‘Achieved without Ambiguity?’ : Memorializing Victimhood in Belgrade after the 1999 NATO Bombing

Abstract

This paper examines the memory and narratives of the 1999 NATO bombings through a spatial lens, discussing how the debates surrounding memorial architecture reflect the multiple, and at times conflicting, understandings of the NATO bombing. By analysing the competition to reconstruct Radio Television of Serbia (RTS) from its ruins, this article discusses the tensions and challenges brought by narratives representing victimhood in Belgrade after 1999. It examines how understandings of victimhood have been spatialized through urban memorials, situating the RTS competition in the wider landscape of memorial representations of the NATO bombing in Serbia. Developed using a bottom-up process, the competition for the RTS memorial reflects both the opportunities and the limits of memorial architecture. While the competition and overall debates mirror general trends of memorial architecture in the context of European politics of regret and trauma, the limited scope of the memorial and its marginality in the cityscape both reflect and enhance the continuing obfuscation of the past in Serbia.