Analytical and Research Methods

In sociology, constructionist approaches to national identity maintain that identities are formed through the negotiation and ascription of meanings to different forms (Anderson 1983; Bodnar Reference Bodnar1992; Billig Reference Billig1995; Brubaker Reference Brubaker1996; Brubaker and Cooper Reference Brubaker and Cooper2000; Cerulo Reference Cerulo1995; Collins Reference Collins2004; Hall Reference Hall, Durham and Kellner2006; Hobsbawm and Ranger Reference Hobsbawm and Ranger1983; Kolstø Reference Kolstø2006; Pavković and Kelen Reference Pavković and Kelen2016). Analyzing the processes by which “distinctions are created, maintained, and changed” (Cerulo Reference Cerulo1997, 386), the literature addresses the representational features of meaning-making: the ways in which identity forms, like national symbols, collective memories, and founding narratives, stabilize (or destabilize) the constructs they depict, functioning as communication strategies (Cerulo Reference Cerulo1995) and “emblems of nation-ness” (Anderson 1983, 133).

Held to mediate different social perspectives, national symbols convey these messages through their design elements: for flags, through their graphics and colors, and for anthems, through their chord compositions and musical themes, eliciting different emotional responses—depending on the contexts in which they are used and the actors who use them (Bodnar Reference Bodnar1992; Cerulo Reference Cerulo1995; Collins Reference Collins2004; Hobsbawm and Ranger Reference Hobsbawm and Ranger1983; Kolstø Reference Kolstø2006; Pavković and Kelen Reference Pavković and Kelen2016). Initially viewed as “rallying points,” in the Durkheimian sense, because their meanings are always shifting, the literature has more recently turned to how these forms can serve as powerful agents of social change and can inspire collective action (Cerulo Reference Cerulo1997, 391), especially as dominant meanings are destabilized when met with alternative interpretations (Bodnar Reference Bodnar1992; Cerulo Reference Cerulo1995; Hobsbawm and Ranger Reference Hobsbawm and Ranger1983; Kolstø Reference Kolstø2006).

Reflecting this perspective, the literature on Kosovo Albanian identity formation in the post-conflict state also looks to the representational aspects, considering how forms like master-narratives, monuments, and national symbols constitute the basis of national identity, serving as sites of both cohesion and contestation, as different groups vie for control (Albertini Reference Albertini2012; Di Lellio and Schwandner-Sievers Reference Di Lellio and Schwandner-Sievers 2006; Ermolin Reference Ermolin2014; Ingimundarson Reference Ingimundarson2007; G. Krasniqi Reference Krasniqi2013; V. Krasniqi Reference Krasniqi2014, Reference Krasniqi2016; Ströhle Reference Ströhle, Šuber and Karamanic2012). Despite Kosovo’s new symbolic landscape, which is intended to promote multi-ethnicity and European integration, what the literature brings to light is how the prevalence of existing ethno-nationalist forms does not contradict the values of the new republic, but reinforces it, as ruling political elites integrate the new national symbols into cultural frameworks with which people already identify, such as the legacy of Albanian military struggle against Serb forces (Ingimundarson Reference Ingimundarson2007, 95). Yet focusing on the representational—the rational, measurable, and determinable aspects—what the constructionist literature does not account for is how the forms’ changing meanings change, how the shifting social contexts in which they appear shift, and how to interpret what people are feeling when they are feeling it.

The article advances Robin Wagner-Pacifici’s (Reference Wagner-Pacifici , Tota and Hagen2017) alternative theory of events. Conceived of as ongoing, rather than temporally and spatially bounded (2017, 5), her political semiotic approach involves consideration of three different analytical features: the features that mobilize and make events happen (performatives), the features that index them and time and space and orient actors to them (demonstratives), and the features that stabilize and reproduce them (representations) (2017, 19–20). As all three features work together to produce events (2017, 21), in order to understand how a transformation of meaning takes shape, the article examines the construction and crisis of the Kosovo state and national identity through political semiotic analysis of its new symbols.

After an overview of Kosovo’s political and historical background, I describe and contextualize the new forms, positioning them within the current symbolic landscape and framing their representational characteristics within the extant literature. Then, reconceptualizing construction to account for the analytically interminable aspects of meaning-making, I elaborate the symbols’ performative and demonstrative features to show how performatives make and change meanings and how demonstratives configure contexts. The Kosovo case illuminates how these analytical features do not work—or rather—how they almost work. In crisis, the forms self-defeat: performatives cannot achieve their meanings, and demonstratives are disorienting. Finally, turning to the context of international competitive judo, another space where Kosovo identity and sovereignty are constructed, the article locates a discursive transformation, as the forms’ political semiotic mechanisms are redirected and imbued with new meaning. From this perspective, the construction is the crisis, but the construction is also the change.

No new surveys have been published regarding citizens’ recent attitudes toward the flag and anthem. Whether or not “everyone” literally “loves” the new flag and anthem is beyond the scope of this article. This discourse and semiotic analysis is concerned with the question of how formations, deformations, and transformations take shape, instead of what or who causes them to transpire. Despite the new state’s emphasis on multi-ethnicity, my study is focused on the dominant discourse of Kosovo Albanians, and further research is required to investigate the attitudes of Kosovo’s minority communities.

