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SARAJEVO STUDY TRIP
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Main Researcher: Dr. Carna Pistan
Do Constitutions remember? If so, how? And what happens when a society’s most contested memories become part of its foundational legal text?
Constitutions are commonly understood as legal and political documents that organize political power, establish state institutions, and protect citizens’ rights. Yet Constitutions also tell stories about political communities. Through references to the past – including historical narratives, founding myths, and national symbols – they articulate who "we the people" are, where we come from, what we have experienced, and which moments of the past should be considered foundational. This mnemonic dimension of constitutionalism becomes particularly significant in societies emerging from violent conflict, where competing interpretations of the past remain closely intertwined with questions of identity, political belonging, and legitimacy. In such contexts, constitutional narratives may try to unite a political community, but may also reproduce exclusions, hierarchies, and divisions by privileging, for example, some experiences of the past over others.
This project examines the relationship between collective memory and constitutionalism by developing the concept of the Constitution as a lieu de mémoire: a place in which political communities deposit, preserve, and reinterpret memories of past glorious and traumatic events. The project develops, on the one hand, a theoretical framework for studying memory through Constitutions and, through a comparative analysis of Constitutions from different regions in the world, identifies the different modes in which Constitutions deal with the past. Within this broader framework, the project focuses, on the other hand, on the post-conflict societies of the Western Balkans, examining how the constitutional orders that emerged from the dissolution of Yugoslavia construct competing understandings of nationhood, conflict, and victimhood. In particular, it explores how constitutional memory can privilege the historical experience of a dominant group, thereby reproducing exclusionary understandings of political community.
More precisely, the project is guided by the following research questions: 1) How do post-conflict Constitutions construct narratives about the past? 2) Which historical events are incorporated into constitutional memory, and which are marginalized or excluded? 3) How do constitutional narratives interact with legislation, commemorations, citizenship, memorialization, and other instruments of memory politics? 4) What are the consequences of constitutionalizing contested memories for groups whose experiences are absent from or conflict with the dominant narrative? 5) Can constitutionalism accommodate plural and competing memories without imposing a single authoritative interpretation of the past? 6) What principles should guide the democratic construction of memory through law in societies marked by conflict?
By adopting an interdisciplinary approach that bridges comparative constitutional law and constitutional theory with nationalism studies and memory studies, the project aims to develop a new perspective on the relationship between Constitutions and collective memory. It further aims to contribute to the comparative study of constitutionalism and to broader debates on how political communities construct belonging through representations of the past. Beyond its theoretical contribution, the project also seeks to develop a series of guidelines for the democratic construction of memory through law, offering insights for policymakers and practitioners engaged in constitutional design, institutional reform, and transitional justice in divided and post-conflict societies.
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