Counter-Heritage and Violence

Author(s): Andrew Herscher

Source: Future Anterior: Journal of Historic Preservation, History, Theory, and Criticism,
Vol. 3, No. 2 (Winter 2006), pp. 24-33
Published by: University of Minnesota Press
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i. "Modern buildings rise higher and higher above the low roofs of the old houses." (Esad Mekuli and Dragan Cukic, eds.,
Prishtina. [Belgrade: Beogradski graficki zavod, 1965])

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Andrew Herscher
Counter-Heritage and Violence

Modernity, Heritage and Counter-Heritage

Contemporary political violence in Kosovo has frequently
included the targeted destruction of architecture, at times to
catastrophic proportions. As Serb forces destroyed mosques,
religious schools, and other buildings associated with Islam
during their campaign against the Kosovo Liberation Army in
1998 and 1999, Kosovar Albanians have vandalized, burned,
and bombed Serbian Orthodox churches and monasteries in

the years after 1999. The targets of this destruction are typi-
cally understood to comprise "heritage," as indeed they have
become forthe communities that identify with and claim those
targets. But this understanding assumes shared definitions
of heritage across otherwise differentiated and antagonistic
social formations. It assumes that enemies recognize the heri-
tage of "the other," and that this recognition guides the target-
ing of destruction. The unsustainability of these assumptions
prompts a closer examination of the relationship between
violence and heritage.
The concept of heritage has long been recognized to
be enmeshed with the concept of modernity. Modernity
was formulated against a pre-modemity that, in the field of
culture, was termed "heritage."1 But heritage is also dialecti-
cally related to another category. As well as being opposed to
modernity's non-historical counterpart, it is also opposed to
despised history- to traces of non-modernity that are not val-
ued, but condemned. This other category of the non-modern,
which I term "counter-heritage," has remained unmarked. The
unmarked conceptual status of counter-heritage corresponds
with, and testifies to, its demeaned social status. Counter-her-
itage is as conceptually invisible as it is physically eradicated.
If counter-heritage is recognized at all, it is as unrecognized
heritage. The memory of destroyed historical objects is typically
grounded in the status of those objects as a kind of heritage
inadmissible to, or unacknowledged by, hegemonic power.2
What these sorts of accounts cannot grasp, however, is that
hegemonic power is manifested not only by selecting out cer-
tain cultural objects for preservation, but also by selecting out
other cultural objects for destruction. Counter-heritage, in other
words, is what the anthropologist Mary Douglas has termed
Future Anterior
Volume III, Number2 an "abomination": an entity made meaningful by a categorical
Winter 2006 order in the very process of being excluded from that order.3

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 Sixty years ago, in Dialectic of Enlightenment, Max
Horkheimer and Theodor Adorno wrote that "[t]oday, the past
is preserved as the destruction of the past."4 The immediate
sense of this comment emerges in the context of heritage; it is
the often-noted transformation that occurs when objects are
identified as heritage, wrested from quotidian existence and
endowed with museal aura. But the comment also suggests
another context for understanding the cultural production of
the past: that this production takes place not only through
preservation that is destructive, but also through destruction
that is preservative. That is, counter-heritage "preserves" a
model of the past. The process of this preservation is destruc-
tion, yet this destruction- by extricating its targets from the
social order- assists in the materialization of some version of
history.
Like the positively-valued traces of pre-modemity that
comprise heritage, counter-heritage is a component of moder-
nity in many of modernity's formations. The site or context of
modernist urban renewal and reconstruction proposals was
counter-heritage, as were the traces of pre-modemity to which
modern historic preservation failed to attend. Yet, counter-
heritage is also salient in many postmodern processes and
projects. Like other cultural forms emerging in the context of
modernism and modernization, counter-heritage has assumed
new meanings and new functions in new historical situations.
This article will look at the emergence of counter-heri-
tage in the context of Kosovo's socialist modernization in
the 1950s, focusing on the destruction of "Old Prishtina,"
the Ottoman-era urban core of Kosovo's capital city. On one
level, this is the story of counter-heritage, of historical objects
defined as objects of modernist destruction. But this story
has a further significance in the post-socialist aftermath of
modernization in Kosovo. In that aftermath, counter-heritage
provided a template for the consolidation of power and iden-
tity during moments of extreme political instability. The mod-
ernist definition and destruction of counter-heritage in Kosovo
became an initial moment in a history of spatial violence, a
history in which a spatial practice that emerged within the
domain of socialist modernization would be used to reorder

contested territory in the domain of post-socialist conflict.

