The Symbol of Mitrovica’s Divisions

Amidst posters celebrating Donald Trump's presidential triumph ('The Serbs stood by him all along!' one boasted), a two-metre-high concrete wall of innumerable shades of grey was constructed almost overnight. It ran almost the entire width of Kralja Petra (King Peter's) street—itself pedestrianized, which for some constituted another form of barricade - where students cram into the string of bars and cafés, beneath eight-storey high-rises. Its concave arc resembled an inverted riot shield. Its towering height - apparently unintended, but they had more cement than expected - foreclosed perspectives of either side towards the other. The lie of the land made it even more imposing when viewed from the south. The gauche wall would funnel pedestrians through two narrow openings, subjecting them to scrutiny that would quickly curtail their inevitable curiosity. It was a flagrant violation of the spirit of normalization - that empty signifier, capable of wrapping itself around each and every positive instance of interaction - the Bridge's revitalisation was intended to promote. Only a lack of Trumpian bravado prevented the Serbs from asking those south of the Ibar to fund its construction.

It was immediately denounced as Mitrovica's "Berlin Wall"; a supposed anachronism in the post-Cold War age. The Serbs proclaimed that it was not in fact a wall but an "open air amphitheatre"; a new entry in the pantheon of euphemisms for physical barriers between peoples. Whether the wall was required to support the amphitheatre, or vice-versa, we will likely never know. Those who described it as a wall were accused of being obsessed with narratives of division; whilst those who saw it as an amphitheatre were eager to build connections between people -though it wasn't clear what...