engleski

PERSONAL NARRATIVE, CONSPIRACY THEORY AND (NOT) BELONGING: EXPERIENCES OF WAR, DISPLACEMENT AND ESTRANGEMENT

The goal of this paper is to examine affective responses to institutionalized narratives on the genesis, course and consequences of the 1990s conflict in Croatia, which coexist with subjugated knowledge, usually taking the form of conspiracy theories. The paper is based on recent fieldwork research. The author examines the ways of forming different personal narratives dominated by the motifs of home, displacement, (not) belonging, and narratives close to conspiracy theories which are incorporated into personal accounts. The author sees conspiracy theories as an attempt to understand the gravity and ambivalence of every (post) war experience, as a possible loosening of the knot that emerged at the intersection between the personal and the collective, the cognitive and the emotional, ethnic identity (be it majority or minority) and citizenship, the desirable and the undesirable, home and leaving home.

personal narratives, conspiracy theory, fear, anxiety, displacement, (not)belonging, subjugated knowledge, popular knowledge

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