Remitting, Restoring and Building Contemporary Albania 3030840905, 9783030840907

Citation preview

Remitting, Restoring and Building Contemporary Albania

Edited by Nataša Gregorič Bon · Smoki Musaraj

Remitting, Restoring and Building Contemporary Albania

Nataša Gregorič Bon • Smoki Musaraj Editors

Remitting, Restoring and Building Contemporary Albania

Editors Nataša Gregorič Bon Institute of Anthropological and Spatial Studies Research Centre of the Slovenian Academy of Sciences and Arts Ljubljana, Slovenia

Smoki Musaraj Department of Sociology and Anthropology Ohio University Athens, OH, USA

ISBN 978-3-030-84090-7    ISBN 978-3-030-84091-4 (eBook) https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-84091-4 © The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s), under exclusive licence to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2021 This work is subject to copyright. All rights are solely and exclusively licensed by the Publisher, whether the whole or part of the material is concerned, specifically the rights of translation, reprinting, reuse of illustrations, recitation, broadcasting, reproduction on microfilms or in any other physical way, and transmission or information storage and retrieval, electronic adaptation, computer software, or by similar or dissimilar methodology now known or hereafter developed. The use of general descriptive names, registered names, trademarks, service marks, etc. in this publication does not imply, even in the absence of a specific statement, that such names are exempt from the relevant protective laws and regulations and therefore free for general use. The publisher, the authors and the editors are safe to assume that the advice and information in this book are believed to be true and accurate at the date of publication. Neither the ­publisher nor the authors or the editors give a warranty, expressed or implied, with respect to the material contained herein or for any errors or omissions that may have been made. The publisher remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and ­institutional affiliations. This Palgrave Macmillan imprint is published by the registered company Springer Nature Switzerland AG. The registered company address is: Gewerbestrasse 11, 6330 Cham, Switzerland

Acknowledgments

This volume was conceived at and inspired by the international symposium, entitled “Practices, Materiality, Places and Temporality: New Approaches in Albanian Studies”, held at the National Historical Museum in Tirana in October 2018, and organized by the Department of History of the University of Tirana; the Institute of Cultural Anthropology and Art Studies (IAKSA, Tirana); the Institute of Mediterranean, European and Comparative Ethnology (IDEMEC, Aix-en-Provence); and the Centre for Turkish, Ottoman, Balkans, and Central-Asia (CETOBAC, Paris). We are very thankful in particular to the members of the organizing committee, Nebi Bardhoshi, Nathalie Clayer, Gilles de Rapper, Gentiana Kera, Dorian Koçi, Olsi Lelaj, and Enriketa Pandelejmoni-Papa for convening this meeting and for bringing together an interdisciplinary group of Albanian Studies scholars based in Albania, Europe, North America, and the growing scientific diaspora. A number of the authors that are part of this volume, including ourselves, participated in the symposium. The conversations that took place there sparked our interest in putting together an edited volume that would highlight new research on Albanian history, culture, public debate, and art. As we began to plan this volume, we also realized that we could not do justice to all the different strands of research represented in the symposium, nor could we cover all the different Albanian communities, within and outside Albania. We made the decision to focus on communities living within the territory of the nation-state of Albania, including perspectives from anthropology, history, geography, and sociology. As the readers will notice, the specific historical periods of Albania’s modern history—especially the communist and postcommunist v

vi 

Acknowledgments

history—are a running thread through these chapters. In this sense, we hope that the volume captures local discussions and questions about how to approach these histories thirty years after the collapse of the communist regime in 1991. We are thankful to a number of people and institutions that supported this project. We thank the three anonymous reviewers who provided very detailed and useful comments on our book proposal. Additionally, we thank the former editor at Palgrave, Mary Al-Sayed, for her interest in and enthusiasm for our project and for guiding us through the first steps of publication. At Palgrave, Elizabeth Graber and Anisha Rajavikraman saw to the successful completion of this project. We also thank Marie-Luise Kartunen for her meticulous copyediting and patience and Tina Krašovic for her enormous help in the final steps of submitting this volume. The volume was made possible through the financial support of the Slovenian Research Agency [J6-1803, P6-0079]. The editing process of this volume took place during the difficult year of the Covid-19 global pandemic and entailed coordination with authors located in various countries and continents. We thank our authors for their patience and perseverance throughout this process. Last but not least, we thank our respective families in Slovenia and the USA, especially our children, Luka, Vid, and Simone, who were often at the background of our zoom meetings in multiple periods of lockdowns and quarantines.

Contents

1 Introduction: Remitting, Restoring, and Building Contemporary Albania  1 Smoki Musaraj and Nataša Gregoric ̌ Bon 2 In the Public Interest: Structures of Feeling in Albanian Literary Production 25 Matthew Rosen 3 Photography and Régime d’historicité: Past, Present, and Future in Two Photographic Albums on Communist Albania 51 Gilles de Rapper 4 Within the Same Frame: Past, Present, and Difference in Contemporary Albanian Art 75 Sofia Kalo 5 Temporalities of Concrete in the Communist and Postcommunist City105 Smoki Musaraj 6 Kuçedra’s Waterways: Restoring Authority and Building Vitality131 Nataša Gregorič Bon vii

viii 

Contents

7 “Can Love Be Transferred”? Tracing Albania’s History of Migration and the Meaning of Remittances163 Julie Vullnetari 8 Heterotopias of Displacement: The Production of Space in Postsocialist Albania187 Enkelejda Sula-Raxhimi 9 “Mystical and Mythical Thinking”: Myth-­Making as a Compensatory Mechanism211 Cecilie Endresen 10 The Age of Understanding the Past239 Julian Bejko Index263

