ABSTRACT
This chapter articulates the privatisation of history in post-conflict Bosnia and Herzegovina (BiH) monuments by looking at continuities and discontinuities between the current state of monuments and practices during and after Yugoslav Socialism. It discusses three forms of built structures that are crucial to understanding the emergence of post-conflict monuments in BiH: socialist monuments from Yugoslavia commemorating World War II anti-fascist Partisan struggle; private ‘para-literature’ tombstones used by individuals to commemorate their life while denouncing ungrateful families; and illegal and uncontrolled turbo-architecture that emerged in the wake of Yugoslavia’s dissolution. The chapter argues that they provide a way to explain both the privatisation of historical experience as well as deregulation of built environments into a grey economy. These three historical precedents also provide a timeline for official and unofficial public construction in Yugoslavia: most of the World War II monuments were built in the 1960–1970s, para-literature tombstones appear in the 1970–1980s and turbo-architecture emerges in the 1990s.
