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inflame a reaction formation: the ‗existential insecurity‘ 252 coming in the wake also of globalising
market economy, the digitisation and the fluidity of the present gives rise to right-wing
nationalism and rejuvenated fear of the other. Thus, digital (or any other) technologies cannot be
seen entirely as a liberating force, as they also provide a fertile ground for the flourishing of
backward, authoritarian policies and practices. These tend to reflect conspicuously also in politics
of memory and remembering.
The urge to control the memorials (in the post-Yugoslav contexts) may not be overtly directed
towards censoring online content. Rather, it seems that the struggles over the
(re)interpretation/revision of the past in post-Yugoslavia tend to widen the gap and inflame and
perpetuate socio-cultural clashes. Not infrequently these clashes originate in the recent processes
of the break-up of Yugoslavia and the emergence of new independent states: the roots to these
issues clearly go well beyond 1991, reaching at least in the interwar Yugoslavia (1918—1941). In
effect, the reduction of daily politics (of the past) to the clashes inhibits and incapacitates
constructive social action. Instead of constructive ‗dealing with the past,‘ the ‗memory wars‘ are
relegated to the sphere of the public and media, where the symbols, monuments and memorials,
idea(l)s and beliefs are mediated and hence left to often futile debates between members of
diametrically opposing convictions. Moreover, the mediation of memories of Yugoslavia (positive
and negative) and the externalisations of individual reinterpretations are mushrooming in DME,
opening up spaces of digital encounters for like-minded and bitter non-argumentative
interventions among the poles. It could be argued that desecration of material memorials migrated
in DME but changed somewhat in the process: if we take it that commentaries to online memorials
―reveal a related ritualistic behaviour to that of placing flowers, teddy bears, photographs and
messages on a memory fence,‖ 253 we could also draw an analogy and say that the desecration in
online memorials can occur either via hate-comments or through a fairly widespread practice of
creating counter-memorials. 254
Unlike in the offline counter-memorial practices, where a
community can hardly form around a desecrated monument, in DME counter-memorial can serve
well to provide a point of encounter for like-minded people.
252 Cf. Zygmut Bauman, Globalization: The Human Consequences. Cambridge, Polity Press, 1998, 2; see also David
Harvey, ―Time-Space compression and the postmodern condition,‖ in Malcolm Waters (ed.), Modernity: Critical
Concepts, vol. 4, New York, Routledge, 1999, 98–118.
253 Malin Wahlberg, ―YouTube Commemoration: Private Grief and Communal Consolation,‖ inPelle Snickars and
Patrick Vonderau (eds.), The YouTube Reader, 218–235, 232.
254 The use of counter-memorial here draws but differs from James E. Young's conceptualisation of counter
monument, alluding to a shift from traditional monument iconography in order to raise ―awareness of the fact that
while monuments do highlight historical connections, they can never replace public and individual responsibility for
critical recollection and responsible remembrance‖ (http://www.goethe.de/kue/arc/dos/dos/zdk/en204638.htm,
accessed 23 August 2011): rather, it refers to online action whereas one digital memorial is countered by creating
another one prompting a different point of view (e.g. video responses on YouTube).
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