Notes on Contributors

Julian  Bejko  is a professor in the Department of Sociology, Faculty of Social Sciences at the University of Tirana, Albania. He is the author of The Society of Cinema, I (2012), The Society of Cinema, II (2013), and Norbert Elias: Sociology of Civilizations (2014). His research interests include civilizing processes and audiovisual representations of the Albanian communist regime. Cecilie Endresen  is Associate Professor in the Study of Religion at the Department of Culture Studies and Oriental Languages, University of Oslo, Norway. She is the author of Is the Albanian’s Religion Really “Albanianism”? Religion and Nation According to Muslim and Christian Leaders in Albania (2012) and her research interest is religious complexity. Nataša  Gregorič  Bon is a Research Associate at the Institute of Anthropological and Spatial Studies at the Research Centre of the Slovenian Academy of Sciences and Arts. Her long-standing research in central and southern Albania pertains to spatial anthropology, movements and migrations, border dynamics, notions of the future, and the meanings of water, environment, and vitality. Her publications include Spaces of Discordance (2008; also translated in Albanian Hapësira Mospërputjesh (2015)) and Moving Places: Relations, Return and Belonging (2016). Sofia Kalo  received her PhD (2016) in Sociocultural Anthropology from the University of Massachusetts Amherst with a dissertation on Albania’s fine art world after the end of communism in 1991. Her ongoing interests are visual culture, identity in and around borders, and social memory with ix

x 

Notes on Contributors

a focus on postcommunist societies. She has published in various journals, including Visual Anthropology Review and Focaal. Smoki  Musaraj is Associate Professor of Anthropology at Ohio University, USA.  Her research interests include theories of money and value, informal and speculative economies, migration and remittances, corruption and the rule of law, and construction and urban development in postcommunist Albania. She is the author of Tales from Albarado: Ponzi Logics of Accumulation in Postsocialist Albania (2020) and co-editor (with Bill Maurer and Ivan Small) of Money at the Margins: Global Perspectives on Technology, Inclusion, and Design (2018). Gilles de Rapper  is a senior researcher at the French National Centre for Scientific Research (CNRS) and Director of the Modern and Contemporary Studies Department at the French School at Athens, Greece. His research interests include communist and postcommunist Albania and the anthropology of photography. He is the editor of the special issue of Ethnologie Française dedicated to the renewal of anthropological research on Albania (2017) and co-author (with Anouck Durand) of Ylli, les couleurs de la dictature (2012). Matthew Rosen  is Assistant Professor of Anthropology at Ohio University. A cultural anthropologist focusing on media, reading, and public culture, Rosen has field research experience on these topics in urban India and Albania. His earlier publications include articles in the Anthropological Journal of European Cultures, Anthropology and Humanism, Ethnography, and Anthropological Quarterly. Enkelejda  Sula-Raxhimi is an assistant professor at the School of Conflict Studies, Saint Paul University. Sula-Raxhimi is an anthropologist specializing in political anthropology. Her research interests focus on power and abuse of power, gender and conflict, ethnic violence and Roma minorities, and mobility and forced displacement due to conflict and climate change. She has conducted field research in France, Kosovo, Albania, and Haiti. She has published in various journals, including Nationalities Papers, Anthropologica, and Altérité. Julie  Vullnetari  is Lecturer in Human Geography at the University of Southampton. Over the past twenty years, she has researched migration and development in Albania, including the links between internal and international migration, the gendering of remittances, and the impact of

  Notes on Contributors 

xi

migration on older people left behind. Her broader research interests include everyday life in socialist societies, feminist geopolitics, and critical border studies. She is the author of Albania on the Move: Links Between Internal and International Migration (2012) and co-author (with Russell King) of Remittances, Gender and Development: Albania’s Society and Economy in Transition (2011).

List of Figures

Fig. 3.1 Fig. 3.2 Fig. 3.3 Fig. 4.1 Fig. 4.2 Fig. 4.3 Fig. 4.4 Fig. 4.5 Fig. 4.6 Fig. 4.7 Fig. 4.8 Fig. 4.9 Fig. 5.1 Fig. 5.2 Fig. 5.3

Petri Kumi Album Cover 56 Safet and Gjylzade Dokle photo album 58 Ylli Magazine, 1962 59 Artan Shabani. Via Egnatia (part of Homo Balkanicus series). 2003 (oil on canvas) 80 Endri Dani. Still from Souvenir of My Homeland. 2012 (video/ installation)81 Gentian Shkurti. Still from Go West. 2001 (video animation) 86 Anila Rubiku. Bunker Mentality/Landscape Legacy. 2012 (installation)89 Enkelejd Zonja. ISS. 2010 (oil on canvas) 91 Enkelejd Zonja. A Fairytale from 1997. 2009 (oil on canvas) 92 Ardian Isufi. Unknown Partisan. 2010 (oil on canvas) 94 Enkelejd Zonja. Në Venat e Tua (In Your Veins). 2010 (oil on canvas)97 Ledia Kostandini. Drejt Evropës (Toward Europe). 2011 (oil on canvas) 99 Inauguration of the playground at the Lake Park. Tirana, Albania, June 1, 2016. Photo by author 106 “Against concretization (Kundër betonizimit)” banner at the protest against the playground at the Lake Park, June 1, 2016. Tirana, Albania. Photo by author 108 Prefabricated apartment buildings. Tirana, Albania. July 2019. Photo by author 114

xiii

xiv 

List of Figures

Fig. 5.4

Fig. 5.5 Fig. 5.6 Fig. 5.7 Fig. 6.1 Fig. 6.2 Fig. 6.3 Fig. 6.4 Fig. 6.5

Colorful houses along the Lana River. Tabakëve Mosque, Tirana, Albania. Photo by Albinfo, June 2005. https:// commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Tirana_-­_Colourful_ houses_at_Lana.jpg117 The intensification of the city. Tirana, Albania, June 2017. Photo by Matthew Rosen 121 Saranda’s stairs, stifled by unregulated construction. Saranda, Albania 2015. Photo by author  124 The TID Tower/Plaza Hotel (left) and the central square at sunset. Tirana, Albania. Photo by author 125 Vjosa River, 2018. Photo by author 147 Biologist collecting water samples at the Vjosa River, 2016. Photo by author 149 Protest of local people against the construction of HPP, organized in Tirana, 2015. Photo by Andrew Burr©EcoAlbania 150 Kutë village and the land which will be flooded by a technical lake should the HPP be built, 2016. Photo by author 151 Vjosa and its wide gravel banks, 2016. Photo by author 153

