States of victimhood and irreparable losses: Serbian veterans of the post-Yugoslav wars

Abstract

In this article I investigate how Serbian veterans of the post-Yugoslav wars positioned themselves in relation to the state that was largely ignoring their claims for material and symbolic recognition. I show how this impacted veterans’ ideas about their place in the Serbian postwar society and argue that the apparent disregard for veterans’ predicaments added to their experience of multiple lacks and losses, as well as aided the formation of a particular veterans’ political subjectivity. This was occurring against a backdrop of a series of lost wars and a context of ambiguities and unsolved contradictions, in which, two decades after the wars there were still no official records about the exact size of the veteran population or their most immediate needs. In order to expose and investigate what can be learned from this case, I draw on the insights of the anthropology of the state and argue that its limitations may be overcome and complemented with a broadened Foucauldian concept of governmentality.

Keywords

• governmentality
• Serbia
• social recognition
• the state
• victimhood
• war veterans