Hostname: page-component-77c89778f8-5wvtr Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-07-22T21:08:58.989Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Narratives of Victims and Villains in Kosovo

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  20 November 2018

Helena Zdravković-Zonta
Helena Zdravković-Zonta*
Affiliation:
Via G. Ressel 10, 34100 Trieste, Italy. Email: helena.zdravkovic@gmail.com
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Extract

This article uses ideological criticism to examine how and why victimage, identity and nationalism are produced through everyday discursive practices of Serbs and Albanians in Kosovo. Wander contends that the ideological turn in criticism confronts and studies what is professed and obscure, and Greene argues that part of this criticism involves unmasking forms of domination. Examining cultural or rhetorical narratives is part of ideological criticism. The narratives in this study can be regarded as competing vernacular memories representative of Serbs and Albanians in Kosovo. The participants invoke personal and collective memories with official national histories to explain contemporary victimization as a continuance of historical victimage. This use of the past can serve to legitimize their national and political claims, as well as to justify violence against the other group, since historical victimage provides a rationale for hating the other group and perpetuating a vicious cycle of violence.

Type
Articles
Information
Nationalities Papers , Volume 37 , Issue 5 , September 2009 , pp. 665 - 692
Copyright
Copyright © 2009 Association for the Study of Nationalities 

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Akhavam, Payam, and Howse, Robert, eds. Yugoslavia, the Former and Future: Reflections by Scholars from the Region. Washington, DC: Brookings Institution, 1995.Google Scholar
Allcock, John B. Explaining Yugoslavia. New York: Columbia University Press, 2000.Google Scholar
Amato, Joseph A. Victims and Values: A History and a Theory of Suffering. New York: Greenwood Press, 1990.Google Scholar
Anderson, Benedict. Imagined Communities: Reflections of the Origin and Spread of Nationalism. London: Verso, 1991.Google Scholar
Appadurai, Arjun. Modernity at Large. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1999.Google Scholar
Bakhtin, Mikhail. The Dialogic Imagination: Four Essays. Austin: University of Texas Press, 1981.Google Scholar
Bar-Tal, Daniel. “The Rocky Road toward Peace: Beliefs on Conflict in Israeli Textbooks.” Journal of Peace Research 35, no. 6 (1998): 723–42.Google Scholar
Barthes, Roland. “Theory of the Text.” In Untying the Text: A Post-Structuralist Reader, edited by Young, Robert. Boston: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1981.Google Scholar
Bataković, Dušan T. Kosovo i Metohija u srpsko-arbanaskim odnosima [Kosovo and Metohija in Serb–Albanian Relations]. Gornji Milanovac/Prishtina: Dečje novine/Jedinstvo, 1992.Google Scholar
Berisha, Ibrahim. Serbian Colonization and Ethnic Cleansing of Kosova: Documents and Evidence. Prishtina: Kosova Information Center, 1993.Google Scholar
Berman, Laine. “Surviving on the Streets of Java: Homeless Children's Narratives of Violence.” Discourse & Society 11, no. 2 (2000): 149–74.Google Scholar
Bieber, Florian. “Nationalist Mobilization and Stories of Serb Suffering: The Kosovo Myth from 600th Anniversary to the Present.” Rethinking History 6, no. 1 (2002): 95–110.Google Scholar
Blain, Michael. “Rhetorical Practice in an Anti-nuclear Weapons Campaign.” Peace & Change 16, no. 4 (1991): 355–78.Google Scholar
Blumi, Isa. “The Role of Education in the Formation of Albanian Identity and its Myths.” In Albanian Identities: Myth and History, edited by Schwadner-Sievers, Stephanie and Fischer, Bernd J. London: Hurst, 2002.Google Scholar