CHAPTER 1

Introduction: Remitting, Restoring, and Building Contemporary Albania Smoki Musaraj and Nataša Gregorič Bon

The year 2021, the year of this volume’s publication, is significant for history in many ways, both at the global scale—coming to terms with a pandemic—and at the local. In Albania, these challenging and uncertain times are accompanied by another significant milestone. This year marks the thirtieth anniversary of the fall of the communist regime (1945–1991), described in both popular and academic accounts as one of the harshest and most draconian regimes in the world (de Waal 2005; Schrapel et al. 2016; Vickers 1999), with legacy to ambivalent feelings and memories that continue to divide contemporary Albanian society and politics in many ways. As described in some of the chapters of this volume, the communist regime is remembered in both traumatic and nostalgic ways, relating to past atrocities and more secure times, respectively. In contrast to

S. Musaraj (*) Ohio University, Athens, OH, USA e-mail: [email protected] N. Gregorič Bon Research Centre of the Slovenian Academy of Sciences and Arts, Ljubljana, Slovenia e-mail: [email protected] © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2021 N. Gregorič Bon, S. Musaraj (eds.), Remitting, Restoring and Building Contemporary Albania, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-84091-4_1

1

2 

S. MUSARAJ AND N. GREGORIČ BON

past times when the communist present had a future (cf. Berdahl 2009, 2010; Strathern 2019), contemporary society is struggling with all kinds of unknowns and uncertainties. Over the last three decades the country has faced numerous ruptures— the fall of the communist regime; concomitant social, political, and economic crises; massive migrations; the fall of the pyramid investment schemes; and near-outbreak of civil war in 1997. What are the presentisms that are lived and experienced in such times? Against this backdrop of continuous upheaval, this volume also points to underlying continuities that have endured, persisting across the centuries. As some of the chapters describe, on the one hand, people often perceive their environment and everyday life as laden with uncertainties and constant changes; on the other, many sense and narrate that despite the seeming “modernization” of the surrounding physical spaces, cultural mindsets and mentalities are continuously tugged “behind” and “backward” (see Bejko; Gregorič Bon; Kalo this volume; Gregorič Bon et al. 2018). What is it like to live in an environment where the sediments, sentiments, and values of the past continue to (re)appear, to be remitted and (re)stored again? Remitting, Restoring, and Building Contemporary Albania delves into the daily lives of people who build their presents by restoring and remitting their pasts in order to plan their futures. The volume brings together contributions by researchers in the social sciences and humanities working on questions of temporality, migration, location, materiality, and art in a contemporary Albania—the so-called European periphery (cf. Green 2005)—that has been experiencing ongoing socioeconomic precarity and change for the past thirty years. One of the underlying themes of this volume is the continuous returning to the structural remnants of the past, here called the process of REMITTING. We depart from the phenomenon of financial remittances to the migrants’ country of origin, which, as the scholarly literature on migration points out (Korovilas 1999; Vullnetari 2007; Vullnetari and King 2011a, b), has been an important motor as well as vehicle of the country’s economy and individual wellbeing over the past three decades. Thus, for example, between 2004 and 2005, when the country’s migration stabilized, remittances amounted to about 1.1 million US dollars and constituted around 14% of Albania’s GDP (de Soto et al. 2002). Yet, as described by Vullnetari (2012; this volume) and Gregorič Bon (2017a, b), in addition to the fiscal value, Albanian remittances also entail social, moral, and emotional value. They subsume various objects, such as

1  INTRODUCTION: REMITTING, RESTORING, AND BUILDING… 3

clothing, food, and other materials, as well as ideas, emotions, relations, space and temporality, which are important generators of social change as well as constituting links between migrants and their stay-at-home families. Since they often travel and circulate in both directions, from the country of destination to the homeland and back, they have a capacity to transgress geographical distances, polity borders, and social boundaries, restore existing relationships, and create material wealth in the migrant’s home-country. Remittances stand for the material and immaterial presences of absent migrants and their “migrant worlds” (cf. Basu and Coleman 2008), which have engendered important historical, political, economic, and social shifts in ideas and social realities throughout history. Thus, as the chapter by Matthew Rosen (this volume) explains, it was no coincidence that the national awakening of the nineteenth century was instigated by Albanian writers living and working abroad. The flow of their ideas and literary works, written in the Albanian language, had the capacity to remit the structural remnants of Albanian society and build the unity of its nation-­state. Thus, the process of remitting, in line with its etymological Latin roots—re (back) and mittere (to send)—has the capacity to restore something that has the potential to bring a better present and future and assure wellbeing (Gregorič Bon in progress). As noted above, Albanian history has featured recurring regime changes that have typically imagined presents as ruptures with pasts (cf. Strathern 2017, 2019). For instance, the communist regime sought to restart the national historical clock by cutting ties to its recent past, rejecting even those communities and initiatives that had been closely linked before and during World War II. Likewise, the first democratic regime of the 1990s vehemently rejected the communist past, looking to the West, capitalism, and Europe as the true home of the postcommunist Albanian nation. We argue that these repeated ruptures have eroded1 the “structural terrains” of Albanian society, where fragments of the pasts—either as relations, 1  Our reference to the process of erosion largely departs from the study by Gregorič Bon, Josipovič, and Kanjir (2018), which argues that the processes of erosion are embodied in social practices, and social practices are spatialized in the landscape. This cross-disciplinary study, which combines an anthropological approach with remote sensing analysis and geographical expertise, explains the interrelationship between geomorphological processes (such as erosion and land cover changes) and social changes (such as migrations). As scholars explain, centuries of migrations on the one hand and persistently high erosion rates on the other—both reaching the highest scales in Europe—have led to a deep interplay between the geophysical characteristics of the landscape and social processes in the Albanian environment.

