Between Repair and Humiliation: Religious Buildings, Memorials, and Identity Politics in Post-war Sarajevo

Abstract

This article examines how, in a post-war setting, memorialization and the increasing presence of religious buildings support not only processes of repair and dealing with a difficult past, but also of sustaining conflict through processes of humiliation. It analyses new and repurposed memorials and religious buildings in post-war Sarajevo, a divided, contested city where identity politics has been mobilized both in wartime and in its aftermath. It also discusses how local understandings of the urban image and urban imaginary of Sarajevo have been related to religious pluralism, but also to conflict and antagonism. Furthermore, it shows how construction of new religious buildings has changed from pre-war patterns and serve to create new spatial appropriations and transformed forms of conflict. Finally, it discusses how memorials take part in identity politics formation in a cityscape dominated by nation-building, contributing not only to dealing with the past, but also to supporting continued divisions and animosities. The underlying argument is that the politics of identity not only shapes memorial acts, but is itself shaped by interventions in urban space, in connection with identity claims.|Keywords: Sarajevo, contested cities, memorials, identity politics