Abstract
Based on research carried out in war affected villages in Croatia, this paper explores the work of memory in a setting which was experientially, demographically and architecturally structure by the consequences of the post-Yugoslav wars. Through vagueness, amnesia and selective remembering, villagers constructed conflicting memories in relation to different sets of events: key-moments in the violence of 1991-5, and in that of World War II, were inscribed in different versions of forty-five years of Yugoslav co-existence and of the more distant past. This has led other studies to explain much of the recent wars in terms of the liberation of suppressed World War II trauma. Suggesting a sceptical and nuanced view of such explanations, by analysing conflicting local narratives of self, village, state, war and history. I highlight the malleable nature of these memories, the importance of silences, and the role of agency in positionings with regard to nationalist discourses.