Paper Short Abstract:

The paper explores the silences in groups connected to the Istrian exodus, focusing on how their collective identity is shaped by shared silence. It examines the links between these silences and transgenerational trauma, memory conflicts, hybrid identities, and research positionality.

Paper Abstract:

This research, part of the project Ethnography of Silence(s), explores silence as a product of power dynamics, memory conflicts, and unarticulated trauma. It investigates methodologies for detecting silence and its diverse meanings.

Adopting a comparative approach, the study focuses on groups connected to the Istrian exodus—a large-scale migration of mostly Italian-speaking people from Yugoslavia after WW II. These traumatic borderland memories have been subject to political manipulation: some narratives have been silenced, others amplified, to construct competing national victimhood discourses. The research traces the formation of silences across varied social contexts, examining groups such as Italians who remained in Yugoslavia as a national minority, Istrian refugees in the contested border zone around Trieste, the diaspora in Australia, and immigrants from former Yugoslav republics in depopulated Istrian towns. The identity of these groups is based on the conspiracy of silence as an undiscussable, uncomfortable secret connected to denial, shame, marginalization, etc. Silences often stem from memory conflicts and traumatic experiences, shaped by whether memory is collective or individual. Unspoken memories may be transmitted intergenerationally through embodied experiences, creating "victims" of an inexperienced past. Conversely, silences may also reflect the denial of fluid, changeable borderland identities, framed within the concept of "national indifference." By studying these diverse groups, the research captures varying scales of memory and silence, influenced by the researcher's positionality—whether perceived as perpetrator, victor, insider, or outsider. The paper will observe also the consequences of the anthropological articulation of silence.