Bogdanović, Dimitrije. Knjiga o Kosovu [Book about Kosovo]. Belgrade: Srpska Akademija Nauka i Umetnosti, 1985.Google Scholar
Boose, Lynda E. “Crossing the River Drina: Bosnian Rape Camps, Turkish Impalement, and Serb Cultural Memory.” Signs 28, no. 1 (2002): 71–96.Google Scholar
Browne, Stephen H. “Reading, Rhetoric and the Texture of Public Memory.” Quarterly Journal of Speech 81, no. 2 (1995): 237–50.Google Scholar
Bruner, Michael L. Strategies of Remembrance: The Rhetorical Dimensions of National Identity Construction. Columbia: University of South Carolina Press, 2002.Google Scholar
Burke, Kenneth. A Rhetoric of Motives. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1969.Google Scholar
Calafell, Bernadette M., and Delgado, Fernando P. “Reading Latina/o Images: Interrogating Americanos.” Critical Studies in Media Communication 21, no. 1 (2004): 1–24.Google Scholar
Carr, E. H. What is History?, London: Macmillan, 1961.Google Scholar
Clark, Edward C., and McKerrow, Raymie E. “The rhetorical construction of history.” In Doing Rhetorical History: Concepts and Cases, edited by Turner, Kathleen J. Tuscaloosa: University of Alabama Press, 1998.Google Scholar
Cohen, Lenard J. The Socialist Pyramid, Elite and Power in Yugoslavia. New York/Lanham, MD: Oakville/Mosaic Press, 1989.Google Scholar
Condit, Celeste. “Democracy and Civil Rights: The Universalizing Influence of Public Argumentation.” Communication Monographs 54, no. 1 (1987): 1–18.Google Scholar
Conway, Brian. “Active Remembering, Selective Forgetting, and Collective Identity: The Case of Bloody Sunday.” Identity: An International Journal of Theory and Research 3, no. 4 (2003): 305–23.Google Scholar
Djuretić, Veselin. Razaranje srpstva u XX veku: Ideoloska upotreba istorije [The Destruction of Serbianness in the 20th Century: The Ideological Use of History]. Belgrade: Srpska Akademija Nauka i Umetnosti, Balkanoloski Institut, 1992.Google Scholar
Doerr, Karin. “Memories of History: Women and the Holocaust in Autobiographical and Fictional Memoirs.” Shofar: An Interdisciplinary Journal of Jewish Studies 18, no. 3 (2000): 49–64.Google Scholar
Dragnich, Alex N., and Todorovich, Slavko. The Saga of Kosovo: Focus on Serbian-Albanian Relations. Boulder: East European Monographs, 1984.Google Scholar
Duijzings, Ger. Religion and the Politics of Identity in Kosovo. London: Hurst, 2000.Google Scholar
Durkheim, Emile. The Division of Labor in Society. New York: Free Press, 1952.Google Scholar
Eilders, Christiane, and Luter, Albrecht. “Germany at War: Competing Framing Strategies in German Public Discourse.” European Journal of Communication 15, no. 3 (2000): 415–28.Google Scholar
Ellis, Donald G. “Intercultural Communication in Intractable Ethno-political Conflict.” In Taking Stock in Intercultural Communication: Where to Now?, edited by Starosta, William J. and Chen, G.M. Vol. 28. Washington, DC: National Communication Association, 2005.Google Scholar
Ellis, Donald G. Transforming Conflict: Communication and Ethnopolitical Conflict. Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield, 2006.Google Scholar
Emmert, Thomas A. “Kosovo: Development and Impact of a National Ethic.” In Nation and Ideology: Essays in Honor of Wayne S. Vucinich, edited by Banac, Ivo, Ackerman, John G., and Szporluk, Roman. Boulder: East European Monographs, 1981.Google Scholar
Emmert, Thomas A. Serbian Golgotha: Kosovo 1389. New York: East European Monographs, 1990.Google Scholar
Esbenshade, R. S. “Remembering to Forget: Memory, History, National Identity in Postwar East-Central Europe.” Representations 49 (1995): 72–96.Google Scholar
Feldman, Allen. “Political Terror and the Technologies of Memory: Excuse, Sacrifice, Commodification, and Actuarial Moralities.” Radical History Review 85, no. 1 (2003): 58–73.Google Scholar
Franks, Jason, and Richmond, Oliver P. “Coopting Liberal Peace-Building: Untying the Gordian Knot in Kosovo.” Cooperation and Conflict 43, no. 1 (2008): 81–104.Google Scholar
