The True, the Good, the Spiteful: An Auto(bio)psy of Bosnian Refugee Experience in Sweden

Abstract

This article employs the Bosnian notion of “inat,” often translated as spite, to perform auto(bio)psy of my writing about refugee lives in Sweden. Methodologically speaking, I begin with an assertion that the hybrid form of auto(bio)psy, a method that entangles creative and critical reflection, helps capture what it means to live with the traumas of war, especially in the face of genocide denial and genocide triumphalism. The value of such a reflection that is neither entirely academic nor entirely artistic, neither a court testimony nor data gathered by a disinterested scholar, lies in the possibility of accessing truths that are as material and as emotional as they can be and hopefully, help us better understand uprooted families from 1990s Bosnia and beyond. Following Wendy Pearlman, I argue for the value of emotional sensibility for more profound scientific discoveries. Furthermore, I argue for the need to reconsider the form-content question in the scholarly understanding and analyses of displacement.