The primary empirical data comprises English-language source materials and images, including newspaper and journal articles from a variety of international publications such as the New York Times, Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, VICE, and Judo Inside; regional publications like Balkan Insight; and local publications like Gazeta Express, Kosovo 2.0, and Prishtina Insight. Discourse is drawn from documentary film, Kosovo government websites, press releases, and brochures; official reports from the United Nations, European Union, and other independent, international agencies like the International Crisis Group; and also from local and international blogs, personal websites, and social media posts to Twitter, Facebook, and YouTube.

Having spent six summers in Kosovo (2010–2015), working in the Department of European Integration in the Ministry of Culture, Youth and Sports (2010), the National Museum and the Ethnological Museums of Kosovo (2011–2013), and Anglia Summer Academy (2013–2015), and participating in the Alter Habitus Memory Mapping Kosovo workshop (2014), the discourse and semiotic analysis is also informed by these experiences as well as by ethnographic methods, including participant observation, ten semi-structured interviews, and countless casual conversations with colleagues, friends, neighbors, taxi drivers, street vendors, bartenders, and students.

Background

Kosovo is the seventh and last state to gain independence after the collapse of the former Yugoslavia. Like many of its neighbors in the Western Balkans, Kosovo is composed of ethnically, religiously, and linguistically diverse groups, including a majority community of Albanians, who constitute 90% of the population, and minority communities of Serbs, Roma, Turks, Bosniaks, Gorani, and other South Slavs (CIA World Factbook 2016). Like its neighbors, Kosovo has been the site of multiple political reconfigurations and shifting symbolic landscapes. And like its neighbors, Kosovo has been the site of deep divides, especially between Albanians and Serbs, who each have their own claims to the land, dating back to antiquity (Judah Reference Judah2008, 4–8).

The end of World War II saw the birth of the Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia, under the leadership of Marshall Tito, and Kosovo was made part of Serbia within this new configuration. During this time, Kosovo Albanians were banned from flying the Albanian flag (red with a black double-headed eagle), but after the passing of the 1974 Yugoslav Constitution, Kosovo gained the status of Socialist Autonomous Province, and enjoyed relative sovereignty, flying the Yugoslav flag for the Albanian minority, red with a black double-headed eagle, featuring a yellow star (the Yugoslav emblem) in the upper left corner (Ante Reference Ante2010, 338). This relative sovereignty lasted until 1989, when Slobodan Milošević, President of the Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia and its successor, the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia, revoked Kosovo’s autonomous status and stripped Kosovo’s Albanians of their rights, creating oppressive, apartheid-like conditions (Judah Reference Judah2008, 49–51, 55–57, 66–68).

Despite the oppressive conditions, Albanian nationalism also continued to spread, leading to riots and calls for Kosovo’s independence. In 1991, Kosovo’s Albanian leaders organized a referendum and declared their de facto independence, creating a “parallel” or “shadow state,” called the Republic of Kosova, represented by the Albanian national flag. Although the impetus for the parallel state was nonviolent resistance, divisions among the political leadership contributed to the formation of a guerrilla army called the Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA), which carried out a series of small insurgencies against the local Serbian government (Judah Reference Judah2008, 68–99).

Although the international community sought a diplomatic solution to the Kosovo conflict (especially in the aftermath of the Bosnian War), when peaceful negotiations failed, and Serbia conducted a militant counterinsurgency in February 1998, the escalation of ethnic violence culminated in the NATO intervention in March 1999. When the bombing campaign concluded three months later, the United Nations Security Council established an interim administration, placing Kosovo under the supervision of the international community, and the official flag of Kosovo became the flag of the United Nations, a blue field featuring the white UN emblem, a map of the world surrounded by two olive branches.

Despite the ceasefire, tensions had not subsided: Kosovo’s Albanians had endured over ten years of political oppression, forced migration, and the Yugoslav army’s killing sprees and mass rapes; more than half of the community was displaced (Human Rights Watch 1999). In the wake of the intervention, the KLA led a series of retaliatory attacks against Serbs and other ethnic minorities (perceived as collaborators), according to a 1999 report conducted by Human Rights Watch. These attacks included arson, looting, beatings, abductions, and murders. Hundreds of thousands of Serbs and other communities fled Kosovo (or were forcibly displaced) (Human Rights Watch 1999). In March 2004, another wave of retaliatory violence directed against minorities erupted. After two days of rioting, 19 people were dead—11 Albanians and eight Serbs. Nearly 1,000 others were injured, including Kosovo police and UN personnel; 29 Serbian churches had been set on fire; and 4,000 people—mostly Serbs, Roma, and other minorities—were forced to flee (Judah Reference Judah2008, 110).

