engleski

(Non)narrative expressions of anxiety in the aftermath of war: anxiety in a place on the example of Lika (Croatia)

The presentation starts with the premise that Lika, a Croatian region, is due to a history of conflict and violence (Second World War, war of the 1990s), an anxiety-filled space. Our premise is also that the dominant narrative of Lika dissolves in “small narratives”. In other words, our interest is twofold and situates itself at the intersection of the image of Lika as a historical space of anxiety and the complexities and contingencies of everyday life. The focus of our research and, consequently, the methodological solutions, are twofold. On the one hand, the focus is on modes of narrating events whose content is undoubtedly anxiety-provoking, i.e. events that are inherently terrifying (murder, persecution, destruction of property, impossibility of return). This aspect will be investigated primarily on the basis of the material collected over the past twenty years using the oral history method. This method provides for a narrative mode complementary to the context of the narrating and research objectives. Although it is to be expected that the narrated traumatic event generates anxiety, the content of affective expression in the material collected using the oral history method (as is frequent with oral testimonies), is often disproportionate to the terrifying content of the narrative. On the other hand, in our own fieldwork material the focus is not only on researching narratives with underlying anxiety in everyday communication, but primarily on anxieties that do not (and cannot) have their narrative mode, that are not expressed or even expressible. The manifestations of anxiety in research situations were often not mere anxiety narratives, but more often non-verbal residues of anxiety on the background of the total experience of life or even a total experience of anxiety (both of the informants and of the researchers). The content of anxiety during fieldwork has contingently sublimated into specter, illusion, experience, atmosphere, flashes, yearning, nausea, impression, silence, aesthetic experience, beauty, joy.

anxiety, fear, Lika, small stories

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