Layers of Memory

Ulica Čekaluša

“During the kingdom of Yugoslavia, and later the socialist Yugoslavia, the Čekaluša Street was called Nemanjina Street, after the founder of the Nemanjić dynasty, Stephan Nemanja. Interestingly enough, numerous streets in the old city center, and the most important roads of Sarajevo, were named after historic figures from the neighboring state of Serbia. Thus, the original street names were changed to the names of Serbian kings, saints, hajduks (thieves), generals, uprisers, assassins etc., names of individuals who traditionally were the enemies of Bosnia and its independence. To a lesser degree, this was also the case with streets named after historic figures from neighboring Croatia. After the reestablishment of Bosnia and Herzegovina’s independence in 1992, the original street names are in use again. Also, some streets were named after Bosnian bans and kings from the glorious period of the medieval Bosnian State, including prominent Bosniacs from the recent period,” (Dizdar).

Symbolic changes, such as the case with street names, reveal “layers of memories across generations,” (Gupta, Ferguson). An avenue itself is essentially unchanging over time. People may come and go, and the surroundings may be altered with the seasons, but the street does not physically move and is relatively unaffected. Given a certain name, though, a street adopts meanings and subjectivities. Through the process of naming, “new narratives of national history and identity are inscribed onto the urban landscape,” (Light). The new political outlines have the ability to seriously affect how the environment is perceived and thus how identity is constructed. But, as ideologies are not everlasting, neither are street names. “Renaming streets became standard practice for each new regime in the twentieth century,” (Donia), and these sequences can be traced by considering names at specific times. Such a transformation is evident for one Marsala Tita Street.

The memories of previous designations can carry on even after a name has changed. This is noticeable in the way older generations may refer to a street by its title during the interwar period, while the middle-aged groups tend to recall the Communist name, and younger contemporaries will almost assuredly be familiar with the name assigned after 1991. With the dissolution of the former Yugoslavia came the removal of Communist labels, such as Roze Luksemburg Street, Lenjinova Street, and Titogradradska. Consequently, identity underwent an “overall shift from the promotion of a supranational sense of Yugoslav identity to the more local nationalisms of the republics,” (Volčič).