and are mobilized to reinterpret the past.
With these dynamics in mind, it becomes important to observe exactly
which cultural resources, historical events or figures, discursive formations,
and social practices were “chosen” as tools and used to modify the
identity of the individual in relation to a changing social and historical
field. It is vital that these “choices” emerging in the narratives of belonging
and antagonism are understood beyond the politicized, instrumental
and reductive logic of ethnicization. Rather, they must be seen as devices
enabling people to deal with new and unexpectedly changing personal and
social needs. This further makes it necessary to acknowledge and analyse
the process by which tradition is reinvented, even though in doing so, we
run the risk of redefining cultural images, that have long existed in all
coexisting local communities, as legitimate and active elements marking
differences along “ethnic” lines.
Following this idea, we tried to highlight the diversity and similarities of
the different cultures that have coexisted and clashed in the Balkans, wherever
these differences and likenesses emerged in the interviews gathered.
In order to do this, we chose to collect materials with the help of those who
have perhaps been the most marginalized and deliberately repressed social
groups in every ethnic or cultural setting we came across: young people.
The Archives of Memory project has sought to include these young people
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