ABSTRACT
The chapter argue that practices of statebuilding have produced complex effects, rendering the past into a means of producing mechanisms of governmentality that have aimed to democratise state and society but have largely failed to deliver social justice. The chapter uses notions of inside-out and outside-in to account for the many layers and positions of power that go into cultural and political memory work. Drawing on feminist stand-point theory, the chapter engages with memory work, actors, and practices that seeks to simultaneously unpack regimes of truth, of the unequal power relations upon which they are predicated, and ground our analysis on assertions and contestations of agency. Under conditions of international statebuilding, memory and violent experiences become unrecognised as a legitimate means of claiming rights, specifically because of the way that Kosovo’s statebuilding has been conditioned upon the erasure of national-based narratives and historical experience. Conceived as a human rights intervention, this dominant reading from the outside-in is deeply detached from the local conception, which holds claims to statehood as a fight for national-sovereignty and social justice.