Compensatory Modernism: Construction and Destruction

In the years after World War II, socio-economic moderniza-
tion was the focus of political will and state energy in socialist
Yugoslavia. In Kosovo, an "autonomous region" within the
Republic of Serbia, a number of ethnic, national, and geo-
political tensions acted as frictions on this modernization: the
post-1948 Yugoslav-Soviet conflict (in which Kosovo was per-

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 ceived as a vulnerable periphery adjacent to Stalinist Albania),
Serb and Yugoslav efforts to control actual and imagined
Albanian irredentism in Kosovo, conflicts within Yugoslavia
about the economic autonomy of republics and distribution
of federal capital, conflicts within and between Serbia and
Kosovo about the political status of Kosovo, and ethnic antag-
onism within Kosovo itself. With these frictions, moderniza-
tion proceeded far slower in Kosovo than in rest of Yugoslavia.5
The Republic of Serbia and Federal Yugoslavia narrated this
slow pace as the result of Kosovo's backward social condi-
tions, but, more accurately, Kosovo faced a chronic under-
development dictated by the contemporary political economy.
The construction of "New Prishtina" was the most signifi-
cant work of urban renewal in socialist-era Kosovo and thus,
a key component of Kosovo's supposed modernization. New
Prishtina, however, was not an instrument ofthat moderniza-
tion as much as a compensation for it. New Prishtina was a
cultural substitute for a promised but undelivered socio-eco-
nomic transformation of Kosovo, a transformation that was
internally restricted from assuming its postulated form. As
such, the construction of New Prishtina corresponds to what
Marshall Berman has called a "modernism of underdevelop-
ment," a modernism in which a symbolic representation of
modernization is given as a substitute for, and deferral of, an
incomplete renewal of socio-economic conditions.6
In Kosovo, a symbolic representation of moderniza-
tion was produced as much by destruction as by construc-
tion. These productions were each formally initiated in 1954
when an Institute for the Protection and Study of Cultural
Monuments was established in Prishtina on the model of simi-
lar institutes founded in other Yugoslav republics after World
War II.7 But also in that year, a master plan for Prishtina was
approved, the main element of which was the placement of a
complex of new municipal and provincial government build-
ings at its center, where the city's Ottoman-era bazaar was
located.8

Diacritics of Modernization: Visualizing Counter-Heritage

In the second half of the 1950s, some of the new buildings
envisioned in Prishtina's master plan were constructed: a pro-
vincial assembly building, a city hall, and a new main street
lined with modernist mixed-use buildings. But these buildings
were not the only diacritics of the city's modernization- the
buildings were located on the site of Prishtina's destroyed
bazaar, or adjacent to other condemned or destroyed
Ottoman-era architecture. Like the modernist buildings
erected over and around them, the destruction of Ottoman-
era architecture also signified the advent of modernization.

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2. "Dilapidated small houses, a relic Modernization, that is, materialized not only by newly-con-
of the past, can still be seen in some
structed modernist architecture, but also by the ruination of
parts of the town, but are fast disap-
pearing. The people of Prishtina want condemned pre-modernist architecture: the destruction of
large and modern apartment blocks."
Old Prishtina's Ottoman-era buildings was equated with the
{Yugoslav Cities [Belgrade: Turistická
stampa, 1965]) destruction of a pre-modem socio-economic system, and of
pre-modernity itself.
The state explicated the architectural and urban diacritics
of pre-modernity and modernity in a series of illustrated books
about the progress of modernization in Kosovo. The book
Prishtina was published in 1965 on the twentieth anniversary
of the end of the World War II.9 "Until the end of the Second

World War," the editors describe, "Prishtina was a typical

Oriental town, with small ground-floor houses and narrow
streets. Only after the Liberation has Prishtina passed through
strong economic, cultural and social development- and
grown into a completely new modern town."10 Modernity, in
other words, was a direct result of postwar socialism, and this
reading was visible in the form of the city itself. An ¡mage of
Prishtina from the book thus shows the city's newly-construct-
ed main street in the foreground, the complex of new govern-
ment buildings in the upper-left corner of the background,
and the remains of the outmoded and partially destroyed
pre-modern urban fabric surrounding all of the above (Figure
1). The caption of the picture focuses precisely on the contrast
between old and new: "Modern buildings rise higher and

