The bequest of Ilegalja

Contested memories and moralities in contemporary Kosovo

Datos Bibliográficos

ID11046124
AutoresStephanie Schwandner-Siever (0000-0003-3173-0586, University of Roehampton, autor de correspondencia), Stephanie Schwandner-Sievers
Año2013
Volumen41
Número6
Páginas953-970
Fecha de publicación2013-11-01
Peer ReviewedSí
Open AccessSí
TipoARTICLE
RevistaNationalities Papers (JOURNAL)
Identificadores de la revistaISSN: 0090-5992 • E-ISSN: 1465-3923
EditorialCambridge University Press (CUP) (PUBLISHER)
DOI10.1080/00905992.2013.767792
OpenAlexW2018656749
IdiomaEN
Citas recibidas10
Referencias citadas24

In this essay I explore the ways in which the internal Albanian politics of memory in Kosovo rely on a longer, lived history of militant self-organisation than the Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA) war period alone. On the basis of recent ethnographic research, I argue that the memory of prewar militant activism is symbolically codified, ritually formalized, and put on the public stage in Kosovo today. Not only has this process effectively rehabilitated and consolidated the personal, social, and political status of specific former activists, it also has produced a hegemonic morality against which the actions of those in power are judged internally. On the one hand, this process reproduces shared cultural references which idealise ethnonational solidarity, unity and pride and which have served militant mobilisation already before the 1990s. On the other, it provides the arguments through which rival representatives of the former militant underground groups (known as Ilegalja) compete both socially and politically still today. Although this process demarcates some lines of social and political friction within society, it also suggests that international efforts to introduce an identity which breaks with Kosovo's past and some of its associated values, face a local system of signification that is historically even deeper entrenched than is usually assumed

Hegemony · Militant · Political economy · Political science · Politics · Power (physics · Sociology · Solidarity · Balkans: History, Politics, Society · Gender Studies · Law · Memory, Trauma, and Commemoration · Turkey's Politics and Society