Examining Spanish Representations of Mass Violence in the Former Yugoslavia

Spain Interrupted: Examining Spanish Representations of Mass Violence in the Former Yugoslavia A Dissertation SUBMITTED TO THE FACULTY OF THE UNIVERSITY OF MINNESOTA BY Erma Nezirevic IN PARTIAL FULFILLMENT OF THE REQUIREMENTS FOR THE DEGREE OF DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY William Viestenz, Ofelia Ferrán June 2017 © 2017 Erma Nezirevic Acknowledgements This dissertation has been at least five years in the making thanks to the support of the Department of Spanish and Portuguese Studies at the University of Minnesota – Twin Cities. I am also indebted to the Department of Romance Languages at the University of Oregon, and the Department of World Languages and Literatures at Boise State University, where I became inspired to pursue graduate study and academic life. First and foremost, I am thankful to my family who have always provided moral support for my goals, and whose idea to move to the United States for my education has seemingly paid off. Chris, thank you for always being there. I don’t know what I would do without your common sense and constant support. This dissertation is also dedicated to my extended family who now find themselves scattered all over the world, but who have nevertheless always made sure to let me know how much they support me. For the completion of this dissertation, which is just the beginning of the project, I am extremely grateful to my committee, Professors Ofelia Ferrán, William Viestenz, Ana Forcinito, and Alejandro Baer. I am especially grateful to my advisors. Ofelia, your own work has been an inspiration for this work and is a big reason why it was done at Minnesota. Bill, not only are you one of the most original thinkers I know, but have pushed me intellectually while thinking outside the box along with me. You have also been an incredible personal support and a source of humor during this process. Thank you for everything! Alejandro Baer and all my colleagues from the Center of Holocaust and Genocide Studies, thank you including me in the truly interdisciplinary and vibrant collaboration. Alejandro, I am especially thankful for your intellectual, moral support, and financial support. I look forward to further working with you and CHGS. ! ! i ! ! ! I am also indebted to the two members of my cohort in Spanish and Portuguese, Scott Ehrenburg and Satty Flaherty-Echeverría, for reading the drafts, and providing their brilliant insight. We did it! I also want to thank all of my friends and colleagues in the department who have provided conversations, discussions, and fresh ideas during this process: Veronica Menaldi, Sandra Rellier, Dora Dias, Nico Ramos Flores, and José Aguirre. José, who has not only taken his mentee position very seriously, but has walked countless miles and eaten countless calories with me. In many ways, I owe you for getting me out of my holding pattern during the latter part of the dissertation phase. Finally, this dissertation is dedicated to both of my grandmothers, who couldn’t have been more different from each other, but whose experience and lessons have been an inspiration and a motivation. Even in the hardest of times, they knew where they belonged. ! ! ii ! TABLE OF CONTENTS Chapter I: Spanish Balkanists and Offensive Hospitality: An Introduction …..………… 1 Chapter II: Testigo molesto y/o invertido: Writing the Witness……………………………………………………………...……………………36 Chapter III: Aesthetic and Political Self-Reflexivity of Witnessing Atrocity ………… 74 Chapter IV: Bosnian Immigrant in Spain: Exploring Hospitality in Lunes en la Calle Slova and Bienvenido a Sarajevo, hermano ………………………………………...…110 Conclusion: Reimagining Community: Sephardic Jews of Sarajevo and the Question of Transnational Memory……...…………………………………………………………. 151 Bibliography……………………………………………………………………………161 Appendix………………………………………………………………………………..168 ! ! ! ! iii ! ! Chapter I Spanish Balkanists and Offensive Hospitality: An Introduction Through a case study of how Spain represents and imagines the former Yugoslavian nation-state upon and after its disintegration in 1990s, this dissertation examines cultural production about Yugoslavia by Spanish authors, journalists, and photographers.!By examining how Spain looks at and understands Yugoslavia, this work problematizes the many discussions on hospitality by showing how the roles of host and guest not only collapse, as Derrida suggests in his deconstruction of the French word hôte and its double meaning in the French language, but how the act of hospitality is always contingent upon interruption. Without interruption, there is no hospitality. Indeed, host and guest not only collapse and contain one another, but the condition for the very existence of these roles rests upon their being interrupted. The crux of my argument lies in the understanding that interruption is what