In the wake of the riots, UN Special Envoy and former president of Finland, Martti Ahtisaari, was appointed in 2005 to determine Kosovo’s final status, facilitating a series of negotiations between Kosovo and Serbia. Serbia, however, would not accept any agreement with the prospect of an independent Kosovo on the table, claiming that the province was integral to the Serbian nation, and Kosovo’s Albanian leaders would not accept anything short of statehood, citing the history of the ethnic cleansing directed against Albanians (Weller Reference Weller2009, 23–28, 29–41). In March 2007, when no agreement could be reached, Ahtisaari and his team crafted the Comprehensive Proposal for the Kosovo Status Settlement, known as the Ahtisaari Plan. The Ahtisaari Plan provided Kosovo with a complete framework for state-building according to EU convention—emphasizing liberal democratic values such as universal human rights, protections for minorities, and a market economy, with the expectation that Kosovo would someday join the EU.

Though Serbia ultimately rejected Ahtisaari’s proposal, Kosovo’s Albanians struck a deal—in return for abiding by the plan, Kosovo could declare independence and receive recognition and funding from the majority of Western and European countries, international civil society organizations, and NGOs (Judah Reference Judah2008, 115). On February 17, 2008, Kosovo unilaterally declared independence from Serbia and welcomed the international presence. As of 2018, Kosovo is recognized by 116 UN member states and 23 European Union member states, and it has joined international organizations such as the International Monetary Fund, the World Bank, the International Federation of Association Football (FIFA), the International Judo Federation (IJF), and the Olympics (“Kosovo Thanks You” 2018). Its independent status still remains contested.

Representations of the New State and Identity

In order to state-build according to European and international convention, part of Kosovo’s task was to create a new identity with new national symbols, promoting multi-ethnicity and European integration, to comply with the Ahtisaari Plan. According to the plan, official state symbols, like the flag and national anthem, cannot refer to a specific ethnicity, nationality, or state (Comprehensive Proposal, Article 6.1). An anthem with no lyrics and a flag that looks like the EU are not unique to Kosovo, however. The designs for Kosovo’s symbols follow the example of post-conflict Bosnia, another ex-Yugoslav state rebuilt by international actors. The Bosnian flag utilizes a blue and yellow color scheme featuring white stars, and its anthem also has no lyrics.Footnote ² Both the symbols and the new states they represent emphasize multi-ethnicity, decentralization, and group rights for minorities because these models are seen by international state-builders as solutions and strategies of post-conflict stabilization in deeply divided societies. Since the early 1990s, Gezim Krasniqi explains, post-communist Europe and the Western Balkans have become “fertile ground” for experimenting with theories of democratization and identity politics. Multi-ethnicity is held “as the recipe for healing the wounds of war and to help overcome interethnic divisions” (G. Krasniqi Reference Krasniqi2013, 4).

In addition to Kosovo’s official state symbols, other forms of the new state and identity include the NEWBORN monument, conceived to commemorate Kosovo’s 2008 independence. In October 2009, the government of Kosovo hired the Israeli branchFootnote ³ of the international advertising firm, Saatchi and Saatchi, to produce the official branding campaign, “Kosovo: the Young Europeans.” The campaign included a series of billboards, videos, and print ads, designed to transform Kosovo’s image of ethnic violence into its new image as a youthful, multi-ethnic, European democracy. Streets are named for former US president, Bill Clinton, as well as for George Bush, Bob Dole, Tony Blair, Madeline Albright, and other foreign leaders canonized as heroes and friends of Kosovo. Upon driving through the main gateway to the capital city, Pristina, one is greeted by an oversized bronze statue of Clinton, and a few blocks up the road is a women’s clothing store called “Hillary.”

“Bac u Kry” (“Uncle It’s Over”)

Although Kosovo’s newly constructed symbolic repertoire is oriented toward the future, serving the political goals of multi-ethnicity and Euro-Atlantic integration (Ermolin Reference Ermolin2014, 160), neither ethno-nationalism nor the past are absent in Kosovo. Monuments of Albanian folk heroes, like Skanderbeg (15th-century Albanian military commander), Mother Teresa (Catholic missionary of Albanian descent), and the late Ibrahim Rugova, President of the Republic of Kosova “parallel state” during the 1990s, all stand in Pristina’s main square. The overall commemorative strategy used by Kosovo Albanian elites accentuates certain versions of the past, like ancient Illyria (Illyrians are the purported ancestors of Kosovo’s Albanians) and the Ottoman era, and especially the legacy of Albanian armed struggle against the Milošević regime, erasing most periods of Serb rule (Ermolin Reference Ermolin2014, 160). There is a visible absence of socialist and Yugoslav memory, and most partisan monuments have been destroyed, but period architecture and remnants do remain (Schwandner-Sievers Reference Schwandner-Sievers , Todorova and Gille2010, 96). In fact, the NEWBORN monument stands in front of a Yugoslav-era Youth Palace (multipurpose hall and sports complex), built in 1977 to commemorate two partisans from World War II, representing Yugoslav values of “brotherhood and unity” (Schwandner-Sievers Reference Schwandner-Sievers , Todorova and Gille2010, 100–101).

