3. Radovi iz zbornika
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A Crack in the Wall of Denial: The Scorpions Video in and out of the Courtroom
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The chapter scrutinizes the impact of a video of executions filmed by the Serbian unit Scorpions in the process of facing the crimes of recent past committed at the territory of former Yugoslavia. To that end, the usage of the video in the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY) and in Serbian courtrooms is analysed in the context of the ongoing debate on didactic purposes of the trials. The afterlife of the video outside of the courtroom and its role in confronting the denial is also scrutinized in the attempt to assess its effect in changing the attitudes during post-war transition., Published
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From Revisionism to "Revisionism": Legal Limits to Historical Interpretation
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Contrary to radical postmodern approaches, there are limits to the representations of the past. Even if one subscribes to the trend which sends the traditional distinctions between facts and values, description and interpretation , to the junkyard of historiography, several rather lively " reality checks " ought to be taken into account, both within the craft and outside it. However, one might embrace the postmodern argumentation insofar as it indicates the fuzziness of the distinction between scholarly and unschol-arly historical interpretations. It might even seem that apart from risking the collective rage of fellow historians, or breaking certain rules of formal logic and elementary physics, not much remains to differentiate between advancing a preposterous argument and suggesting a bold historiographical hypothesis. In the light of those epistemological uncertainties, the proposed subtopic, focusing on the " border between legitimate reexamination of historical narratives and attempts to rewrite history in a politically motivated way that downgrades or denies essential historical facts, " stands out as an interesting but by no means easily approachable problem. Indeed, how does one cross the limit? By borrowing and adjusting the title from the famous conference on the Holocaust in history, organized in 1990 by UCLA under the disturbing name " Probing the Limits of Representation , " this paper carries the gist of that gathering into the legal realm, in an attempt to examine the involvement of the courts in distinguishing between legitimate and illegitimate historiographical interpretations. 1 The paper analyzes the ways in which various legal proceedings are influencing the demarcation between revisionism (reexamination of views on the past) and " revisionism " (denying the mass crimes of the 20th century). The workshop on revision of Central European history lends itself very well to such scrutiny, as Holocaust denial stands out as both the most malignant and the most persistent tendency among the " revisionist " projects., Published
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