Gendered Rememberings: Sexual Violence in the Aftermath of Conflict

My research posits itself as a feminist intervention into the politics of memory with particular regard to sexualised violence in Bosnia-Herzegovina and the conflict from 1992-1995. The research draws on a number of tools to interrogate how and why sexualised violence is memorialised in the aftermath of this conflict. It takes as its starting point, Edkins' understanding the politics of trauma. That is, it is impossible to articulate trauma, but yet there is also a necessity and a duty to do so. The duty to speak about sexualised violence in the aftermath of conflict in Bosnia-Herzegovina has manifested itself in a number of different ways, from legal prosecution in the courts of the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia and collections of testimony, to fictional accounts in novels and film that claim to represent to experiences of those who were raped during the conflict. My research will use these sources to unpack the politics of memory in Bosnia-Herzegovina, at the same time complicating the dichotomy of testimony and fiction within these sources.
In the existing literature, memory has largely been theorised in terms of a search for a 'language of mourning', as a 'commemoration of the dead' providing 'assistance to those left behind'. However, it is inadequate to see victims of sexual violence as those who have been left behind, and indeed the growing numbers of sources contributing to collective memories of sexualised violence support this claim. Current theorisations of memory work to exclude women's experiences of conflict and violence. My research will both explore how the memory of war is gendered and bring to the fore women's memory of conflict. This will allow both an exploration and problematisation of the memory of sexual violence. It will draw strength from feminist interventions into sexual violence but go further in exploring this political absence of victims of sexual violence from literature on memorialisation. They are not straightforwardly forgotten or silenced, creating a fundamental need to explore and uncover sites of remembrance for victims of sexual violence as well as interrogating the politics of the absence itself.
Given the lack of literature on the gendered politics of memory it is for my research to explore both how the existing work engaging the memory of conflict instrumentalises or excludes women and sexual violence as well as to uncover alternative sites of memory which serve to politicise those who remain absent from the memory of conflict. In order to do this I draw on Wibben's narrative intervention into feminist security studies, since narratives 'both enable and limit representation'; and how women's memories of sexual violence are narrated, or where they are excised from dominant narrative shapes our understanding of specific subjectivities. Narration is understood in a broad sense for the purposes of this project since there is an impossibility of speaking trauma. Narrative is then understood to include gesture, gaze and acts, it is understood performatively. In proposing to explore gendered subjectivities, I will also make a contribution to how conflict is understood and represented in its aftermath.
Ethical Considerations: Yes, in relation to this project the ethical considerations would be primarily in the fieldwork I will carry out. That is in speaking to individuals who may be traumatised by their experiences. Much of the research will focus on cultural representations of sexualised violence and therefore will not involve direct contact with individuals but in the process of carrying out fieldwork I plan to hear testimony from individuals involved. There are sources that have already collected such testimony of the conflict and therefore it may not be necessary to conduct interviews with individuals that are victims of sexual violence. However, I will need to be conscious that the issue is sensitive and deeply political in Bosnia-Herzegovina.