Despite Kosovo’s new identity and brand, imagery and tropes of Albanian military sacrifice and martyrdom dominate the cultural and commemorative landscapes. In Diego de Mendoza’s Reference de Mendoza2009 documentary, Branding Kosovo, journalist Krenar Gashi explains how Kosovo’s first independence “brand” was not at all connected to NEWBORN or to the Young Europeans whatsoever, but to the image of the late Kosovo Liberation Army commander, Adem Jashari, wearing a traditional Albanian plis (skull cap), with the slogan “Bac u Kry” (“Uncle It’s Over”)Footnote ⁴ (de Mendoza Reference de Mendoza2009). Gashi discusses how in the weeks leading up to Kosovo’s independence, “Bac u Kry” first appeared as a banner on the side of the Pristina Grand Hotel, and then morphed into a massive branding campaign as the slogan and image were reproduced on billboards, T-shirts, bumper stickers, coffee mugs, internet memes, and graffiti.

According to Anna di Lellio and Stephanie Schwandner-Sievers (Reference Schwandner-Sievers , Todorova and Gille2006, 513–514), the image of Jashari and the narrative of his death serve as the anchor for the postwar construction of Kosovo Albanian identity and the political foundation for the new state. What they call the “pan-Albanian master-narrative” condenses the war into a single event, the massacre of Jashari and his entire family by Serbian forces in the rural village of Prekaz, Kosovo, in March 1998 (just weeks before the NATO intervention). Immortalized as the “Legendary Commander,” Jashari has come to represent Albanian heroism and military sacrifice in the face of Serbian oppression—the central tropes of the Kosovo independence struggle and new national identity (di Lellio and Schwandner-Sievers Reference Di Lellio and Schwandner-Sievers 2006, 514). Today, representations of the narrative are everywhere in Kosovo. In addition to the independence slogan “Bac u Kry,” one often sees the image of Jashari carrying an automatic weapon and wearing military fatigues. Mounted on the roof of the Youth Palace (hanging above NEWBORN) is an oversized poster of this very sort. The narrative “give[s] meaning to the collective trauma of the more recent war experience,” offering Kosovo Albanians the “shared self-understanding as an oppressed nation looking for political and psychological deliverance” (di Lellio and Schwandner-Sievers Reference Di Lellio and Schwandner-Sievers 2006, 514).

The legacy and the image of Jashari “leav[e] no room for [other] painful stories and experiences of war,” Nita Luci explains. Today, the “marginalization of other experiences is often claimed as a necessity” by political elites “in order to build reconciliatory relations and promote a strategy of ‘forgive and forget’” (Reference Luci2014, 177). Two groups whose experiences of the Kosovo war have been suppressed by the dominance of the Jashari legend include participants in Rugova’s peaceful resistance during the 1990s and the survivors of the Serbian regime’s practice of widespread, systematic rape during the war (DiLellio and Schwandner-Sievers Reference Di Lellio and Schwandner-Sievers 2006, 520–522). These groups must vie for their place in the cultural and political landscape, because, there is “no space for public disagreement” with the Jashari legend, DiLellio and Schwandner-Sievers maintain (2006, 514), and “any public criticism of the legendary commander amounts to blasphemy” (2006, 521). While the pan-Albanian narrative does generate quiet criticism from “sub-narratives and contestations that do not embrace the “mythical aspects of war and resistance” (2006, 514), “all these voices remain strictly private” (2006, 523).

When it became clear that Kosovo’s only viable path to independent statehood would mean adhering to the Ahtisaari Plan, political elites such as Thaçi, Ramush Haradinaj, and Agim Çeku (former KLA turned politicians) began to integrate the pan-Albanian narrative with the framework for the “newborn” Kosovo, reproducing the image of a multi-ethnic, future European state, “free of any ethnic or confessional discrimination” and “where integration into the Western-oriented cultural and political discourse is willingly accepted” (Ermolin Reference Ermolin2014, 170). Creating a stable trajectory from Jashari’s death in 1998 to the declaration of independence in 2008—when the new Kosovo was born—the integration of these narratives “build[s] a particular linear rendition of the national experience through the interplay between history and memory” (V. Krasniqi Reference Krasniqi2016) and provides a plot structure for Kosovo Albanians’ struggle from political “oppression to freedom” (Di Lellio and Schwandner-Sievers Reference Di Lellio and Schwandner-Sievers 2006, 516). This narrative integration is instrumentalized by ruling elites who derive “their political legitimation from the past,” while “insisting on a new beginning” (Ströhle Reference Ströhle, Šuber and Karamanic2012, 246).

Current President Thaçi and his party, the Democratic Party of Kosovo (PDK), have been especially successful in coordinating the two narratives, deploying what Valur Ingimundarson calls a “double strategy,” which aims at “winning the ‘hearts and minds’ of Kosovo’s Albanians through memory,” while “placating the ‘international community’ by projecting a … future image of itself” (2007, 104). However, departing from Ingimundarson somewhat, the strategy requires more than using the future to appeal outward and the past to appeal inward. It involves the integration of both concepts, repositioning Kosovo’s European future within the legacy of Albanian armed struggle against Serbs (Ingimundarson Reference Ingimundarson2007, 104). Independence, in Thaçi’s words, is the “natural epilogue to our long, painful and historical journey … and our future is certain under the common roof: European Union and NATO” (Government of the Republic of Kosovo 2009, 176).