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 higher above the low roofs of the old houses."11 Here, modern-
ization is not a self-constituted and autonomous construction,
butan implied destruction of the rejected remnants of pre-
modemity.
In the book Yugoslav Cities, also published in 1965, it
is specifically the remains of Old Prishtina's bazaarthat are
staged as signs of the superseded socialist prehistory.12 In
one ¡mage, mud-brick buildings in a still-extant section of the
otherwise-destroyed bazaar were juxtaposed with a new, white
modern building with the caption reading, "Dilapidated small
houses, a relic of the past, can still be seen in some parts of the
town, but are fast disappearing. The people of Prishtina want
large and modern apartment blocks" (Figure 2). The remains of
the bazaar formed a counter-heritage, a "relic of the past" that
was designated not for preservation, but for eradication.
Only while such designations were made and partly car-
ried out were other "relics of the past" designated positively
as heritage. While the remains of Prishtina's bazaar gradually
disappeared, Kosovo's Institute for the Protection of Cultural
Monuments selected other examples of pre-modem architec-
ture as historic monuments to be protected and preserved by
the state. The state produced heritage and counter-heritage
simultaneously, with each acting as a foil for the modernity
that the state was attempting to represent aesthetically, if not
institute socio-economically.
The division of Kosovo's pre-modern architectural culture
into heritage and counter-heritage was refracted through
a complex amalgam that included Orientalism, socialist
modernism, and the international post-war ideology of his-
toric monuments as singular and exemplary constructions.
This division yielded a corpus of heritage in Kosovo strongly
oriented towards Serbian Orthodox churches and monaster-
ies, including those built after the World War I; these build-
ings became "listed historic monuments," protected by and
cared for by the state. At the same time, another corpus of
pre-modern architecture was produced, this one strongly ori-
ented towards Ottoman-era architecture- some of which then
became counter-heritage slated for destruction.

Counter-Heritage, Spatial Violence, and Political Violence

While the definition and destruction of counter-heritage
emerged during socialist modernization, counter-heritage has
also become a component of post-socialist spatial politics in
Kosovo. This is because destruction- like other types of chron-
ic violence- becomes an autonomous cultural form, detached
from its original context and reproducing itself in new contexts
under the sign of such terms as "response," "revenge," "repri-
sal," "retribution," or "punishment."13 Most recently, in the

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3- Village mosque, Reti e Poshtme, waning aftermath of socialism in Yugoslavia, counter-heritage
Kosovo, destroyed in March 1999.
(Photograph by author, September
has become enmeshed with ethnic politics- or, more precise-
1999) ly, with the ethnicization of politics in Kosovo. That is, as the
conflict over political sovereignty in Kosovo has transformed
into a conflict between antagonistic ethnic groups these
groups have defined both themselves and their ethnic other
through the production, destruction, and memorialization of
counter-heritage.
In the 1998-99 Serb counter-insurgency campaign against
the Kosovo Liberation Army in Kosovo, along with the mass
deportation of and violence against Kosovar Albanians, Serb
forces damaged or destroyed approximately 200 of Kosovo's
620 mosques along with a range of other buildings associated
with or occupied by Kosovo's Albanian communities- houses,
shops, and entire urban neighborhoods (Figure 3).'4This
destruction was not collateral damage- in some towns and
cities, mosques and other Islamic religious sites were the
only buildings singled out for attack, and in other, most or
all Islamic buildings were destroyed. Subsequently, during
Kosovo's administration by the United Nations, violence by
Albanians against Serbs in Kosovo has included the targeted
damaging or destruction of approximately 140 Orthodox
churches and monasteries, along with houses and villages
associated with or occupied by Kosovo's Serb communities
(Figure 4).15
To the perpetrators of this violence, destruction was aimed

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4. Orthodox Church of St. Parasceva, not at heritage, but at counter-heritage- at signifiers of a
Drsnik, Kosovo, destroyed in October
despised history. There were, then, significant disjunctions
1999. (Courtesy Information Service of
the Serbian Orthodox Diocese of Raska between what was imposed as counter-heritage on a collective
and Prizren)
ethnic other and what that collective claimed as heritage. Serb
forces targeted Islamic architecture, casting the identity of
their adversary in ethno-religious terms, while Albanians have
targeted Serb Orthodox architecture to institute a reciprocal
casting. In both cases, perpetrators of violence did not choose
targets on the basis of their status as listed historic monu-
ments, historic age, or significance to the targeted community.
Also, in both cases violence asserted the identity between an
ethnic group and a state or para-state, so that violence against
counter-heritage performed a forensic function, establishing
the very parameters of otherness in the process of targeting
an other.16

In the context of nationalist ideology, on both Albanian

and Serb sides, the ethnicization of violence through destruc-
tion has been productive. Not only have Albanian and Serb
antagonists targeted the religious sites of the other as coun-
ter-heritage, but memory projections on both sides have
transformed imposed counter-heritage into inherited heritage.
Along with monuments, representative and venerable edific-
es, and other objects deemed to be of historical significance,
the architectural casualties of wartime and postwar violence
have become subsumed into the category of architectural heri-
tage for both Albanians and Serbs in Kosovo.

