Description
In International Relations and Peace and Conflict Studies, violence has often been treated as spatially insular and located in remote, “subaltern” regions of the world. Histories that are connected through chains of violence are narrated as separate. This in turn serves the purpose of whitewashing actors situated in the global north from their complicity in violence and war. Drawing on postcolonial literature, this article suggests that the memory of violence needs to be de-colonised and histories need to be reconnected to create global links of accountability. To that end, the article claims that the arts can act as mechanisms through which compartmentalised histories can be reconnected and translated from subaltern spaces to a more nuanced understanding of violence and complicity. A case study of the war in Bosnia-Herzegovina in the 1990s, which is often narrated as a localised civil war, casts light on a number of art projects that have managed to communicate the interconnectedness between local and global structures of violence. The article concludes by arguing that the arts can transcend political limitations in terms of developing new languages through which diverse audiences can be reintroduced to historical silences and reminded of their own implication in violent histories.
