Sensitive Objects of Humanitarian Aid: Corporeal Memories and Affective Continuities

During the 1992–95 war, the vast majority of people in Bosnia and Herzegovina relied on international humanitarian assistance for survival. Material goods sent as humanitarian aid were crucial to the civilians trapped in Sarajevo under siege. Chapter 4 presents what some of the residents remember and how they talk about it two decades later. The analysis pursues how the act of narration of a particular person–object interaction activates corporeal memories and establishes affective links – resonances in the body and mind – between then (when the experience was acquired) and now (when one narrates it), between what the research participants talked about (their humanitarian aid-related experiences), and how they talked about it (affects that were revived in the course of narration). The vivid descriptions of sensual experiences concerning humanitarian aid – the tastes and smells of food and feel of clothing items received from distant donors – witness to the lingering sensual effects those experiences still have today.