Let me begin by saying this clearly: the title is not a reflection of what I personally believe. It’s simply an attempt – a quite honest one, in fact – to find an equivalent for the slogan: “Kosovo is the heart of Serbia.” When you say “heart,” whatever else you may mean, the metaphor is ultimately very specific, not to say – somewhat inappropriately – material or bodily. The mental path from “heart” to “territory” is a short one.
From the center of the body (of the corpus, that is) to the center of the state (seen as a roof over the national corpus), it’s just one step. So when you say, as rebellious citizens across the country did the other day, that “Kosovo is the heart of Serbia,” you are, in fact, asserting a territorial claim (to Kosovo) and pretending that nothing has happened over the past few decades.
But something did happen. In fact, we’re nearing the end of the fourth decade since Serbia unleashed its nationalist… hmm, what might we call it? Tell you what, let’s first look at the consequences, and then find a fitting name. When you add it all up – from the early 1980s to today – over the course of that nearly half a century, Serbian nationalism has practically Serbia, down to its very foundations.
Not only is Kosovo no longer a part, let alone the heart, of Serbia, Serbia doesn’t even have – let’s not list everything, we can focus on just one thing – universities. They were abolished by the very government that has been beating its patriotic (Kosovo-loving) chest for decades, with a simple decree passed in the night. The fact that the universities are still twitching might just be a conditional reflex, though we can hope it proves to be a sign of vital resistance.
As for the “heart” of the country, since we’re speaking in metaphors, that same regime threatens to rip it out. I’m talking about Jadar and Mačva and the utterly senseless intent to allow anyone, foreign or domestic, to mine lithium there. Scorched earth is what Serbian nationalism leaves behind – both in our neighbors’ lands and right in the heart of Serbia.
Let the reader continue on their own – even just the last few months will suffice. And a fitting name? Four decades of unbridled Serbian nationalist destruction of neighbors and itself. Psychoanalysts would call it a clear demonstration of the death drive. It’s just that psychoanalysis doesn’t easily apply to collectives, so we’ll set that aside.
A boy – a Serbian boy, and it’s important to say that the boy was targeted because he was a Serb – was choked by an Albanian policeman in Kosovska Mitrovica. And that, too, must be said: the fact that the officer was Albanian and the boy was Serbian turned the officer into a bloodthirsty brute. In the footage, if I saw correctly, the officer doesn’t appear much older than the boy, who was about to graduate high school. If the boy was 18, the policeman might have been in his early twenties – and already capable of choking someone.
It’s a harrowing image. The boy is unequivocally a victim. Whatever he might have done – and in our local context, it was likely nothing unusual or unexpected – it can’t justify being strangled, especially not by a police officer. I must say – reader, forgive me – I even feel sorry for that officer. He’s too young to become a killer, and yet that’s the path he’s on. Hopefully someone will talk to him and explain just how cosmically wrong – world-shattering – his actions were.
The horrifying image from Kosovska Mitrovica sparked a reaction from the rebellious part of Serbian society. Shocked citizens took to the streets and cried out: “Kosovo is the heart of Serbia.” That slogan – completely worn out from decades of misuse – can be interpreted in many ways, given the context. The rebellious citizens sympathize with the boy. They want to show that they are pained by the injustice and violence inflicted upon him by a police officer. They want to say that this must not be allowed. They wish to protect the boy but don’t know how, so they shout: “Kosovo is the heart of Serbia.”
Only, that slogan means something else entirely. It contains none of what the protesting citizens actually meant to express. It was and remains a banal articulation of Serbian pseudo-patriotic territorial claims. When they raised it, these rebellious citizens perhaps wanted to say: “We are the true patriots, unlike the regime whose patriotism is obviously fake. We genuinely care about Kosovo, about the Serbs there, and about that unfortunate Serbian boy.”
But by saying that, this segment of society entered a pseudo-patriotic competition with the regime – a game we’re bound to lose, even if we defeat and topple the regime itself.
You can’t, after decades of destruction and self-destruction, go out into the streets with the same slogan that was used (by both the new and old regime) to justify that destruction. Especially not if you aim to draw a clear line between us and them, if you seek a clear break from the criminal regime and its catastrophic legacy. “Kosovo is the heart of Serbia” – that can be nothing but a sign and confirmation of the continuity of failed policies.
Does that mean we should have stayed silent about the violence in Kosovska Mitrovica? Absolutely not. We all – truly, I believe this – must stand with that child and with “our” people in Kosovo and protect them from violence however we can. Just as we would for anyone else, anywhere else – say, in Palestine. (Yes, we should get used to that – Kosovo is the same as Palestine to us: a foreign land.) How? Well, certainly not the way fake Serbian patriots have done it so far. Laying claim to territory solves nothing – it only makes things worse.
Please don’t misunderstand me – hurting anyone is the last thing I’d want – but when we, shouting “Kosovo is the heart of Serbia,” look tearfully at the image of an Albanian officer choking a Serbian child, we’re actually seeing our own reflection in the mirror. Because it’s entirely possible that the unfortunate Albanian, as he was choking that unfortunate young Serb, was thinking to himself: “Kosovska Mitrovica is the heart of Kosovo.”
And that’s why, instead of the heart, let it be the soul. The soul is less physical – especially when we talk about territory – and easier to imagine somewhere outside of or above the body, if that’s more to your liking. To argue now whether parts of our collective Serbian identities (yes, there are many, and we should get used to that) must be rooted in stories about Kosovo is unnecessary and useless. They simply are. That’s how identities work – they needn’t be logical or consistent.
And since that’s the case, instead of trying to change or reject them, it would be better to adapt them to reality. The soul instead of the heart – that’s all we need. These are just metaphors; we can assemble and disassemble them without harming feelings or attachments.
Plus, the soul is a much more flexible metaphor than the heart. With a bit of irony, we could recall Plato’s idea that the body is the prison of the soul – but there’s really no good reason for irony here. A more useful insight, again from psychoanalysis, is that the soul is the prison of the body. Following Lacan, Deleuze and Guattari elaborated in detail the idea that there is no body without a soul or mind to which it is subjected. In order to have a body, it must be organized as a body – meaning, constrained by the soul (or mind).
Choose your slogans carefully – that’s what I wanted to say. Whether Kosovo is the heart or the soul of Serbia, the very idea that it holds a central (legitimizing) place in our collective identity arrangements constrains us: it organizes us in a way that, if it doesn’t outright make us prone to destruction and self-destruction, then at least renders us incapable of understanding reality and truly being able to help the people in Kosovo – whether they be Serbs, Albanians, or anyone else.
Translated by Marijana Simić
Peščanik.net, 29.05.2025.
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