4 

S. MUSARAJ AND N. GREGORIČ BON

things, ideas, sentiments, or mythology—seem to be remitted and struggle to be RESTORED in contemporary Albania. Against the backdrop of continuously eroded pasts, we also document temporalities of the past that persist in the Albanian cultural imaginary, strive to BUILD the present, and open up to potentialities that may pave the way to a better future. In this light, we examine cultural myths, norms, materialities, and mobilities in the longue durée, noting ruptures and/or shifting framings or articulations. We also point to alternative contemporary restorations of the recent and distant past(s) in relation to the arts—in painting, photography, and literature, as well as among publishers and in civil society. Remitting, Restoring, and Building Contemporary Albania explores the temporal, spatial, and material domains that are dragged out, restored, rebuilt, (re)seized, (re)imagined, sensed, or otherwise materialized and lived. By delving into different contexts—such as migration, displacement, urbanization, environmental issues, language theories, and art—the book explores how these different social contexts provide a space for emerging potentialities that might lead to a more secure future and assure peoples’ wellbeing. To describe these and other issues, we identify three underlying and interrelated themes that we weave through most of the chapters: migrations—emplacements and displacements; myth and temporality; art, literature, and potentiality.

Migrations—Emplacements and Displacements One of the images that often accompanied the beginning of the contemporary large-scale migrations of refugees from Syria, other parts of the Middle East, and the African region, in social media as well as in printed news, was that of a cargo ship anchored in port, overcrowded with people, many of whom were still struggling to get on board due to lack of space. The picture was taken on August 8, 1991, at the port of Durrës, when about 20,000 Albanians, mainly from Tirana and Durrës, boarded a cargo ship carrying sugar from Cuba to Albania, forcing the captain to sail to Italy.2 Italy became a key destination for Albanian migrants at that time 2  Overladen and with broken engines, the ship eventually reached Brindisi, where the city’s deputy chief of police refused to let it dock. It continued to the port of Bari, 55 miles away, a trip of seven hours due to overcrowding. During this time, the Italian authorities had reportedly done little to prepare for the mass arrival. After thirty-six  hours of exhausting

1  INTRODUCTION: REMITTING, RESTORING, AND BUILDING… 5

(second only to Greece), and was seen by many Albanians as a place of wellbeing and a better future. This phenomenal event, which made widespread media headlines and was later debated in EU political circles because of the non-humanitarian response by the Italian government and European politicians more broadly, marked the start of a decade of massive migrations that reached epic proportions (Vullnetari this volume). The 1991 event was, however, only one of many clandestine migrations that have shaped Albanian history, its economy, and politics, and permeated the daily lives of Albanians. As Julie Vullnetari writes in her chapter, Albanian migrations are not solely phenomena of the postcommunist period. With the exception of the period of the communist regime (1945–1991)—when internal movement and resettlement were centrally controlled and directed, while leaving the country was strictly forbidden and heavily punished (with the exception of the political elite)—they have been present throughout the centuries. The first recorded large-scale resettlements in Albanians’ collective memory took place in the second half of the fifteenth century. During the period of the Ottoman Empire and after the death of the Gjergj Kastrioti Skanderbeg—today’s national hero—in 1468 an estimated 200,000 people inhabiting what is nowadays Albanian territory moved to present-day Italy, the Dalmatian coast, and southern Greece (Vullnetari 2012, 59; this volume); the movement and migration of people from the region to other parts of the Ottoman Empire were also well-established patterns of social, economic, and cultural life at the time (Blumi 2011).3 These kinds of movements were referred to as kurbet in both social memory and historical accounts. The term is etymologically derived from the Arabic word travel, mostly without water and food, the migrants were left at the port for hours. Later they were driven to the Stadio Della Vittoria, where they were detained for a week. Due to the unpreparedness of the Italian authorities, the situation in the stadium got out of control, becoming a lawless zone controlled by powerful gangs. When the refugees learned of their imminent deportation, many tried to flee. Food and water were literally thrown over the wall by the authorities with a fire crane, most of it being seized by the gangs. After a week of this chaotic agony, the majority of Vlora’s passengers were deported to Albania. 3  Writing against essentializing categories of ethnic identity in the Balkan region more broadly, Isa Blumi (2011) documents how movement and migration within the Ottoman space and beyond was an integral part of Ottoman society, enabling Albanian merchants, intellectuals, and laborers to move within a multicultural space. Blumi claims that by taking into account these constant movements, migration, and the cultural exchanges that ensued, we gain a different narrative of the past that challenges nationalistic and ethnicized representations of Balkan people and identities.

