After the War, War: Post-Conflict Society and Trauma in Josip Mlakić’s Izgaranje
After the War, War: Post-Conflict Society and Trauma in Josip Mlakić’s Izgaranje

Summary/Abstract: The paper examines how war and the post-war period shape identity through the destruction of symbolic structures and the lasting disruption of individual security and community cohesion. In Josip Mlakić’s short story collection Izgaranje [Immolation], the characters remain tethered to traumatic experiences that hinder the reconstruction of identity, while repetitive rituals and senseless actions, arising from the fragmentation and disorientation following the conflict, lead to a state of persistent crisis without the possibility of forming new identity patterns. The theoretical framework is grounded in a constructivist understanding of identity, demonstrating how war produces homogenized patterns of exclusion, yet Mlakić’s stories simultaneously reveal their fragility through the transgression of boundaries and the destabilization of wartime narratives. In the post-conflict context, identity remains marked by trauma, the collapse of ideological frameworks, and a sense of emptiness, with characters failing to establish a stable foundation and drifting toward self-destruction or a complete inability to return to “normal” life. Consequently, trauma becomes the sole remaining content of what would constitute their post-conflict identity.

• Details
• Contents