Paper short abstract:

In this paper I explore identity, memory and emotion among Serbian migrants residing in the San Francisco Bay Area, California. I analyse the importance of material objects that displaced Serbs keep in their American places. More than just a memory practice, I argue that the remembrance of lost houses is also a central marker in staking political claims.

Paper long abstract:

In this paper I explore identity, memory, and emotion among Serbian migrants residing in the San Francisco Bay Area, California. I emphasize the prevalence of an ethnic group that constructs its difference (and inaccessibility to outsiders) through the insistence on an absolute separation from others or "obstinate otherness." This difference has to be understood through the prism of national upheaval and ethnic violence in the homeland.

First, I describe the significance of a "deep history" in the constitution of Serbian identity and long-distance nationalism in the wake of the violent disintegration of the homeland. "We are history!" exclaimed one young Serbian woman and thereby underlined that according to her, the collective Serbian body does not "own," but embodies or "is" history. In order to understand the centrality of a collective Serbian identity that is based on visions of the past and suffering, I introduce Appadurai's concept of the "community of sentiment." This phenomenon shows that long-distance nationalism is not only a cognitive phenomenon, but also an emotional one. As such it is enacted in ritual, music, dance, and narrative.

Second, I turn to the material side of memory by analyzing the salient importance of houses, landscapes, and architectural artifacts that displaced Serbs keep in their exilic places to transform them into spaces. Significant in the life stories of elderly displaced Serbs is the memory of war and expulsion during World War II. With the onset of the dismemberment of Yugoslavia in 1991, past stories of violence, flight, and destruction became crucial in transforming "dormant transnationals" who had for decades put their victim narratives aside, into long-distance nationalists. Thus, "unsettled accounts" of the past were followed by yet new unsettled accounts in the present, whereby the legacy of the "truth" of World War Two overshadowed the recent events. Interestingly, the 'emotional attachment' to a far away home in their narratives of suffering was reflected in the material objects decorating their new houses. More than just a memory practice, I argue that the remembrance of lost houses is also a central marker in staking claim to a "lost world," claims that have been especially dangerous in the wake of the bloody conflicts in the 1990's.