“Borderland Collective Memories and Identities: The Case Study of Nova Gorica/ Gorizia” by Kaja Sirok

This research aims to develop a comparative perspective on the construction, erosion and reconstruction of the history narration on the italo – Slovene border area. Especially it works on comparative border identities and contested memories about the end of the Second World War and events between the years 1943 – 1947 seen from the present situation.
The study focuses on the consequences of the tensions and conflicts between individual and collective memory of the population in the region of Gorizia/Gorica. In particular, it aims to understand and analyze differences in construction and narration of memory among people from both sides of the border. Using micro-history and oral history, the study shows how both ethnic groups (as national historical narratives) institutionalize these divisions over memory. The members of the two groups decided to accept the »memory division«, even to the point of allowing different versions of events to become part of various forms of public memory - which in many cases implies divisions into private and politicized memories (many of these memories are nowadays contested on a national level, since both states commemorate different, mostly disputable and incompatible events).
The analysis of the contested border memories is focused on the impact that long-standing historic processes, as well as recent developments and events have on the construction of the other in the region and on the processes of identity building in the border area. Particular attention is given to the »visual memory« (monuments and its symbols, the denomination of the streets...), which contributes to the consolidation of the identity in its linkage to the territory, especially in contested areas. The narrated stories provides us with a close view to the individual experience of each person to dynamics of different interpretations of the past and employment of elements of identity building, as well as to the contested feelings of people in the border area.

Film Screening:
»My border«
16th September, 1947. The border was forced between houses and streets, between fields and gardens, between people - it divided the world in two. It became an obstacle and a challenge. This documentary video-novella was made for the younger generation, which never saw the border as a problem but merely as a natural fact - like the river Soca that runs along it. It was also made for the generation that was born along it when it was called the Iron Curtain, the generation that saw it as an unsurpassable obstacle.