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5. Front cover, Bashkësia Isláme e As buildings identified with both Albanians and Serbs
Kosovës, Serbian Barbarities Against
Islamic Monuments in Kosova.
have been destroyed in political violence, both communi-
(Prishtina: Dituria Isláme, 2000) ties have accumulated a heritage of destroyed architecture
(Figures 5 and 6). What Albanians and Serbs have come to
6. Front cover, Eparhija Rasko-
Prizrenska, Crucified Kosovo. (Prizren- include as their heritage in Kosovo is precisely the counter-
Gracanica: Eparhija Rasko-Prizrenska, heritage defined by the other. This re-definition of counter-
1999 [ist ed.])
heritage as heritage- a negation of a negation- interprets
violence from the perspective of its victims, but it is also a
memorialization of victimization that can provide a resource
for further violence. The formation of a heritage of destroyed
buildings has thus provided an incipient legitimation for vio-
lent responses to that destruction. To the extent that the coun-
ter-heritage of an other is destroyed as revenge for destruction
wreaked by that other- a justification frequently made in
Kosovo- then destruction has become self-reproducing and
the recognition of a shared possession of counter-heritage
across communal lines remains invisible.

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 Author Biography
Andrew Herscher is an assistant professor at the University of Michigan in the
Taubman College of Architecture and Urban Planning, the Department of Slavic
Languages and Literatures, and the Department of Art History. He has worked in
Kosovo for the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia, the United
Nations, and the Kosovo Cultural Heritage Project, a non-governmental organiza-
tion he co-founded and co-directed.

Endnotes
1 See Françoise Choay, The Invention of the Historic Monument, trans. Lauren M.
O'Connell (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001).
'Unrecognized heritage could be the referent of what Foucault termed "counter-
memory." I pose the term "counter-heritage," however, not as a referent of coun-
ter-memory, but of hegemonic memory work that suggests or yields destruction
instead of preservation.
3 Mary Douglas, Purity and Danger: An Analysis of the Concepts of Pollution and
Taboo (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1966).
* Max Horkheimer and Theodor Adorno, Dialectic of Enlightenment, trans. John
Cumming (New York: Continuum, 1994), xv.
5 Michel Roux, Les Albanais en Yougoslavie: Minorité nationale territoire et dével-
oppement (Paris: Éditions de la Maison des Sciences de l'Homme, 1992).
6 Marshall Berman, All That is Solid Melts into Air: The Experience of Modernity
(New York: Penguin, 1982), 174-176.
7 On the history of historic preservation in Kosovo, see Milan Ivanovic, Spomemci
kultuře Kosova i Metohije i problematika njihove zastite i egzistencije," in
Problemi zastite i egzistencije spornen i ke kultuře i prirodnih objekata i rezer-
vata na Kosovu iMetohiji, ed. Milan Ivanovic (Prishtina-Belgrade: Savetovanje
Konzervátora Jugoslavie, 1968). On the work of the Institute for the Protection and
Study of Cultural Monuments in Kosovo, see Ratomir Karakusevic, "Rad Zavoda
za záštitu i proucavanje spomenika kultuře AKMO od svog osnivanja do danas,"
GlasnikMuzeja Kosova i Mewtohije 1 (1956).
8 BorislavStojkov, "Odredni odrzivog urbanog razvoja Pristine, in Obnova
Pristine, ed. Borislav Stojkov (Belgrade: Institut za Arhitekturu i Urbanizam Srbije,
1996), 10.
9 Esad Mekuli and Dragan Cukic, eds., Prishtina (Belgrade: Beogradski graficki
závod, 1965).
10 Ibid.
"Ibid.
12 Yugoslav Cities (Belgrade: Turistická stampa, 1965).
13 On the cultural autonomy of violence, see Allen Feldman, Formations of Violence:
The Narrative of the Body and Political Terror in Northern Ireland (Chicago:
University of Chicago Press, 1992).
lA Andrew Herscher and Andras Rieldmayer, The Destruction of Cultural Heritage
in Kosovo, 1998-1999: A Post-War Survey (Cambridge: Kosovo Cultural Heritage
Survey, 2001). The Islamic Community of Kosova's list of damaged and destroyed
Islamic religious sites is given in Bashkësia Isláme e Kosovës, Serbian Barbarities
Against Islamic Monuments in Kosova (Prishtina: Dituria Isláme, 2000).
15 Eparhija Rasko-Prizrenska, Raspeto Kosovo ^rizren-bracamca: tparnija KasKo-
Prizrenska, 1999 [ist ed.], 2000 [2nd ed.], 2001 [3rd ed.]), 7.
16 On forensic violence, see Arjun Appaduraj, "Dead Certainty: Ethnic Violence in
the Era of Globalization," Public Culture 10, no. 2 (Winter 1998).

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