Beyond elites’ political instrumentalization of the past for the future, the narrative integration extends to ordinary citizens as well. With the difficult past now “over” (as per the slogan, “Bac u Kry”), as Kosovo’s independence neared, “everyone was celebrating under this motto and this sign,” Gashi recounts, but “‘it was … known in advance that everything [representing] one ethnicity (or the other) … would be moved away from the celebration of independence. We knew that because Kosovo was getting independence based on the international plan’” (cited in de Mendoza Reference de Mendoza2009).

The Flag and Anthem

Eight months before declaring independence, on June 13, 2007, the Kosovo Unity Team, a United Nations–backed organization responsible for the status negotiations, announced the competition for the design of Kosovo’s new flag, along with the strict selection criteria and rules for what the designs could and could not include. For example, submissions had to “reflect the aspirations of the people of Kosovo for integration into European and Euro-Atlantic institutions”; they could not “represent or approximate the flag or emblem of any state … or imply any allegiance to any ethnic community of Kosovo” or “utilize the representation of any eagle symbol”; and they could not “solely utilize red and black color schemes, or red, white and blue color schemes.”Footnote ⁵ They also needed to be “rectangular and of the proportions of 2:3” (Heimer Reference Heimer2008).

Kosovo’s new flag, blue with a yellow map of Kosovo underneath five white stars, was created by local designer and former Kosovo Liberation Army fighter, Muhamer Ibrahimi (“Kosovo Flag” n.d.). Drawing from Karen Cerulo, the flag contains a basic, rather than embellished, visual syntax, characterized by a limited range of primary colors, the use of white to “avoid a clash of primary colors,” and simple ornamentation, containing “few superimposed emblems or signs on the field” (1993, 247–248). (Embellished syntax is variable and dynamic, visually containing stark color contrasts and multiple foci.) In the words of Ibrahimi, the blue field “represents the aspirations of the people of Kosov[o] to move ahead towards Euro-Atlantic institutions” (“Prime Minister Thaçi Meets Designer of Kosova Flag” 2008), “the golden yellow [color] … represents Kosovo as a rich and peaceful country” (cited in Heimer Reference Heimer2008), and the stars represent Kosovo’s ethnic communities: Albanian, Serb, Bosniak, Turk, Roma, and Gorani. “There are larger and smaller communities,” Ibrahimi remarks, “but they are all equal in the new state of Kosovo” (cited in Heimer Reference Heimer2008).

Several months later, in June 2008, the national anthem was adopted. The rules forbade any colors or icons symbolizing a specific nationality, ethnicity, or cultural heritage. The rules also stipulated at the length “should not last less than 30 seconds or more than 60 seconds” (“National Anthem of Kosovo” n.d.), though “there is no explanation for why the anthem had to be so brief” (Pavković and Kelen Reference Pavković and Kelen2016, 175). Written by Kosovo composer Mendi Mengjiqi, Europe is a fifty-five-second composition with no official lyrics. “Having no words [is] simpler than coming up with multilingual versions,” political advisor, Muhamet Hamiti explains. “This is the least controversial alternative” (cited in MacDonald Reference MacDonald2008, 6).

Europe is slow-moving and majestic. Composed in the key of G, the chords are uplifting, warm, and conventional. The 4/4 time signature provides a straightforward and clean rhythmic structure—this could be a melodic march or a Christmas carol. Unlike traditional Albanian and Serb folk music, which contain embellished musical syntaxes characterized by “erratic, wandering motion” (Cerulo Reference Cerulo1993, 248), Europe has a basic musical syntax, a “stable and fixed musical structure,” free of “variation or ornamentation” and “offer[ing] the most concise, direct method of fulfilling the rules upon which Western tonal music is based” (1993, 247–248).Footnote ⁶ “Obviously it will be a handicap … to have an anthem without lyrics,” adds Baki Jashari, director of the Kosovo Philharmonic Orchestra. “I really can’t imagine singing an anthem without words” (cited in de Mendoza Reference de Mendoza2009).

Cerulo suggests that flags and anthems are designed with “specific political bonds in mind,” as elites attempt to “structure real social relations by imposing symbols depicting desired relations.” The symbols are “blueprint[s] for that which leaders [think] should be” (1995, 16). For example, as Thaçi remarked during the presentation of the new flag,

By highlighting how the flag was designed by a former KLA soldier, Thaçi positions the meaning of the flag within the framework of Jashari’s and Albanians’ military sacrifice, yet by also introducing it as the flag that will “wave outside the UN offices and all over the world,” he positions it externally, toward Kosovo’s future as a member of international organizations. By integrating the flag into two frameworks for the new state and identity, the flag becomes a literal “blueprint” for Kosovo’s European future, while simultaneously reinforcing the idea that Kosovo Albanians’ past struggle is now “over,” as “Bac u Kry” reiterates.

Although the six stars on Kosovo’s flag are intended to demarcate Kosovo’s six ethnic communities, one alternative interpretation is that the six stars also represent the six countries of the Albanian diaspora. This myth is associated with Thaçi, and while such an interpretation might enable different individuals and groups to assimilate the new flag into existing cultural frameworks, other citizens see through it. In an interview, Albion Basha, an 18-year-old from Pristina, tells journalist Die Morina that he believes the new flag is “purely political”: “I think that the red-and-black flag belongs to all Albanians, while the blue one belongs only to Thaçi. The flag in our hearts is the [Albanian] one” (cited in Morina Reference Morina2017). Political activist Rron Gjinovci adds, “The Kosovo flag is a disaster and a product of a non-democratic process of adopting it” (cited in Morina Reference Morina2017).