6 

S. MUSARAJ AND N. GREGORIČ BON

ghurbeh, which means “a journey to or a sojourn in a foreign land,” usually for work purposes (Gregorič Bon 2017a). On the one hand, it carries the idea of migrants’ (kurbetlli) pain (dhimbje) and longing for home and family, as well as the related suffering of migrants missing their loved ones; on the other, it is seen as a heroic sacrifice made by migrants on behalf of their families (Pistrick 2010, see also Vullnetari this volume), which brings social capital such as civilization (civilizim), economic development (zhvillim), and general wellbeing to the migrants’ homeland and the relatives they left behind. Tales of kurbet are, therefore, narrated in numerous Albanian folk songs, such as traditional polyphony and rhapsodies, and described in literary works (e.g., Çajupi 1990, 79). Despite centuries of social, political, economic, and cultural changes, kurbet continues to play an important role in Albania today and is often used as a synonym for migration in many contexts (Gregorič Bon 2017a; Papailias 2003, 1064; Pistrick 2009, 2010). This explains why the international scholarly work that appeared after the collapse of the communist regime mainly dealt with the phenomenon of migration. Numerous studies by scholars from Albania and abroad examined the social and cultural meanings of Albanian migration from different perspectives: economic factors, the impact on the country’s social life, politics, and economy (Gëdeshi 2010; Gëdeshi and de Zwager 2010; King 2005; Korovilas 1999; Tirta 1999; Vullnetari 2012); remittances (de Zwager et al. 2005; Korovilas 1999; Sjöberg 1992; Vullnetari and King 2011a, b); identity processes and belonging (Vathi 2011); Albanian diaspora (Bonifazi and Sabatino 2003; Dërhemi 2003; Kosic and Triandafyllidou 2003; Mai 2005); “brain” and “care drain” (Glytsos 2006; Vullnetari and King 2008); gender and generational relations (Çaro et  al. 2018; Vullnetari 2004; Vullnetari and King 2011a, b); border dynamics and transnationalism (De Rapper and Sintès 2006; Mai and Schwandner-­Sievers 2003; Pistrick 2010; Vullnetari 2019); integration processes in host countries, and return migrations and integration processes (Hatziprokopiou 2003; Vathi 2011), among others. While many of these studies have focused on migration as a linear process taking place in a particular time and location and marked by uni-directional moves (migrant moving in one direction, remittance in opposite), more recent anthropological and socio-historical work has sought to explore migrations as a relational, often cyclical passage that encompass multiple directions and relations, which generate displacements as well as emplacements (Dalipaj 2008, 2016; Dalakoglou 2010, 2012; Gregorič Bon 2016, 2017a, b; Musaraj 2017, 2020; Pistrick 2013, 2015; Vullnetari 2019).

1  INTRODUCTION: REMITTING, RESTORING, AND BUILDING… 7

In this vein, the chapter by Vullnetari sets Albanian migrations in historical context and highlights their social and cultural implications for processes of emplacement and displacement. She sheds light on important phenomena connected with remittances, both in terms of their economic impact and in the formation of broader emotional and social relationships with the migrants’ family, homeland, and belonging. From a temporal perspective, remittances related to migration are significant because they bring back and replace something that has been displaced or taken away. As such, they have the capacity to remit and restore past intimate, emotional relationships between migrants and the families who have remained at home, and have the potential to assure the present and bring a better future. Spatially, these continuous and sporadic flows of remittances eradicate the geographical distances between the migrant’s destination and his/her stay-at-home family, and reaffirm the meaning of home and location, and the migrant’s emplacement and belonging. While the topic of international migration since the 1990s has received considerable attention in Albanian studies scholarship, internal movement and displacement during the communist period and after are largely neglected. As discussed in various chapters of this volume, the country’s isolation from Europe and the world during the communist regime has been a predominant theme in Albanian studies. Indeed, Albania’s ban on travel abroad was one of the most draconian imposed anywhere by a communist regime, while the country was notorious for its policies of self-­ reliance and an increasing paranoia about the threat of foreign attack. Nevertheless, as Elidor Mëhilli (2017) emphasizes, these isolationist policies and mentalities belong to the late communist period, which was a dramatic change from the 1950s and ‘60s, a time of intensive economic, cultural, and intellectual exchange with the broader communist bloc. By contrast to the ban on movement abroad, Vullnetari (2012; this volume) and Sula-Raxhimi (this volume) remind us that internal movement and migration were constant and widespread during the communist regime. In her chapter, Vullnetari documents significant internal migration during the early post-war era, driven in part by government projects of urbanization and industrialization and partly a result of the connected and intensifying rural-urban migration that followed increasing collectivization. These movements decreased from the ‘70s onward, when, following the Cultural Revolution, stricter regulations controlling residence and mobility were implemented. Nevertheless, other forms of migration or displacement took place throughout the communist period, such as requiring

8 

S. MUSARAJ AND N. GREGORIČ BON

certain professions (teachers, doctors, army officers, engineers) to work in rural and remote areas or exiling the politically persecuted to remote labor camps (see also Sula-Raxhimi this volume). Sula-Raxhimi’s chapter takes up another set of internal displacements that have been an understudied topic in Albanian studies, namely, the displacement of the Roma and Egyptian communities throughout the communist regime and the postcommunist period. The chapter draws on Michel Foucault’s notion of “heterotopia,” defined as “real places that are outside of all places” (Foucault 2001, 1574), to think about how marginal spaces inhabited by the Roma and Egyptian communities were made possible in communist and postcommunist Albania. During the communist regime, writes Sula-Raxhimi, the Roma population in Albania was targeted and controlled through specific policies of sedentarization, education, and employment, as part of the main reforms for the urbanization and industrialization of the country. Nomadic and semi-nomadic communities were forced to reside in specific neighborhoods, located mainly on the outskirts of cities, such as Kinostudio and Selite in Tirana, and Rrapishta in Elbasan, where cheap apartments were built to house Roma families. In the postcommunist period, as the Roma communities once again found themselves economically marginalized due to neoliberal economic and development-induced urban policies, many lost their homes and ended up living in shacks and semi-legal dwellings on the new margins of cities. Sula-Raxhimi defines these encampments as “heterotopias of displacement and precariousness” driven and shaped by new urban development initiatives and neoliberal policies that for some produce abandonment and isolation. This account of the Roma displacements is valuable not just for broadening the study of a marginalized group in Albania; it also makes a contribution to the study of statecraft, during both the communist and postcommunist periods, as it is articulated and reproduced through the control of space and of population groups. Migrations and concomitant processes of emplacements and displacements have also contributed to relocating Albania on the geopolitical map over the centuries (see Gregorič Bon 2017a). While, during the autocratic regime and its associated state apparatuses set Albania’s location exactly in the center of the geopolitical map of Europe and the world, since the collapse of the regime due to political and economic crisis, its geopolitical location has shifted to Europe’s very margins. In the last decade, as a result of Europeanization processes, the location of Albania has oscillated even more intensely between the center and the margins. In light of this, Smoki