Gallagher, Victoria J. “Remembering Together: Rhetorical Integration and the Case of Martin Luther King, Jr. Memorial.” Southern Communication Journal 60, no. 2 (1995): 109–19.Google Scholar
Goati, Vladimir. “The Impact of Parliamentary Democracy on Ethnic Relations in Yugoslavia, 1989–1995.” In Ethnic Conflict Management: The Case of Yugoslavia, edited by Janjić, Dušan. Ravenna: Longo Editore, 1997.Google Scholar
Greene, Ronald W. “The Aesthetic Turn and the Rhetorical Perspective on Argumentation.” Argumentation & Advocacy 35, no. 1 (1998): 19–29.Google Scholar
Gronbeck, Bruce E. “The Rhetorics of the Past: History, Argument, and Collective Memory.” In Doing Rhetorical History: Concepts and Cases, edited by Turner, Kathleen J. Tuscaloosa: University of Alabama Press, 1998.Google Scholar
Grundmann, Reiner, Smith, Dennis, and Wright, Sue. “National Elites and Transnational Discourses in the Balkan War.” European Journal of Communication 15, no. 3 (2000): 299–320.Google Scholar
Hacker, Kenneth L., Coste, Tara G., Kamm, Daniel F., and Bybee, Carl R. “Oppositional Readings of Network Television News: Viewer Deconstruction.” Discourse & Society 2, no. 2 (1991): 183–202.Google Scholar
Halbwachs, Maurice. The Collective Memory. New York: Harper & Row, 1980.Google Scholar
Hall, Stuart. “Encoding/Decoding.” In Media and Cultural Studies: KeyWorks, edited by Durham, M. and Kellner, D. Malden, MA: Blackwell, 2001.Google Scholar
Hasian, Marouf Jr. “Vernacular Legal Discourse: Revisiting the Public Acceptance of the ‘Right to Privacy’ in the 1960s.” Political Communication 18, no. 1 (1997): 89–105.Google Scholar
Hasian, Marouf Jr, and Frank, Robert E. “Rhetoric, History, and Collective Memory: Decoding the Goldhagen Debates.” Western Journal of Communication 63, no. 1 (1999): 95–115.Google Scholar
Hauser, Gerard A. “Vernacular Dialogue and the Rhetoricality of Public Opinion.” Communication Monographs 65, no. 2 (1998): 83–107.Google Scholar
Hauser, Gerard A. Vernacular Voices: The Rhetoric of Publics and Public Spheres. Columbia: University of South Carolina Press, 1999.Google Scholar
Hawes, Leonard. “Double Binds as Structures in Dominance and of Feelings: Problematics of Dialogue.” In Dialogue: Theorizing Difference in Communication Studies, edited by Anderson, Robert, Baxter, Leslie A. and Cissna, Kenneth N. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage, 2004.Google Scholar
Herring, George C. “Analogies at War: The United States, the Conflict in Kosovo, and the Uses of History.” In Kosovo and the Challenge of Humanitarian Intervention, edited by Schnabel, Albrecht and Thakur, Ramesh. Tokyo: United Nations University Press, 2000.Google Scholar
Hobsbawm, Eric, and Ranger, Terence. The Invention of Tradition. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1983.Google Scholar
Huyssen, Andreas. “Monument and Memory in a Postmodern Age.” Yale Journal of Criticism 6, no. 2 (1993): 249–62.Google Scholar
Ignatieff, Michael. Virtual War: Kosovo and Beyond. New York: Metropolitan Books, 2000.Google Scholar
Jansen, Stef. “Victims, Underdogs and Rebels: Discursive Practices of Resistance in Serbian Protest.” Critique of Anthropology 20, no. 4 (2000): 393–419.Google Scholar
Judah, Tim. Kosovo: War and Revenge. London: Yale University Press, 2000.Google Scholar
Kelman, Herbert C. “The Interdependence of Israeli and Palestinian National Identities: The Role of the Other in Existential Conflicts.” Journal of Social Issues 55, no. 3 (1999): 581–600.Google Scholar
Kenny, Michael G. “A Place for Memory: The Interface between Individual and Collective History.” Comparative Studies in Society and History 41, no. 3 (1999): 420–37.Google Scholar
Krasniqi, M. “The Role of the Serbian Orthodox Church in Anti-Albanian Policies in Kosova.” In The Kosova Issue—A Historic and Current Problem, Symposium held in Tirana, 15–16 April, 1993, edited by Bajraktari, Jusuf. Tirana/Prishtina: Instituti i Historisë (Akademia e Shkencave e RSH)/Instituti i Historisë, 1996.Google Scholar
