Syncretic Debris: From Shared Bosnian Saints to the ICTY Courtroom

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Main author: HadžiMuhamedović, Safet
Format: Journal Article           
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id eprints-30123
recordtype eprints
institution SOAS, University of London
collection SOAS Research Online
language English
language_search English
topic BL Religions. Mythology. Rationalism
DR Balkan Peninsula
GN Anthropology
KJ Europe
description This article is an anthropological postscript to the work of the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia (ICTY), brought to a conclusion in 2017. Drawing on long-term fieldwork in Bosnia, I trace in the Tribunal’s archives the strange afterlives of two shared and syncretic saints, George and Elijah, their feasts and the religiously plural landscapes they encapsulated. Surfacing as debris after violent impact – displaced and disarticulated – they offer here a possibility of reading both along and against the grain of the archival expectations. I analyse the chartings of ethno-religious distinctions and the discourse of ‘historical enmities’ between Bosnian communities, with particular attention to the iterations of these arguments in the reports of ICTY’s expert witnesses. This sustained invention of the absence of shared tradition, although productive of debris, is, I argue, continually countered by the emplacement of remnants into rekindled wholes.
format Journal Article
author HadžiMuhamedović, Safet
author_facet HadžiMuhamedović, Safet
authorStr HadžiMuhamedović, Safet
author_letter HadžiMuhamedović, Safet
title Syncretic Debris: From Shared Bosnian Saints to the ICTY Courtroom
publisher University of Hamburg
publishDate 2018
url https://eprints.soas.ac.uk/30123/

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