opens up the conditions for hospitality. As Derrida argues, unconditional hospitality is impossible making all hospitality thus conditional. One always owes something to the Other even in the case of a gift which is unreturnable. While there may not be an unconditional hospitality, the conditions created by interruptions allow for an examination of not only old traumas and a potentiality for their healing, but also, cause a self-serving and pathological understanding of the roles of host and guest. These two notions extist in any host-guest relationship, and more specifically, in contexts of post-mass atrocity, can exist as g(host), where the roles not only collapse but their coexistence provides a space for self- examination in light of one’s traumatic past. !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! 1 ! ! So what constitutes an interruption? An obvious answer to this would be: events such as wars. But wars themselves open up a series of conditions for further interruptions. The wars in Yugoslavia at the end of the twentieth century opened up the possibility for multiple layers of interruption including the interruption of: 1) a “European identity,” 2) individual subjectivities and collective identities, 3) an insular approach to the study of certain phenomena that cannot be contained to the framework of the nation-state, 4) traditional understandings of the roles of author and witness, 5) democracy, 6) the market, etc. A brief look at the etymology of of the verb “to interrupt” points to the connotation this word has in its past participle form ‘interruptus’, coming from the Latin verb interrumpere (“to break apart, break off, break through”) an interference with a legal right, a meaning used around the year 1400. This further breaks down from ‘inter’ (‘between’), ‘rumpere’ (‘to break’), and ‘compare’ (‘corrupt’), and acquires the meaning “to break into, break in upon, disturb the action of” particularly of speech in both English and Latin (Online Dictionary of Etymology). The idea of disturbing the act of speech can be seen explicitly in the way the relationship between host and guest plays out, and its ability to create the conditions for hospitality, and complicate it. The fact that there is an etymological connection to the notion of corruption also becomes prominent in the way hospitality functions. If we are talking about witnessing the atrocity of another, and end up hosting their memories, the ethical question inevitably arises: How corrupted are these memories? This idea is what demands an examination such as this one, as it provides insight into the relationships between hosts and guests that are nonetheless corrupted – whether it !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! 2 ! ! is by the idea of rescue, or more self-serving ideas in terms of understanding memory, or even the (un)intended pathologizing of the Other’s experience. The idea for this research arose in part from personal experience of living through the war in the former Yugoslavia during the 1990s and its direct aftermath, and in part due to my academic interest in Spanish literature. As I began my graduate studies, I took a seminar in European Studies in which I decided to explore the parallel connections between Spain and Yugoslavia during the twentieth century including histories of civil wars, dictatorships, struggles of collective memory, and transitions to democracy. My research for this seminar led me to a syllabus for an undergraduate course taught at Oberlin College by Sebastiaan Faber and Veljko Vujacic titled “Nationalism, Culture, and Politics Under and After Dictatorship: Spain and Yugoslavia in the 20th Century.” The syllabus makes some important comparisons and provocative claims, These differences between Spain and Yugoslavia make the comparison between the two countries exceedingly interesting. Most obviously, Franco was a right- wing dictator, first identified with fascism (he came to power thanks to Hitler and Mussolini) and later with anti-communist traditionalism, while Tito was a left- wing anti-Stalinist. A second important difference concerns the contrast between Spain’s unitary state and Yugoslavia’s socialist federalism. Thirdly, Spain’s transition to democracy was relatively successful while Yugoslavia’s post- dictatorial trajectory was disastrous. Spain today is a prosperous nation-state with a functioning democracy in a parliamentary monarchy; Yugoslavia, after years of internal violence and external intervention, has ceased to exist as a unified state, while its former republics are still struggling to enter the European Union. Why !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! 3 ! ! did two societies that shared many historical similarities end up following such different paths? (Faber and Vujacic 1-2) While the idea for this course had a

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