The Question of Montenegrin Guilt in Vojislav Pejović’s The Life and Death of Milan Junak and Ognjen Spahić’s Under Both Suns

Abstract

ABSTRACT The article explores the questions of responsibility and guilt in two novels by contemporary Montenegrin authors. Vojislav Pejović's The Life and Death of Milan Junak (2008) and Ognjen Spahić's Under Both Suns (2020) problematize the active role of Montenegro in the Yugoslav Wars in the 1990s and shed new light on the mnemonic aftermath of the armed conflict(s) in present-day Montenegro. Using Michael Rothberg's concept of implicatedness as a theoretical starting point, the article argues that Pejović's and Spahić's novels provide a new perspective on conceptualizing and understanding the notion of collective guilt in the countries of former Yugoslavia – one that goes beyond understanding guilt and responsibility (both individual and collective) in binary terms. The article argues that the novels achieve originality in contemporary Montenegrin and post-Yugoslav literature by establishing links between seemingly unrelated historical traumas in different places and through an implicit critical engagement with the literary canon and cultural heritage to which they belong.