Given the international community’s restrictions, the consensus among the elites connected to selecting the flag and anthem (many former KLA, including government officials from the Kosovo Ministry of Culture, Youth and Sports, political leaders, as well as designers, musicians, and artists) was that the rules were a small price to pay. What mattered was that Kosovo was declaring independence—that the past was over. In fact, they assumed that the new symbols would be changed later (de Mendoza Reference de Mendoza2009).

Reconceptualizing Social Construction and Crisis

Meaning-making involves more than rational negotiation between elites’ messages and citizens’ responses from below. In addition to the representational aspects of construction—how meanings are stabilized and reiterated across time and space, analysis of the forms’ performative and demonstrative features illustrates how meanings are changed and contexts shaped. For meanings to be made, all three mechanisms work together (Wagner-Pacifici Reference Wagner-Pacifici , Tota and Hagen2017, 21).

Performatives are the political semiotic forms that set meanings in motion and make them happen, changing the realities they describe. Wagner-Pacifici (Reference Wagner-Pacifici , Tota and Hagen2017, 20), engaging the work of J. L. Austin, explains how performatives are world-changing utterances, including speech acts like declarations, pronouncements, and oaths. Kosovo’s unilateral declaration of independence is one type of performative: in declaring the state independent, the utterance has the illocutionary force of bringing about Kosovo’s independence. Similarly, as the monument spells the word “NEWBORN,” it makes Kosovo newborn. As “Bac u Kry” asserts, “Uncle It’s Over,” it also achieves a new reality: marking the end of the Kosovo Albanian independence struggle and bringing the new state and identity to life.

Flags and anthems are speech acts, but their language is visual and musical (especially anthems without lyrics). When flags are displayed and waved, and when anthems are played, they perform their meanings. In representing constructs like the state and national identity, they make the constructs happen, changing the social realities they represent. “Of the three features of political semiosis,” Wagner-Pacifici writes, “performatives have the most apparent and direct impact on identity.… It is important to recognize the multiple and latent identities … called into action or into existence, by, among other things, performative speech acts that successfully connect illocutions and perlocutions” (2017, 22).

However, it is not enough for a flag to be seen or for an anthem to be heard—just as it is not enough for political leaders to simply declare Kosovo independent, for the monument to simply spell out the word, or for the slogan to simply state, “it’s over.” The effectiveness of performatives depends entirely on their perlocutionary uptake: the conventions and contexts that determine how the utterances are interpreted, and if they will even be accepted at all (Wagner-Pacifici Reference Wagner-Pacifici , Tota and Hagen2017, 21). Uptake determines whether or not the forms are associated with their meanings, citizens identify with them, and whether or not the feelings they elicit are felt and valued.

With the Kosovo state and its official symbols contested, they lack uptake—their meanings “stuck in culture and history” (Wagner-Pacifici Reference Wagner-Pacifici , Tota and Hagen2015, 26). As Kosovo journalist Artan Muhaxhiri puts it:

Referring to the flag, “I can’t relate to it,” writes artist Bardhi Haliti (Reference Haliti2008) in his blog (Haliti Reference Haliti2008). Albin Kurti, activist and former leader of the political opposition, Lëvizja Vetëvendosje (the Self-Determination Movement), dubs it the “click flag,” “because it was made with a few clicks on a keyboard.” And the stars, he jokes, “are really Velcro stick-ons, just in case one of the minority communities decides to leave” (cited in McKinna Reference McKinna2012, 18). As uptake is governed by context, this is where demonstratives come into play.

Demonstratives contextualize and index meanings, locating them in time and space and orienting actors and their positions subject to them (Wagner-Pacifici Reference Wagner-Pacifici , Tota and Hagen2017, 23). Demonstratives include parts of speech like “yours” and “ours”; “this,” “that,” “these,” and “those”; “here” and “there”; or “us” and “them,” as well as symbolic indicators, like gestures, visual syntaxes, and musical arrangements. For example, when then–prime minister Thaçi remarked to a group of students, while laying the foundation stone at the building of a new elementary school in April 2008, “our country’s future is beginning,” the students understood that by “our country,” Thaçi meant Kosovo, and it was their future he was talking about (Government of the Republic of Kosovo 2009, 106). The image of Jashari wearing a traditional Albanian plis and people’s understanding of the phrase “it’s over,” indicate the Albanian independence struggle against Serbs (not, for example, the international supervision).

Flags and anthems are paradoxical: on one hand, they are considered to be unique expressions of national culture; at the same time, modern, Western flags and anthems are entirely un-unique, often visually and musically indistinguishable from each other—following similar syntactical conventions and containing similar thematic content (Pavković and Kelen Reference Pavković and Kelen2016, 22). Demonstratives enable citizens to determine that the symbols express their state, their national identity, and not another’s. Kosovo’s blue and yellow cartographical flag (a flag with a picture of the state on it) orients citizens, indicating “who” they are by locating “where” they are—as well as where their future lies. Europe’s basic musical syntax also achieves this register.