1  INTRODUCTION: REMITTING, RESTORING, AND BUILDING… 9

Musaraj (this volume) describes how contemporary claims of residents and architects about the restoration and preservation of the coastal city Saranda, and the retention of its Mediterranean outlook and spirit, work toward setting Albania on the map of Mediterranean Europe. This appeal to positioning the Mediterranean as a new horizon of the future is also present in Julian Bejko’s chapter. In a comparable way, as Cecilie Endresen (this volume) explains, though through different narratives, some Albanians seek to emplace the nation and its history on the world map through alternative myths about language primacy and its origins, which they portray as the cradle of civilization. This way of locating Albania on the wider geopolitical and social map generates a particular space-time that opens up an important and hitherto overlooked question of temporality.

Myth and Temporality Although thirty years have passed since the fall of the communist regime, a large body of scholarly literature, as well as popular discourse, still refers to the present as the postcommunist period, which is characterized as an ongoing process of “building” (ndërtimi), of migration and mobility, and of being on the “road to” (rruga për) “transition,” “modernization,” “development,” or “going towards Europe” (të shkojmë drejt Europës). Stephanie Schwandner-Sievers and Bernd J. Fischer (2002), in their seminal volume Albanian Identities, argue that mythohistories or “archetypal structures” (Schwandner-Sievers and Fischer 2002, 7) that are grounded in the past are embedded in the processes of building a postcommunist national identity. With this, the authors suggest the tendency of continuous return to the structural remnants of the past, which, as we argue, are important in understanding the present and building “individual and collective futures” (cf. Petrović-Šteger 2018, 2020a, b). We see the tendency to remit and restore the structural terrain as a “symptom” that has a longue durée in the Albanian historical imaginary of time-space. How is the present lived and experienced by the people of Albania, who often express the feeling that their daily lives are beset by constant change and uncertainties? The experience of the present, according to historian Reinhardt Koselleck (2004), is structured by the space of experience and the horizon of expectations. The space of experience refers to the relationship with the past, while the horizon of expectations shapes the specific

10 

S. MUSARAJ AND N. GREGORIČ BON

orientation toward the future. Time and temporality are crucial aspects of the everyday experience and imaginaries of any society, but they are especially pertinent in cultural contexts undergoing deep social, political, and economic transformations, and those post-communism entailed tectonic shifts in the collective imagination of time and history. In Albania, as in other postcommunist contexts, the transformations reset the orientation toward past, present, and future, producing a period marked by specific rhythms and tempos of everyday life that are distinct from other times. A number of chapters in this volume engage with these themes, bringing to light multiple historical temporalities (the glorious past, the timeless temporality of tradition and folk culture, the communist past); multiple ways of restoring the past (as nostalgia, as postmemory, as a history of the present); articulations of the experience of time in post-communism; and multiple orientations toward the future (the future as a rupture from the present, as an enduring temporality, as a restoration of particular myths and moral values). The subjects of myth, tradition, and folk culture have long been central topics of Albanian studies, both locally and internationally. Orientalist European anthropological studies of Albanian culture, for instance, have fetishized studies of kanun (an unwritten code of honor and law) and besa (honor, oath). Communist ideology also appropriated this fetishization, as well as folk culture more generally, and reframed them as cultural essence and a crucial component of Albanian nationalism. Bardhoshi and Lelaj (2018) note that this was then temporalized during the communist times as remnants (mbeturinat) of the past that had to be cleansed through the emancipatory practices of communist modernity (see also Bardhoshi 2018; Bejko this volume). The fetishization and temporalization of tradition, myth, and folk culture have reemerged in the context of postcommunist transformations, a phenomenon with which chapters in this volume engage, providing more nuanced and multiple appropriations and critique of the imaginaries of myth, tradition, and folk culture. One innovative approach in these chapters is to highlight how different actors—artists, environmental activists, amateur linguists, among others— evoke, restore, idealize, and/or critique various myths and traditional culture. In some chapters, myths and tradition feature as an idealized past that is invoked in the present as a way of critique, of restoring/generating national pride, and as what Rosen calls, following Raymond Williams, a “structure of feeling.” Gregorič Bon, for instance, explores the invocation of the mythological figure of Kuçedra as a means to remit and restore the

1  INTRODUCTION: REMITTING, RESTORING, AND BUILDING… 11

meaning of and relation to authority, and bring back vital understandings of water and “environment” in order to reassure sustainable futures. Endresen explores the emergence of a new national myth based on amateur linguistic theories that the ancient Albanian language is the origin of various world languages. Other forms of glorious pasts recur in a number of chapters that explore contemporary engagements with the communist period. De Rapper studies communist photography and points to different moments (the 1980s and ‘90s) that featured photography from before the communist period in reference to an “eternal and immutable” Albania. In Endresen’s study, the glorious past serves as a source of pride that counters the experience of marginality in the contemporary geopolitical and cultural space of Europe, thus serving as a temporal reference point for articulating identity and community that circumvents the twists and turns of history. A number of chapters that focus on the production of literature, art, and photography also note persistent local engagements with myth and tradition that present various approaches, some disclosing different forms of idealization and nostalgia, others critiquing self-Orientalizing representations. Thus, a work of art featured in Sofia Kalo’s chapter consists of a video of a grandmother making byrek—a traditional dish originating in Ottoman cuisine—thus capturing a historically specific affect, namely, emigrant nostalgia for the country left behind. Yet other examples of artistic or literary production take a critical approach to contemporary invocations of myth and tradition in the Albanian public sphere. Another artistic example explored in Kalo’s chapter, for instance, features an Albanian man of traditional appearance. The painting, titled “Homo Balkanicus,” performs a critique of the traditional mentality (mentalitet i vjeter) that is holding back Albanian culture. Backward mentalities, Bejko reminds us, were also a target of communist ideology and propaganda, which temporalized cultural practices; mentaliteti i vjetër was a remnant of the past, while emancipation was the promise of communist modernity. Bejko concurs that the notion of mentalitet i vjetër persists in contemporary Albania as well, marking a continuity between communism and post-communism. Additionally, Rosen traces nationalist discourses of a glorious past in nineteenth-­century Albanian literature but notes that readers and publishers of his acquaintance in twenty-first-century Albania do not share these idealized visions of traditional national culture but are, on the contrary, critical of the dominant Ottoman, communist, and postcommunist forms of governance and cultural discourse. These approaches to myth and

