| Description |
This dissertation draws from research in memory studies, discourse analysis, ethnographic methods, and human rights rhetoric to argue that analysis of on-the-ground discourses in the form of lived narratives advances how we think about human rights. Eleven Bosnian Americans who came to Salt Lake City, Utah as a result of the Bosnian war in the mid-1990s were interviewed. I examine how participants share stories about prewar, wartime, and postwar life, and how trauma emerges from those narratives in the form of "traumatic breach" and "(dis)placement trauma." My findings suggest that a practice of human rights is more effectively understood as lived, accounting for the enduring embodiment of trauma manifest throughout these collected, lived narratives, rather than as physical, static manifestations of violence. As opposed to universalist conceptions of justice put forth by The Hague, this research pays attention to local particularities as significant groundwork for theorizing human rights violations and war trauma. |
