Remembering and Forgetting a Contentious Past

Abstract

By exploring the role of cultural associations, different forms of political participation, and mass media on opposite sides of the old Italo-Yugoslav boundary, this article links opposing interpretations of the past to differences in state institutions and reconfigured social groups. Striking differences in how narrators remember episodes of past violence over time point to contentious processes of state formation after wars and to the impact of institutionalized commemorative practices on individual memory.