SARAJEVO AND THE WAR: ATROCITY, COMMODITY, AND TRANSGRESSION IN BOSNIA’S WAR TOURS Helen M. Orr A dissertAtion submitted to the faculty at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill in partiAl fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in the Department of Religious Studies in the College of Arts and Sciences. ChApel Hill 2019 Approved by: Todd Ramón Ochoa LAuren Leve Randall Styers Renée Alexander Craft DellA Pollock © 2019 Helen M. Orr ALL RIGHTS RESERVE ii ABSTRACT Helen M. Orr: SArajevo and the WAr: Atrocity, Commodity, and Transgression in BosniA’s WAr Tours (Under the direction of Todd Ramón Ochoa) This dissertAtion is based on long-term ethnographic fieldwork, and it examines SArajevo’s wAr tour industry as a sociAl production embedded in the contemporary reAlities of post-conflict society. BosniA’s wAr tours tAke international visitors to sites that commemorate the violence of the BosniAn wAr, including SArajevo’s almost four-yeAr long siege and urbicide. The dissertAtion explores issues of religion and violence, the commoditizAtion of suffering, and the global intersections of dark tourism, witnessing, and the politicAl construction of sAcred discourses. As such, the dissertAtion treAts the tours as ritual performAnces importAnt to the production of BosniAn counter-memory. The tours authorize BosniAn memories and narratives of the wAr in the midst of a post-conflict history that is narratively contested. They also resist broader Western narratives of the wAr, historicAlly beholden to the project of OrientAlism, which continue to produce the Balkans as a geopoliticAl entity beholden to violent, ethno-religious Actors. The project further examines the epistemologicAl and politicAl links which tie SArajevo’s wAr tour industry to the global phenomenon of dark tourism, in which sites of atrocity become open to touristic production and mArket-share. Drawing upon an assemblAge framing, the wAr tours are treAted as vitAl, mAteriAl sites which both produce, and resist, their commoditizAtion. The dissertAtion is attuned to the wAys in which dark sites are produced as “sAcred spaces,” and examines how the scholArly lAbeling of these sites as “sAcred” further obscures the commodificAtion of BosniAn suffering. At the sAme time, the dissertAtion uses a theory of transgression to affirm the forces of excess and profound loss at plAy in these touristic iii spaces. The dissertAtion treAts the tours as instrumentAl, politicAl acts, and frames the intimAcies of post-wAr BosniAn life through the tours, embedding them in the city life of SArajevo. iv For my parents, Dawson & Carol Orr, whose love and support made this journey possible. v ACKNOWLEDMENTS This dissertAtion wAs mAde possible by the support of mAny, a few of whom I have the opportunity to name here. LAuren Leve, Randall Styers, DellA Pollock, and Renée Alexander Craft contributed to this project as mentors and wise interlocuters. I am especiAlly thankful for my advisor, Todd Ramón Ochoa, whose affirmAtion, guidance, encouragement, time, and incisive feedback have enabled me to mAke the project one that I am proud of. I am further indebted to my former advisors, SArah K. Pinnock and Michael D. JAckson, whose influence lingers in these pages. I also wish to thank the lAte Elie Wiesel, a mentor whose work and teAching inspired me. PAvithra VAsudevan, Batool ZAidi, and Aron SAndell are friends and writing partners; I’m grateful to have shared so much of the time spent writing this project with you. (And PAvi, we did it!). My thanks as well to the deAr friends who have been such a tremendous part of my doctoral program yeArs, and to the Religious Studies department at UNC. I am also grateful to the Wenner-Gren Foundation, whose support enabled this dissertAtion, as well as to numerous friends met abroad in both SerbiA and BosniA, whose friendship has helped to mAke this offering possible. SpeciAl thank-you(s) to Dženana, Ines, and JAkov. Most importAntly of all, I wish to thank my family for their love and encouragement: DAwson and Carol Orr, VAnessA, RicArdo, and Judith LozAno, and Cedric and Rubi Lee WilliAms. vi PREFACE …the excesses of the Yugoslav civil war could not take place before certain necessary conditions had been fulfilled. … [and they] should therefore be studied, analysed [sic], and described in this light. Still, studies describing the enabling conditions cannot take away the tormenting sense of incomprehension concerning the scenes that took place in this war. The unease remains. Intelligible causal relationships remain elusive; the excesses are still irrational and all out of proportion. --MAttijs van der Port1 For whoever listens to a witness, becomes a witness. --Elie Wiesel 1 Mattijs vAn der Port, Gypsies, Wars, & Other Instances of the Wild: Civilisation and Its Discontents in a Serbian Town (AmsterdAm: AmsterdAm University Press, 1998), 13. vii TABLE OF CONTENTS AN INTRODUCTION: SCHOLARLY FRAMEWORKS ........................................................................... 1 War Tours And the Production of Counter-Memory ................................................................................. 2 AnthropologicAl LocAtions And Dark Tourism .......................................................................................... 6 ContemporAry RituAls ............................................................................................................................. 12 A SECOND INTRODUCTION: HAUNTINGS ......................................................................................... 18 CHAPTER 1: BULLETS IN BAŠČARŠIJA: THE SOCIAL LIFE OF A POST-WAR COMMODITY ................................................................................................... 20 CHAPTER 2: THE TUNNEL OF HOPE/THE TUNNEL OF SMUGGLERS: COUNTER-MEMORY AUTHORIZES THE PRODUCTION OF THE SACRED AND THE PROFANE ...................................................................... 49 TrAvel, Tourism And Theorizing Religion ............................................................................................... 50 Booking A WAr Tour ................................................................................................................................ 54 War Tours As Sites of Counter-Memory ................................................................................................. 59 The “Tunnel of Smugglers” And GeogrAphies of Siege Profiteering ...................................................... 68 CHAPTER 3: TRANSGRESSION AND DARK HUMOR: ON THE EXCESSES OF VIOLECE, LAUGHTER, AND SPAM MEAT ............................................................... 81 Laughter on A WAr Tour .......................................................................................................................... 86 Laughter And TrAnsgression .................................................................................................................... 91 Crni Humor ............................................................................................................................................. 94 Dark Humor And TrAnsgression ............................................................................................................ 104 A PArting Joke ....................................................................................................................................... 110 viii IN THE PUB ............................................................................................................................................. 113 CHAPTER 4: WAR CHILD/WAR GUIDE: POST-MEMORY, PERFORMANCE, & REPETITION ........................................................................................................ 115 At SArAjevo’s First WAr Hostel ............................................................................................................. 120 Tourists, Former UN soldiers, And Returned Refugees ........................................................................ 129 The Siege/Bunker Tour/Experience ...................................................................................................... 136 CHAPTER 5: THE ISLAM YOU DIDN’T KNOW ABOUT TOUR: EUROPE, ORIENTALISM, AND THE TOURIST GAZE ...................................................................... 145 Double Consciousness & Gaze Work ................................................................................................... 146 Context(s) of the IslAm Tour ................................................................................................................. 151 Porous TransnAtionAl CAtegories and GlobAl Tourist Encounters ........................................................ 159 At the Mosque ....................................................................................................................................... 163 A RETURN TO HAUNTINGS ................................................................................................................. 182 CHAPTER 6: ON SUFFERING AND REPRESENTATION .................................................................. 185 Sensational and Sensorial Suffering ...................................................................................................... 191 Sensorial Portraits ................................................................................................................................. 196 AlminA .............................................................................................................................................