Colonizing the Past

Macedonia

square in central Skopje has been at the centre of disputes over the planned construction of a church. But, as it has recently been revealed, the municipal authority of Skopje has even more ambitious plans over the city's central public space. As the daily Dnevnik has revealed, no expense has been spared in the city's intervention to give character to the square; Fonderia Artistica Ferdinando Marinelli, located in Florence, Italy, has been secretly hired to make statues of figures that are central in Macedonian national narrative. Apart from a monumental statue of Alexander the Great riding his horse Bucephalus which, together with its 10 metre high pedestal will reach 22 metres, statues of the Byzantine Emperor Justinian, and of Czar Samuil as well as a host of Macedonian revolutionaries and politicians are planned to be positioned in the square.

This ‘excess’ of history in one public space is something that begs closer investigation. It certainly constitutes an attempt to imprint in space a particular historical narrative, a narrative that attempts to bring and suture together and seamlessly a host of pasts, some of which are contested by Macedonia’s neighbours. The narrative attempts to construct a sense of continuity and equivalence of moments from distinct eras.

Starting from the contested Macedonianness of Alexander the Great, moving on to the equally problematic ethnic or national origin – at a time when nations did not exist - of the Byzantine emperor Justinian and of Czar Samuil who is claimed by both Bulgarians and Macedonians as their own and culminating into the incorporation of personalities that played a role in the construction of modern Macedonian nationhood, the narrative has been criticized as both expensive and controversial – some even argue incendiary.

But what is interesting is the effort that has been invested in such an enterprise, an effort that hints that the past that is being constructed is not straightforward as it is intended to look and probably reflects a present that is ridden with anxiety and societal insecurity, a present that is marked by the ruling coalition’s attempt to establish its hegemony over a society that is deeply divided in terms of where it is moving towards. In some ways, this obsession with the past hides a preoccupation with the present and the future of Macedonian society … .

Spyros Sofos: Bulgaria’s Blackmail is Unfair

INTERVIEW 13.09.23 19 ПРЕГЛЕДИ At a time when Macedonia is under strong international pressure concerning the constitutional changes, and the region is waiting to see whether it will be coupled to the European locomotive, external views become a dire need for the country to position itself on the right coordinates during the geopolitical developments that will not leave us unaffected. After the interview with the German journalist and specialist on the Balkans Michael Martens, we present to you another conversation, this time with Spyros Sofos, whose research at the London School of Economics and Political Science has focused, among other things, on social insecurity, identity and collective action, as well as populism in Southeast Europe. He says that Bulgarian elites playing the nationalist card poses the risk of adding fuel to the fire in the region at a time when North Macedonia's access to the EU would render the contentious issu

11 December 2009: Turkey's Constitutional Court bans the pro-Kurdish Demokratik Toplum Partisi

Following a lawsuit filed by Chief Public Prosecutor Abdurrahman Yalcinkaya on November 16, 2007, the Turkish Constitutional Court has decided yesterday to shut down the Demokratik Toplum Partisi (Democratic Society Party) due to the party’s alleged links with the PKK. Following 9-hour deliberations on the fourth day of the case, Constitutional Court President Haşim Kılıç said that its members voted unanimously to close down the DTP as it became a focal point of acts against the indivisible integrity of the state . The result of this controversial decision is that, yet again, voices advocating human rights protection for Turkish Kurds are stifled, and the largest pro-Kurdish political force that had made considerable inroads in the Turkish political system by wining in nine provinces in the 2009 local elections is now seriously impaired. Thirty seven DTP members, including DTP Chairman Ahmet Türk and MP Aysel Tuğluk were banned from politics for five years. The rump parlia

Whose Is This Song? (Chia e tazi pesen?) (2003)

My friend Mirjana has pointed out the existence of this very interesting documentary by Bulgarian director Adela Peeva. Listening to a song she knew since her childhood as Bulgarian being performed in Istanbul in Turkish, the director starts a small Balkan Odyssey through Turkey, Greece, Albania, Bosnia, Macedonia, Serbia only to end up at the Bulgarian-Turkish border region in her native Bulgaria. A song that apparently encapsulated common aesthetics and, more importantly, a shared yet diverse culture, where borrowing and translation make it impossible to argue about cultural ownership and origins proved to carry in it all that divides the peoples of Southeastern Europe. Not only people tried to claim it as exclusive property of their own nation but they often angrily dismissed counterclaims as nothing more than theft. It reminded me Freud's remarks about the 'narcissism of minor differences', the accentuation of antagonism towards those who look, sound and feel so similar

AnonymousJune 4, 2011 at 9:59 AM
FYROM nationalists aren't "ethnic Macedonians" an iota more than than they are "ethnic Istabulers" or "ethnic Serbs". . They are ethnic Bulgarians that se state force to oppress evidence of their own ethnic Bulgarian past.

You (and those like you) that bizarrely call them "macedonians" in the face of obvious state propaganda) are morally complicit in that state oppression.

Much like Tito era communsists (that erased the ethnic Bulgarian context of their "macedonian" identity and used fake cries of "persecution" as a technique to lure in the unsuspecting to their cause)... by calling them "macedonians" FYROM's appologists effectively encourage the exact sort of propaganda they claim to be against.

What leftist extremists like you don't grasp (aside from the fact that you are an extremist) is since you've told them they are "Macedonians" the current inhabitents of Paeonia take that as license to insintuate all of Macedonian history (including Macedonia Greece) belongs to them.

What "comrades" like you don't grasp is for FYROM's narrative as "Macedonians" to be real... requires they once again attempt to erase Macedonians in Greece (much like IMRO alligned with the Axis dand later contridbuted to the Greek civil war)

In short, history seems to be repeating itself. (Some) Greek leftists apparently haven't learned at all from the Greek civil war. They are once again betraying their country to show how we are all "comrades". (except this time its wrapped up in in post modernist neo-liberal word salad instead of communism)

southeastern europe

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