Paper short abstract:

This paper explores how through speeches and ritual actions at cemeteries of martyrs in Kosova, collective memories are inscribed onto the political landscape resulting in processes of "community-making", "land claims", and "consolidating borders".

Paper long abstract:

This paper explores how through speeches and ritual actions at cemeteries of martyrs in Kosova, collective memories are inscribed onto the political landscape resulting in processes of "community-making", "land claims", and "consolidating borders". More specifically, I provide background information on Kosova's contested national space, territory and boundaries and investigate new nation-state formation and the marking of national territories through "dead-body politics" (Verdery, 1999) that is, the discovery of mass graves, reburials and commemoration ceremonies. With ethnographic examples from the villages of Krusha e Madhe and Pastasel, I illustrate that the acts of digging up and reburying bodily remains and following anniversaries of massacres are more than the identification of family members or the revelation of secret acts of violence in that they also allow for transforming the dead into martyrs, engaging in symbolic politics and building nationalism. It will become apparent that the sites of martyr cemeteries serve as "front stages" (Goffman, 1959) on which Kosovar Albanians come together to commemorate, create a new national historiography, express ethno-national unity and engage in community-making. Political "reproductions" through such dead-body politics touch on questions of identity, power and authority, and are efforts to create loyalties to a particular national territory and tradition by inserting desired national values directly into the lives of individuals, families and communities.