Wagner-Pacifici explains the how term “demonstrative” means “indicative,” referring to “semiotic indexicality,” but it can also mean “expressive,” signifying “the connection with emotions” (2017, 96). In the context of independence, the cartographical flag and the lyric-less anthem were designed to orient citizens toward positive emotions, like hope for the European future, patriotism, and feelings of sovereignty. The anthem’s musical arrangement should also express this mood. Drawing on Western themes, Europe sounds like a modern, European national anthem. “The feel of the composition is very nineteenth century,” Pavković and Kelen write, like a “new tune calculated to fit in with anthems generally, as if it were one the listener had always already known” (2016, 176).

With the effectiveness of performatives diminished, context-configuring demonstratives are unaligned and disorienting. “I didn’t use modes of Albanian music because … I wasn’t allowed to make music like Albanian or Serbian or any other. It had to be something unique … like … Europe,” the composer muses (cited in de Mendoza Reference de Mendoza2009). The demonstratives “endlessly [rotate],” as “determinations of inside and outside, near and far, and us and them are contested and confused” (Wagner-Pacifici Reference Wagner-Pacifici , Tota and Hagen2017, 123). Self-Determination writes,

Suspended in time and space,“the feelings of being European … disappear automatically as soon as we have the desire to travel to Europe,’” in the words of Muhaxhiri (cited in Ströhle Reference Ströhle, Šuber and Karamanic2012, 238). “I can’t believe that these are the choices for the flag,” Pristina resident Shqipe Abazi tells international reporters, referring to the finalists from the competition. “None of the designs have anything to do with Albanian people. It should be red and black. It’s a big deal—how many times does a country get to choose a flag?” (cited in Wander Reference Wander2008). As for the anthem, Bardhi Haliti (Reference Haliti2008) ruminates, “I still can’t decide if the part about having no lyrics is ridiculous or cool.”

However, the lack of uptake is only partial. Kosovo is not, not a country—it is just barred from joining the EU, UN, and NATO. Citizens have passports, but they just cannot move freely outside of Kosovo’s borders or travel to the EU without visas. They have democratically elected leaders—former US Vice President Joe Biden calls current president Thaçi the “George Washington of Kosovo.” Thaçi is even “hailed in Washington and Brussels as the Gerry Adams of the Balkans,” and his name has been invoked “as a possible Nobel Peace Prize candidate” (Bielfsky 2013). But according to recently revealed NATO files and WikiLeaks documents, Thaçi is also known as the “biggest fish” in Kosovo’s crime syndicates, and his associates (also in the highest positions of power in the Kosovo government) have nicknames such as “butchers,” “Balkan mafia boss[es],” and “organ harvesters” (Xhymshiti Reference Xhymshiti2016).Footnote ⁷

With a self-defeating state and national identity, the results of the 2014 survey are not surprising. As Serbia continues to deny Kosovo’s statehood, despite the slogan “Uncle It’s Over,” the question emerges as to whether or not the Kosovo Albanian independence struggle is really “over.” Despite its typography, is NEWBORN really “stillborn?” “This project called Kosovo is not clear for Kosova[n]s themselves that live in Kosovo,” claims Ilir Bajri, Kosovo musician and director of the Pristina Jazz Festival. “We still don’t clearly know what Kosovo is and where it’s going” (cited in Zhegrova Reference Zhegrova2013).

“Suddenly Everyone Started to Love Our Anthem, Our Flag”

Despite the assumption that the new symbols would be changed later (de Mendoza Reference de Mendoza2009), it was not the forms that changed—only their meanings. In light of Kosovo’s recognition by multiple international sporting associations and the successes of Majlinda Kelmendi, the flag and anthem have been “normalized”—even widely accepted, blogger Mehdi Sejdiu (Reference Sejdiu2017) suggests: “February 17, 2017, marked nine years since Kosovo declared independence,” he writes. “This year, a larger presence of Kosovo flags was witnessed than on previous celebrations of Independence Day.” “Suddenly everyone started to love our anthem, our flag,” observes the owner of Pristina’s MIQT pub, Dardan Ibrahimi Daki (cited in Robinson and Pollozhani Reference Robinson and Pollozhani2016). Returning to the question of how, this change is produced by the same political semiotic mechanisms that form, deform, and, now, transform the symbols’ meanings. Here, performatives are re-performed with uptake and demonstratives are re-aligned.

The International Judo Federation (IJF) was one of the first international sports associations to recognize Kosovo, admitting the country in 2012 (Pickering Reference Pickering2016). In 2014, however, when Kelmendi went to the Judo World Championships in Chelyabinsk, Russia, to defend her title, she was informed she would not be allowed to compete under Kosovo’s symbols, and instead would have to compete under the flag of the IJF and the Olympic anthem. She was also banned from displaying the name of her country on the back of her gi (judo uniform), as per the sport’s convention, and was forced to wear the letters of the IJF instead (Sinha Reference Sinha2015). “I went there to represent my country and I was not allowed” (Kelmendi cited in Montague Reference Montague2015).

