How bodies remember: tattoos made in the YPA as a figure of memory

Dorotka, Duje. (2014). How bodies remember: tattoos made in the YPA as a figure of memory. Diploma Thesis. Filozofski fakultet u Zagrebu, Department of Ethnology and Cultural Anthropology. [mentor Potkonjak, Sanja].

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Abstract

This paper is problematising the status of tattoos made in the Yugoslav People's Army (YPA) after the political transition. Besides the fact that these tattoos can refer their bearers to a spectre of different episodes from the past, different narations about life in YPA that were collected in the interviews show the existence of somewhat opposed individual interpretations of personal histories, which may or may not be interpreted as nostalgic. Besides this, the fact that there is a specific remembering group introduced in the form of an internet Forum of ex members of ex YPA, to whose members the experience of military is one of the identifying episodes of life, confirms that these tattoos still have a collective dimension, given that this community recognises them as a part of their collective past. After all this being said, tattoos from YPA can be interpreted as figures of memory, because they incorporate all of the criteria that Jan Assman, who devised the term, gives us. They are: connected to space and time; connected to a community; and have a capability of reconstruction.

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