Authors

Discussion

Silence and silencing are dynamic processes. The boundaries of who is muted and whose memories are foregrounded can shift abruptly and repeatedly, particularly in contexts of war and post-conflict transformation. At the same time, silence is rarely absolute, as “pockets of expression” often emerge even within a public sphere otherwise dominated by suppression. This paper examines marginalized Serbian communities in Croatia and their memories of violence in the former Yugoslavia—communities particularly affected by the troubling and shifting line between perpetrator and victim. Adopting a post-secular approach, it traces the unexpected entanglements of the religious and the secular, which—often producing hybrid spaces for negotiating meaning and representation—can themselves operate as “pockets of expression” in a society saturated by Croatian nationalist interpretations of the Yugoslav wars and further reinforced by Western hegemonic narratives of Serbian guilt.