The Political Uses and Social Lives of “National Heroes”: Controversies over Skanderbeg’s Statue in Skopje

Abstract

The article analyzes the contentions over symbolic spaces and meaning in Mace­ donia’s capital Skopje/Shkup. at the center of the analysis stand the negotiations around the monument to Skanderbeg, unveiled in the city center in November 2006. The author contextualizes the political and social setting of the monument, highlighting both the 2001 conflict and its appeasement via the Ohrid agreement and the administrative redrawing of municipal boundaries of 2004 as the two key moments in re-establishing symbolic landscapes and meanings. as becomes obvious, the notion of a simple albanian­Macedonian rivalry does not suffice to explain in depth the mechanisms at work. Altogether intra-Albanian competition, the reshaping of albanian identities and solidarities across the Balkans, and Macedonian post-2001 politics have generated loyalties and differences that go well beyond ethnic conditionalities.