How Bodies Remember: Tattoos Gotten In The YPA As A Figure Of Memory

Sa？etak The author discusses the status of tattoos gotten in the Yugoslav People's Army (YPA) after the political transition. Besides the fact that these tattoos serve to remind their bearers of a broad spectrum of episodes from their past, different narratives about life in the YPA that were collected by means of interviews, show the existence of somewhat opposed individual interpretations of personal histories, which may or may not be interpreted as nostalgic. Besides this, the fact that there is a specific memory community represented in the form of a Web forum of ex YPA members, who find the experience of serving the army as an identifying life period, confirms that these tattoos still have a collective dimension, since this community recognizes them as a part of their collective past. After all this being said, tattoos from the YPA can be interpreted as certain figures of memory, because they incorporate all of the criteria that Jan Assman, the creator of this syntagm, has mentioned: connection to the space and time; connection to the community; the capability of reconstruction