Vladimir Putin, who claims to be a black belt in judo, is an honorary member of the IJF (and an author of a book on the sport), was also present on the last day of the competition. “It ma[de] me angry inside, not scared,” Kelmendi reflects (cited in Montague Reference Montague2015). Retaining her title after the final match, she then found herself on the podium with a gold medal around her neck, feeling “nameless” and “helpless” (Sinha Reference Sinha2015). Kelmendi prayed silently, “May I never have to go through this humiliation again” (cited in Sinha Reference Sinha2015).

In April 2016, a few months prior to the 2016 Summer Olympics, Kelmendi was to return to Russia to compete in the European Judo Championship in Kazan. Again, she was told she had to compete under the flag of the IJF—but this time, the Kosovo team decided to boycott. Several days later, IJF president Marius Vizer intervened. After “delicate negotiations,” Vizer later reported that the Kosovo team would indeed compete under its own national symbols (Knezevic Reference Knezevic2016). After Kelmendi won, the Kosovo flag flew high and Europe played during the medal ceremony, with Russian soldiers standing stoically in salute (“European Title for Kosovo’s Majlinda Kelmendi in Kazan” 2016).

As “performatives have the most apparent and direct impact on identity” (Wagner-Pacifici Reference Wagner-Pacifici , Tota and Hagen2017, 22), in this context, they were performed with uptake, calling multiple identities into existence. In displaying the symbols, Russia was recognizing and honoring Kosovo and Kelmendi, as competing under Kosovo’s symbols legitimates the identity and sovereignty of the state, and it also forms her individual identity as an athlete and citizen. The Russian salute, an embodied speech act, was also performative, changing the reality it describes. Here, the performatives not only served to mobilize the meanings of the constructs they represent, but they also provided the uptake. Back home in Kosovo, citizens watched the match on TV, and Sejdiu (Reference Sejdiu2017) discusses how the flag “waved with fervor, confirming Kosovo’s independence and statehood,” “familiariz[ing] the population with the notion of Kosovo as a state, [and] making the flag a part of their identity as a state.”

As a bodily gesture, the salute was also demonstrative, configuring the context by guiding actors and spectators toward the exchange. “Demonstratives engage gear-shifting mechanisms,” Wagner-Pacifici explains, and whereas “turning one’s back on someone,” for example, “is an explicit mode of abnegation, creating a new ‘us and them’” (2017, 24); the salute reoriented Russia toward Kosovo, recreating the “us and them.” Saluting is a mode of recognition and honor, as well as obedience and yield, and the gesture served to affirm each of these countries and their distinct identities.

Demonstratives are also an important “mode of forging meaningful identities and relations” (Wagner-Pacifici Reference Wagner-Pacifici , Tota and Hagen2017, 25), and other forms are at work in shifting the symbols’ meanings, such as the concept of competing under national symbols in a sporting context, and the ability for Kelmendi to now compete with Kosovo on her back. Kelmendi describes how, whenever she traveled for competitions, people would ask about her training gear and uniform, “‘IJF? What is that? Is that a country? Why do you wear that on your back?’” (cited in Sinha Reference Sinha2015). But in Kazan, with Kosovo on her back (abbreviated “KOS”) and the state flag on the arm of her gi, her uniform and her body became the locus of new meaning.

Then, at the 2016 Summer Olympics, Kelmendi waved Kosovo’s flag during the opening ceremony, going on to win her country’s first Olympic gold medal. “I felt so happy there at the podium when I saw my flag and when I heard my anthem’” (cited in “Kosovo Wins First Ever Olympic Gold Medal” 2016). Back home in Kosovo, Sanije Balaj, a 51-year-old resident of Pristina, says he began to cry when he heard the national anthem played at the medal ceremony (“Kosovo Wins First Ever Olympic Gold Medal” 2016). Balaj’s tears were not tears of sadness, of course, and therefore, seeing the flag or hearing the anthem not only “triggers” emotional responses, but they must also be indexed and registered. Emotions, like demonstratives and contexts, are always shifting. Here, Kelmendi and Balaj are “caught up in eventful moments, reorienting in … [and] toward … these moments and reconfiguring their identities and relations in the process” (Wagner-Pacifici Reference Wagner-Pacifici , Tota and Hagen2017, 97).

Although she helped redirect their political semiotic mechanisms, Kelmendi’s individual experience did not cause—but is part of—the transformation. To what extent does the legend of Jashari also impact this transformation and shape its context, given the martial character of the sport? In any transformation, any process of meaning-making, the forms inhabited are innumerable. Meanings are mobile—“relentlessly so.” It is “the handoffs from one form to the next” that keep them alive (Wagner-Pacifici Reference Wagner-Pacifici , Tota and Hagen2017, 11). In this context, the political semiotic features of the flag and anthem are redirected, and when coupled with the work of other forms, like the Russian salute or the appearance of Kosovo on Kelmendi’s back, amidst the crisis, this is how its national symbols become meaningful. “I feel so good,” Kelmendi asserts after winning the Olympic gold, “maybe for one or two days, I can make people from Kosovo laugh, make them happy, and maybe forget that we have so many problems here” (cited in Knezevic Reference Knezevic2016).