For some time already, I have been thinking about the stimulating image of a world of civility that I found in a novel written in the middle of the twentieth century by the Yugoslav writer Ivo Andric entitled The Bridge on the Drina. The bridge as envisioned by a 14th-century builder is not just a river overpass between Bosnia and Serbia, as it suddenly doubles in width in the middle to allow for something more than just a crossing of the river on foot or on horse. It is not so much the bridge itself that interests me but this additional physical space in the middle of it, this square on the bridge called the kapia. The bridge’s social, cultural and political power lies in this neutral extra space, with its terraces and “sofas” on either side that can accommodate conversations and get-togethers — or the savoring of Turkish coffee served from a brass coffeemaker — by those who over the centuries used the bridge most: Muslim Bosnians and Turks, Orthodox Christian Serbs, and later on also Catholic Croats and Jews.
The kapia, this square on the bridge, was a place where those who would otherwise not meet could look at each other, sit together, and get to know each other. Not a market place, not a temple, not a court, not a school, the kapia was a place that people did not have to stop at, or come to, but they did. With its “sofas” on both sides, a stand with a brass coffeemaker, and a constant flow of people speaking different languages and worshiping different gods, the kapia was a space that people made really good use of. This neutral site, in the middle of the bridge, made it possible for people to get to feel at home with each other, to look through each other’s lenses, and to plant the seeds of trust. If we could lift the image of the kapia from the novel and look at it as our new modern agora, this richly textured space, inhabited by diverse voices and faces—what would be, if any, its new features and principles?
The very imagery of a bridge and the effort to “bridge” is frequently used in discussions on social capital, networking, and the need to bring people together in an increasingly divided world. But it is really kapia that makes a difference. Kapia, a place on a bridge, is a threshold, a turning point, a place of challenge and transformation. Kapia is about horizons, not borders, and in times of crisis it opens new prospects, new openings to the future. Kapia is a lookout, and I do not mean an outpost or a guard, but a place from which one can see much farther. Such lookouts used to be the harbor cities of Gdansk, Odessa, Lubeck, or Cape Town, full of different flavors and voices. This is where foreign sailors came, with their different languages, foods, costumes, and customs. A kapia, then, though a manmade construction, may indeed be called a “natural” site for dialogue. The kapia is not a ready-made possibility but rather something people have to work on, to envision, and then to build. The kapia is a “space of appearances” that makes performativity possible. New York is such a kapia.
Huh!?.. You don’t know what you are talking about at all. Perhaps in ordinary times kapias served as “balconies” for the passersby to enjoy the view on these bridges (which has nothing to do with the multiculturalism bullshit you are reading into them). But actually, this was not the primary function, the “raison d’être” of such architectural devices. At times of “trouble”, kapias served to the Ottoman military as “check-points” to control the traffic on the bridge. Or, once fortified, they served as military stations/defense outposts to control both sides of the bridge and the traffic on the river. They have nothing to do with “cultural pluralism”, they were simply built as military defense platforms.
You must be clinically naive, or you don’t care what you are crapping at all as long as some naive people like the guy who runs this site buys it as “discourse of multiculturalism”. Did you really think the “culturally diverse people” living on opposite sides of the river built these bridges just to say “hi!” to each other? “The bridge as envisioned by a 14th-century builder”???.. That “visionary builder” was no one other than Mimar Sinan, the legendary chief architect of Ottoman Empire, who was a yenicheri (born as non-moslem, and raised in Ottoman army from early age) from Balkans. Architect Sinan built the bridge under the orders of “Sokollu Mehmet Pasha”, the grand vezir of his time. Thus, the real name of the bridge, which you strictly avoid mentioning for some reason, is “Sokollu Mehmed Pasha Bridge” (Most Mehmed-paše Sokolovića). Check your history, get your facts straight before writing crap.
I can’t believe such crap passes as some kind of “social theory”. But, then, it must have been “deliberately considered” as social theory, I assume. How foolish, how said, how low…
You probably won’t publish my comment, since it doesn’t comply with your norms of “professionalism and civility” –which will be nicely paradoxical in the sense that, you are publishing plain false information to fulfill the space of “public discussion and deliberation”, and you will be censoring its most relevant criticism for the sake of “professionalism and civility”.
Enjoy…
Althue Serre, I am tempted to take down your reply because of the personal tone of your attack on Matynia and your crude and disrespectful language. But actually I, as the host of Deliberately Considered, encourage robust debate, even what DC contributor Gary Alan Fine calls, “savory political speech.” So I wouldn’t take the reply down as a matter of principle and didn’t.
Nonetheless, I believe you are misreading Matynia’s post. I don’t know if this is intentional or not. There is a difference between art and history, and thinking through metaphors is a wonderful human capacity. As Matynia puts it, it is a way to “search for hope.”
The week’s theme at DC has been on art and politics. Matynia’s was a reflection on the meaning of Kapias, informed by the reading of a novel. It points to the capacity and achievement of understanding, despite differences. This is something that bridges, with and without Kapias, do. They bring people from two sides together.
Having read Andric’s “Bridge” (who won the Nobel Prize primarily because of this novel), Matynia knows very well that the bridge was built by the Grand Vizier, that it was a check point, a place where atrocities were in fact committed. The point of the post, it seems to me, is that, designed as a check point as it was, the bridge nonetheless became a point of contact. That is the hope.
When reading this I thought of Union Square. There are many places to sit and many people congregate there. Yet, how many strangers talk to each other? It seems clear to me that we need much more than kapias if want to encourage dialogue between strangers. I wish I knew what that was.