Abstract This thesis examines Serbia’s changing approach to dealing with the Kosovo question since 2012. The claim of Serbia that Kosovo is an indivisible part of its territory has been anchored in the institutional framework of the country ever since the Kosovo war (1998-1999). Serbia’s attachment to Kosovo is not only an institutional matter, but is also woven into the cultural fabric of the Serbian political collective. It resonates with the Kosovo myth, the main element of which is the physical and symbolic claim to Kosovo. Since Kosovo declared its independence in 2008, countering Serbia’s claim to Kosovo, the Serbian Government has struggled to accommodate this state of affairs with its EU integration process guided by the incentive of the Brussels dialogue for normalizing relations between the two entities. I study the Brussels dialogue between Serbia and Kosovo as a dynamic process of contestation of meaning. It is conceptualized as a contact zone that both enables and constrains the re-articulations of the constitutive Other, either as an enemy (through antagonism) or as an adversary (through agonism). The thesis particularly inquires how the Serbian Government led by the Serbian Progressive Party (SNS) since 2012 has re-articulated Kosovo within the Brussels dialogue. It locates two central moments in this process: adopting the Brussels agreement in 2013, and re-introducing the idea of partitioning Kosovo along ethnic lines as a solution to the Kosovo-Serbia dispute in 2018, both of which are understood as myths. The theoretical and methodological contribution of the thesis lies in the re-conceptualization of “myth”. While existing studies of myth in the context of Kosovo-Serbia relations have been focusing on the Kosovo myth, this thesis considers the Kosovo myth as a sedimented discourse, guided by a discourse theoretical lens. This discourse has turned into a social imaginary in Serbia, a horizon of meaning that defines and constrains what is said, felt, and otherwise practiced concerning Kosovo. The social imaginary structures the “Kosovo is Serbia” discourse based on Serbia’s physical and symbolic claim to Kosovo, which is deeply rooted in the political and cultural life in Serbia. In 2018, it was re-articulated into the idea of partition for Serbia to retain its claim to Kosovo. Making a claim to only a portion of the territory, Northern Kosovo, the partition leaves outside of contestation the “mythologically” laden central and Southern Kosovo where the sites that embody the Kosovo myth, the Serbian medieval monasteries, are located. A deconstructive reading of the Kosovo myth developed in this thesis reveals that the main discursive element that connects the Kosovo myth, the Kosovo social imaginary, and the idea of partition is territoriality.
