According to today’s liberal-democratic agenda, the process of "Truth and Reconciliation" (T&R) seems to be the most desirable way of dealing with the historical legacy of wars and bloodshed in ex-Yugoslavia. In order to secure the lasting peace and prosperity in the region it is necessary to reach the objective truth about the painful reality of the wars, to come to a basic consensus on "what really has happened". Only in this way it might be possible to overcome conflicting and particular visions of any respective national group.
In my contribution, I will try to question whether the concept of T&R represents an effective alternative to the partition of historical truth divided among different nationalist interpretations of history, or is it rather inevitably caught within the same limits of national imaginary? Because, we should note that the T&R norm of objectivity entirely depends upon the category of nation. As the discourse of T&R indicates, objective truth can be derived only from the framework of national truth: every particular nation, which has been involved in conflicts, should accept a part of the responsibility for the crimes committed in their own name. Consequently, the problem of T&R is understood as a problem of national consciousness. The central ideological mechanism of reconciliation therefore takes the form of national recognition, the recognition of one's own belonging to the part of national responsibility or blame. Within this structural limitation, the concept of T&R functions as another type of historical revisionism in a double sense: on the one hand, desingularising the very political nature of the "post-socialist" nation, and, on the other, neglecting or denying a whole set of contradictions, tensions and violence that came up during the course of the second historical encounter of the principles of nation-State with the complexity of Yugoslav situation.
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