Krstić, Branislav. Kosovo: Izmedju istorijskog i etničkog prava [Kosovo: Between Historical and Ethnic Rights]. Belgrade: Kuća Vid, 1994.Google Scholar
Kvale, Steinar. “The 1,000-Page Question.” Qualitative Inquiry 2, no. 3 (1996): 275–84.Google Scholar
Laffan, Robert G. D. The Serbs: The Guardians of the Gate. New York: Dorset Press, 1989.Google Scholar
Lindlof, Thomas R., and Taylor, Bryan C. Qualitative Communication Research Methods. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage, 2002.Google Scholar
Logoreci, Anton. “A Clash between Two Nationalisms in Kosova.” In Studies on Kosova, edited by Pipa, Arshi and Repishti, Sami. Boulder: East European Monographs, 1984.Google Scholar
Magaš, Branka. The Destruction of Yugoslavia: Tracking the Break-Up 1980–92. New York: Verso, 1993.Google Scholar
Malcolm, Noel. Kosovo: A Short History. London: Macmillan, 1998.Google Scholar
Markovits, Andrei S., and Reich, Simon. “The Contemporary Power of Memory: The Dilemmas for German Foreign Policy.” Communication Review 2, no. 1 (1997): 89–119.Google Scholar
Mazower, Mark. The Balkans: A Short History. New York: The Modern Library, 2000.Google Scholar
Mertus, Julie A. Kosovo: How Myths and Truths Started a War. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1999.Google Scholar
Mitchell, Richard G. Jr., and Charmaz, Kathy. “Telling Tales, Writing Stories: Postmodernist Visions and Realist Images in Ethnographic Writing.” Journal of Contemporary Ethnography 25, no. 1 (1996): 144–66.Google Scholar
Moeller, Robert G. War Stories: The Search for a Usable Past in the Federal Republic of Germany. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2001.Google Scholar
Mojzes, Paul. Yugoslavian Inferno: Ethnoreligious Warfare in the Balkans. New York: Continuum, 1994.Google Scholar
Montalbano-Phelps, Lori. “Discourse of Survival: Building Families Free of Unhealthy Relationships.” Journal of Family Communication 3, no. 3 (2003): 149–77.Google Scholar
Nietzsche, Friedrich. On the Genealogy of Morals. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994.Google Scholar
Nora, Pierre. Realms of Memory: Rethinking the French Past. Vol. I Conflicts and Divisions. New York: Columbia University Press, 1996.Google Scholar
Okoye, James C. “Sarah and Hagar: Genesis 16 and 21.” Journal for the Study of the Old Testament 32, no. 2 (2007): 163–75.Google Scholar
Ono, Kent A., and Sloop, John M. “The Critique of Vernacular Discourse.” Communication Monographs 62, no. 1 (1995): 19–46.Google Scholar
Osborne, Brian S. “Landscapes, Memory, Monuments, and Commemoration: Putting Identity in its Place.” Canadian Ethnic Studies 33, no. 3 (2001): 39–77.Google Scholar
Ramet, Sabrina. Balkan Babel: The Disintegration of Yugoslavia from the Death of Tito to the Fall of Milosevic. Boulder: Westview Press, 2002.Google Scholar
Renan, Ernest. “Qu'est-ce qu'une nation?” [What is a Nation?].” In Œuvres complètes [Complete Works]. Paris: Calmann-Levy, 1947–61.Google Scholar
Ross, Marc H. “Creating the Conditions for Peacemaking: Theories of Practice in Ethnic Conflict Resolution.” Ethnic and Racial Studies 23, no. 6 (2000): 1002–1034.Google Scholar
Rushing, Janice H., and Frentz, Thomas S. “The Gods Must be Crazy: The Denial of Descent in Academic Scholarship.” Quarterly Journal of Speech 85, no. 3 (1999): 229–46.Google Scholar
Ryan, Stephen. “Peacebuilding Strategies and Intercommunal conflict: Approaches to the Transformation of Divided Societies.” Nationalism and Ethnic Politics 2, no. 1 (1996): 216–231.Google Scholar
Samardžić, Radovan. Kosovo–Metohija dans l'histoire serbe [Kosovo and Metohija in Serbian History]. Lausanne: L'Age d'Homme, 1990.Google Scholar
Samardžić, Radovan, et al. Kosovo i Metohija u srpskoj istoriji [Kosovo and Metohija in Serbian History]. Belgrade: Srpska Knjizevna Zadruga, 1989.Google Scholar