12 

S. MUSARAJ AND N. GREGORIČ BON

tradition reflect a growing critique of the self-Orientalization of Albanian culture in public and official discourses, and also in academic representations.4 Albanian studies of the past three decades have engaged with time and temporality in various ways. Recent historical works have revised Albania’s position and changing relations with the broader socialist world, highlighting important periods and transformations within the communist period from the internationalism of the ‘50s and ‘60s to the increasing isolationism of the ‘70s and ‘80s (Bejko this volume; Mëhilli 2017). A number of historical and ethnographic accounts produced in the first two decades of the twenty-first century also explore the discourse and practice of a communist modernity that permeated developments in infrastructure and industry (Mëhilli 2017); the everyday life of peasants and workers undergoing a process of proletarianization (Lelaj 2015); and the production of music, literature, art, and photography (de Rapper 2019; Rosen 2019; Tochka 2016). Other works explore the microhistories and experience of everyday life during communism (Hemming et al. 2012; King and Vullnetari 2016; Vullnetari and King 2014; Woodcock 2016). Using the oral histories of people who lived through it, Shannon Woodcock (2016) for instance, draws attention to the microhistories of the time, which provide a nuanced and granular account of the experiences, affects, and struggles of the everyday under the communist regime. In a similar vein, the project “Zërat e Kujtesës” (Voices of Memory) (Lleshanaku and Tufa 2014–2016), organized by the Institute for the Study of Communist Crimes and Consequences in Albania, has built up an archive of such memories as a way to provide more depth and nuance to the experience and postmemory of communism in Albania. More remains to be done, however, in scholarly work. Remitting, Restoring, and Building Contemporary Albania presents multiple forms of engagement with the pre-communist and communist pasts by various actors in contemporary Albania that highlight a multiplicity of temporalities that are often entangled or/and coalesced. A number of contributions in this volume are grounded in the broader literature on

4  On Orientalism in representations of the Balkans in literature and scholarly accounts see Todorova (2009). On the presence of Orientalism in Albanian literature and intellectual life see Sulstarova (2006).

1  INTRODUCTION: REMITTING, RESTORING, AND BUILDING… 13

postcommunist memory and/or nostalgia.5 Tracing the history of nostalgia as an emotion imbued with a particular temporality, Svetlana Boym (2001) approaches the emergence of this affect in various postcommunist cities, framing such expressions as a critique of the present and distinguishing between restorative and reflective nostalgia: the former seeks to restore an idealized and sanitized version of the past, whereas the latter regards the past as a vantage point from which to critique the present. A number of chapters in this volume note manifestations of different forms of memory and/or nostalgia in artistic expression, photography, and architecture. De Rapper, for instance, considers the orientation toward the communist past in the publication of two albums of communist photography. He notes that, while the authors of these albums seek to restore a temporality of timeless humanity that was co-opted by communist ideology, the images within them attest to the communist past as a memory that endures and needs to be restored and reckoned with in the present. Kalo finds the production of postmemory (Hirsch 2008) and reflective nostalgia in a number of the works by artists who draw comparisons and parallels between the failure of the communist past and the postcommunist present (see also Rosen this volume). Smoki Musaraj notes the mobilization of a restorative nostalgia in state redevelopment projects, such as the “Return to Identity” urban renewal initiative that painted Tirana’s communist buildings in bright colors. This project, however, is criticized by residents and artists alike (see Kalo this volume) for not going far enough in restoring and redeveloping the crumbling architecture and infrastructures of communism or in developing better postcommunist cities. Another important temporality explored in postcommunist studies is that of modernity, which implies a temporality of linear progress toward a future radically different from the past. Scholars of postcommunist societies have revisited communism as an alternative modernity and also explored the disenchantment with both communist and postcommunist modernities. Explorations of modernity permeate many chapters in this volume, 5  Early works focused on what is now defined as the first wave of postcommunist nostalgia, a nostalgia of people who were born and lived under the communist regime and were disenchanted with the early outcomes of the postcommunist transformations (Berdahl 1999; Boym 2001; Ghodsee 2011; Todorova and Gille 2010). A later wave, referred to as the second wave of nostalgia or postmemory, occurred in younger generations who had not experienced the communist times first-hand but were nonetheless drawn to that memory and lost past (Oushakine 2020; Petrović 2010a, b).

