Reconciliation and Implacability: Narratives of Survivors from the War in Bosnia and Herzegovina

Previous research on post-war society emphasized structural violence with subsequent reconciliation processes. Researchers have focused on the importance of narratives, but they have neither highlighted narratives about reconciliation nor analyzed conditions for reconciliation in post-war interviews. This article tries to fill this gap by analyzing the stories told by survivors of the Bosnian war during the 1990s. The aim of analyzing the retold experiences of 27 survivors of the 1990s war in north-western Bosnia is to evaluate markers of reconciliation and implacability, as well as those of reconciliation being actualized in the narratives. Stories on implacability, reconciliation, and conditions for reconciliation are not shaped only in relation to the war as a whole, but also in with regard to an individual‘s wartime actions and those of others. In these stories, implacability is the predominant feature, but reconciliation is said to be possible if certain conditions are met. Examples of these conditions are justice for war victims, recognition of perpetrators of crimes, and emotional commitment from the perpetrator (by showing remorse and shame, for example)