Schiffrin, Deborah. “Mother and Friends in a Holocaust Life Story.” Language in Society 31, no. 3 (2002): 309–53.Google Scholar
Schwartzman, Richard. “Recovering the Lost Canon: Public Memory and the Holocaust.” Rhetoric & Public Address 4, no. 3 (2001): 542–58.Google Scholar
Silber, Laura, and Little, Allan. Yugoslavia: Death of a Nation. New York: TV Books/Penguin, 1995.Google Scholar
Skendi, Stavro. Albania. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1956.Google Scholar
Skendi, Stavro. The Albanian National Awakening, 1878–1912. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1967.Google Scholar
Stavrianos, Leften S. The Balkans since 1453. New York: New York University Press, 1958.Google Scholar
Stevens, Georgina. Filling the Vacuum: Ensuring Protection and Legal Remedies for Minorities in Kosovo. London: Minority Rights Group International, 2009, <http://www.minorityrights.org/7856/reports/filling-the-vacuum-ensuring-protection-and-legal-remedies-for-minorities-in-kosovo.html> (accessed 15 June 1999).+(accessed+15+June+1999).>Google Scholar
Sturken, Marita. Tangled Memories: The Vietnam War, the AIDS Epidemic, and the Politics of Remembering. Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1997.Google Scholar
Sturken, Marita. “The Remembering of Forgetting: Recovered Memory and the Question of Experience.” Social Text 57 (1998): 103–25.Google Scholar
Šuflaj, Milan. Srbi i Arbanas: Njihova simbioza u srednjem vijeku [Serbs and Arbanas: Their Symbiosis in the Middle Ages]. Sarajevo: Knjizevna zajednica Kultura, 1990.Google Scholar
Tawil, Edward. Property Rights in Kosovo: A Haunting Legacy of a Society in Transition. New York: International Center for Transitional Justice, 2009, <http://www.ictj.org/static/Europe/Property_Rts_Kosovo_0309.pdf> (accessed 15 June 1999).+(accessed+15+June+1999).>Google Scholar
Turner, Kathleen J. “Rhetorical History as Social Construction: The Challenge and the Promise.” Doing Rhetorical History: Concepts and Cases, edited by Turner, Kathleen J. Tuscaloosa: University of Alabama Press, 1998.Google Scholar
Udovicki, Jasminka, and Ridgeway, James. Burn this House: The Making and Unmaking of Yugoslavia. Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2000.Google Scholar
Van Dijk, Teun A. “Discourse as Interaction in Society.” In Discourse as Social Interaction, edited by Van Dijk, Teun A. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage, 1997.Google Scholar
Van Dijk, Teun A. Ideology. London: Sage, 2000.Google Scholar
Vickers, Miranda. Between Serb and Albanian: A History of Kosovo. London: Hurst, 1998.Google Scholar
Vujačić, Veljko. “Historical Legacies, Nationalist Mobilization, and Political Outcomes in Russia and Serbia: A Weberian View.” Theory and Society 25, no. 6 (1996): 763–801.Google Scholar
Wander, Philip. “The Ideological Turn in Modern Criticism.” Central States Speech Journal 34, no. 2 (1983): 1–18.Google Scholar
Warnick, Barbara. “Leff in Context: What is the Critic's Role?” Quarterly Journal of Speech, 78 (1992): 232–37.Google Scholar
Wax, Rosalie H. Doing Fieldwork: Warnings and Advice. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1971.Google Scholar
Wood, L. A., and Rennie, H. “Formulating Rape: The Discursive Construction of Victims and Villains.” Discourse & Society 5, no. 1 (1994): 125–48.Google Scholar
Woodward, Susan L. Balkan tragedy: Chaos and Dissolution after the Cold War. Washington, DC: Brookings Institution, 1995.Google Scholar
Zelizer, Barbie. “Finding Aids to the Past: Bearing Personal Witness to Traumatic Public Events.” Media, Culture & Society 24, no. 5 (2002): 697–714.Google Scholar
Zirojević, Olga. “Kosovo in the Collective Memory.” In The Road to War in Serbia: Trauma and Catharsis, edited by Popov, Nebojša. Budapest: Central European University Press, 2000.Google Scholar