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Nov. 23, 2024
Uncontainable Trauma
As new wars emerge across the world, wars that ended decades ago are still destroying the societies that waged them.
Guest on today’s episode, Olivera Simić, came of age in the intrastate war that broke apart her country of Yugoslavia in the 1990s, and has spent her life researching, documenting, bearing witness to, and articulating the uncontainable trauma that continue to ripple through her homeland 30 years later.
In her autobiography Surviving Peace, Olivera writes about how those experiences shaped her life, and in the newly published Lola’s War: Rape Without Punishment, as well as a number of academic articles, Olivera draws on twenty plus years of in-depth conversation and documentation of the experiences of victims, perpetrators and everyone in between - from all sides of the war.
In this hour we talk about the long-term impact of war, particularly on women, in her home country of Bosnia Herzegovina, as well as the limits of institutions - law, medicine, social welfare, education - to remedy the horrific crimes and atrocious violence committed by neighbor against neighbor, countryman against countrywoman.
Episode Links
Olivera’s website: https://oliverasimic.com/
Contact Us
Website: https://www.subjecttopower.com/
Instagram: @subject2power
Email us at subjecttopower@gmail.com
Credits
Host: Elle Kamihira
Produced by Elle Kamihira
Audio Engineering by Jason Sheesley at Abridged Audio
Cover Art by Bee Johnson
Music by Beware of Darkness
Olivera Simić
Author and Professor of International Law & Transitional Justice
Olivera Simić is an Associate Professor at Griffith Law School, Australia, where she teaches international law and transitional justice. Originally from the former Yugoslavia, Dr. Simić lived through Yugoslav wars (1991-1999). She was nineteen years old, studying her first year of a law degree in Bosnia and Herzegovina when the Bosnian War broke out in 1992. Initially as a refugee and later as a migrant, Dr. Simić lived and studied in Eastern and Western Europe, US and South America before coming to Australia in 2006.
She has published four monographs and numerous co-edited collections, book chapters, journal articles and personal narratives. They draw on hundreds of interviews with victims, perpetrators and bystanders of the wars. The stories of people who struggle with post-war trauma and seek some form of justice for crimes they survived, particularly women, are at the heart of Olivera Simić’s work.
Olivera Simić was a nominee for the Penny Pether Prize for Scholarship in Law, Literature and the Humanities, and won the Peace Women Award from Women’s International League for Peace and Freedom (WILPF, Australian branch). Her latest book “Lola’s War: Rape Without Punishment” (Palgrave MacMillan, 2023) was shortlisted for the Australian Legal Research Award 2024.