Contesting the politics of erasure and coloniality: multiculturalism and marginalization in Sarajevo and Salonika

Piro Rexhepi

- completed -

This project explores the intersections of (post)socialist and (post)colonial politics of urban renewal in present day Salonika and Sarajevo. Through archival research and ethnographic field work, he examined how asymmetrical pasts are normalized and integrated into the re-making of these cities as national sites of multiculturalism. Specifically, the emergence of intersectional political movements that contest the exclusionary tactics of neoliberal gentrification are explored by bringing attention to the exclusion and erasure of migrant and racialized communities and histories. In both cities, he is interested in exploring how imperial memories become the political battleground where projects of museumification come to clash with an alternative historicity and vernacular living strategies of marginalized communities.