"Skopje 2014: Monumentalizing the Past for a Majoritarian Present?"
Workshops, conferences 2017
- Date: Jun 6, 2017
- Time: 10:30 AM - 01:00 PM (Local Time Germany)
- Location: MPI-MMG, Hermann-Föge-Weg 11, Göttingen
- Room: Library Hall
For more details please contact cziesielsky(at)mmg.mpg.de.
While the most overt political context for this proliferation of
gargantuan statuary was the ongoing “name dispute” with Greece, which
officially rejects Macedonia’s claim to the name “Macedonia” and insists
on referring to the country with the periphrastic expression “Former
Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia,” Skopje 2014 also intervened in a
variety of national and local debates over Macedonian identity and the
role of the past in the contemporary city. Our roundtable discussion on
Skopje 2014 assembles a panel of experts deeply versed in contemporary
Macedonian public culture and politics to address a series of
interrelated questions: How might we understand the intersecting logics
of imperial glorification, national and ethnic antagonism, and amnesia
that Skopje 2014 embodies? What is the relationship between Skopje 2014
and more recent, vehement political disputes over Macedonian identity
and citizenship? Finally, how are we to interpret Skopje 2014’s
neoimperial aesthetics vis-à-vis the other, laminated pasts that
saturate and define the city, whether socialist, Ottoman, or Byzantine?
Participants:
- Dr. Rozita Dimova, Associate Professor, Department of Languages and Cultures, Slavonic and East-European Studies, Ghent University
- Dr. Andrew Graan, Visiting Research Fellow in Social and Cultural Anthropology, University of Helsinki
- Dr. Goran Janev, Associate Professor of Social Anthropology, Institute for Sociological, Political and Juridical Research, Ss. Cyril and Methodius University in Skopje
- Dr. Aleksandar Takovski, Assistant Professor of Discourse Analysis, South East European University