Macedonian Monument Culture Beyond ‘Skopje 2014’

Abstract

Abstract While recent studies on Macedonia have mostly focused on ‘Skopje 2014’ as a uniquely excessive project of nation-building, this article analyses local developments in monument culture elsewhere in Macedonia. Disentangling the processes of nation-building since the Ohrid Agreement of 2001, the author distinguishes three coexisting, but competing, repertoires of monument culture, namely a Yugoslav, a Macedonian, and an Albanian one. Each repertoire has been closely associated with ethnicity and the legitimation of ethnopolitical claims, as well as party politics and ideology. The past has continued to divide Macedonians. The author argues that these divisions in Macedonian monument culture reflect the competing and diverging Albanian and Macedonian historical narratives, and amount to effectively mutually exclusive ethnic and ideological nation-building efforts in post-Ohrid Macedonia.