14 

S. MUSARAJ AND N. GREGORIČ BON

raising issues that include the failure of communist modernity described in conversations with readers and publishers in Tirana (Rosen this volume); the negative qualisigns of grayness and drabness attached to prefabricated, concrete panel apartments (Musaraj this volume); and a critical reading of communist-era films and discourses of morality and emancipation (Bejko this volume). Yet the chapters also speak of the disenchantment with postcommunist modernity, as reflected in the popular discourses of the “betonizim” (concretization) (Musaraj this volume) or the destruction of the city (Rosen this volume) as a result of neoliberal development strategies. The chapter by Sula-Raxhimi reminds us that such policies have pushed different social groups at the margins of the city, living in different temporalities altogether. She documents the displaced lives of the Roma and Egyptian communities who live in makeshift structures in various margins of Tirana and whose repeated dislocations place them in a space of heterotopia, thus inhabiting a temporality that is clearly situated outside the national one, whether that is one of progress or of crisis. To contrast discourses of modernity and progress, many of the interlocutors in these chapters note everyday efforts to materialize an enduring temporality. De Rapper and Kalo, for instance, call for an enduring temporality of the communist past in the present, not as a form of nostalgia but as a form of memory that needs to be reckoned with and that continues to shape the present. Musaraj’s and Gregorič Bon’s interlocutors demand a stop to “development,” whether in the form of dams or of new high rises, and a preservation and restoration of existing natural landscapes and built infrastructures (the river, public spaces, parks). These enduring temporalities (Ringel 2014) are distinct from projects of restorative nostalgia in that they do not seek to glorify the past; further, they set themselves against the neoliberal temporalities of punctuated present and the promise of a messianic future (Guyer 2007; Musaraj 2020) that are intrinsic to the ongoing and uncontained construction in urban and rural areas. Several of these works associate “the future” with “Europe,” an association that has also been explored by other recent scholars (Dalipaj 2016; Gregorič Bon 2018; Musaraj 2020). As mentioned earlier, Musaraj’s and Bejko’s chapters in this volume discuss Europe and/or the Mediterranean as a horizon of expectations in twenty-first-century Albania. Europe and/ or the Mediterranean here takes on different meanings and reflects different temporalities, standing either for a possible and desirable political horizon (such as accession to the European Union) or as a timeless temporality

1  INTRODUCTION: REMITTING, RESTORING, AND BUILDING… 15

that needs to be restored (such as belonging to a timeless European and Mediterranean cultural and physical space). Taken together, these chapters push our thinking in the direction of modernity as a multiple rather than a singular project. Further, the chapters explore the potentialities of the future as they are imagined in the present: a horizon of expectations (Koselleck 2004) that shapes everyday experience. These multiple potentialities are further explored in chapters that study artistic and literary production in the postcommunist era.

Art, Literature, and Potentiality Key recent contributions look to the history and practices of art production during communism and after (Kalo 2017a, b; Pistrick 2015; Tochka 2016), engaging, among other things, with popular song, state-controlled music production, and visual arts. These works explore political ideologies and their critiques, as well as affects performed and generated through these different artistic mediums. A key novel contribution of this volume is a deep engagement with “the social life” (Appadurai 1988) of artistic production, from the artist/producers, through intermediaries, to consumers/publics. The volume offers ethnographic insights into various artistic communities: communist-era photographers (de Rapper this volume), indie book publishers and translators based in Tirana (Rosen this volume), and the visual artists of the transition period (Kalo this volume). In these chapters, we learn about the lives of these artists and publishers, their everyday challenges and frustrations, their local and transnational life trajectories, and the extensive social and professional networks that sustain and inform their works. By tracing the everyday lives of these cultural producers, the chapters highlight the challenges posed by the free-market economy to the world of artistic production and circulation. Free-market injustices and political corruption are prevalent themes in contemporary studies of Albania (Hoxhaj 2019; Kajsiu 2016; Musaraj 2018, 2020); they are also themes that emerge in the study of the lives of the artists and cultural producers, as well as artistic representations. Thus, the directors of the publishing house Pika pa sipërfaqe express cynicism and frustration over the economic pressures and challenges that the publishing world faces in Albania today (Rosen this volume). Seeking to expand the range of literature available to the Albanian reader, they encounter significant challenges that arise from a ruthless market regime and endemic corruption. Kalo

16 

S. MUSARAJ AND N. GREGORIČ BON

also posits market demands and limitations as an important factor shaping artistic production in Albania (Kalo 2017a, b; this volume). The protagonists of her ethnography are artists who are very much aware of and concerned with the global art market and attuned to the global interest in “alternative representations of difference” and “strangeness,” while also providing “salient cultural critiques” (Kalo this volume) that seek to stimulate local debate as well as challenge representations of Albanian in the West. Art, literature, and photography are, therefore, more than just a medium of representation and a vehicle of restoration of something that has been almost forgotten, intentionally buried (due to traumatic experiences), destroyed, or otherwise repressed. Eckehard Pistrick (2015) writes about migration songs of the post-1990s as popular artistic productions that are not just expressions of the traumatic experience of exile, but that also perform human action and cultural creativity. As aptly presented and explained in the chapters by Kalo, de Rapper, Rosen, and Bejko, art images, films, photographs, and literary works are active agents that engage with various pasts—be it distant or current—evoking affects, traumas, and memories, and restoring the present. By unveiling and juxtaposing different layers of the past, artworks and literature have the capacity to reflect, restore, and rebuild past events and interpret them in the nexus of contemporary events. Artistic objects and their expressions create the potentiality to transgress and/or transform the individual and society. Following Strathern, we define potentiality6 “as the capacity for development as yet unrealized” (Strathern 1996, 17). In this sense, the ethnographic insights into various artistic communities in this volume generate potentialities that open up new ways of “looking at the communist past”

6  In anthropology, the study of potentiality largely departs from research on reproductive technologies, biomedicine, and related issues (Strathern 1996; Taussig et al. 2013). In recent decades, potentiality has become a topic of temporal anthropology, with a particular focus on future realms (Bryant and Knight 2019; Petrović-Šteger 2020a, b). Here we particularly take as our starting point Petrović-Šteger’s argument that the task of anthropology is to offer not only “critical descriptions of the present (on its historical trajectories), but possible intimations of a society’s futures. Anthropological analysis, in other words, not only describes but also anticipates” (Petrović-Šteger 2020a, 3). In this view, we see the chapters dealing with art and artworks as textual trajectories that open up potentialities and might lead to possible assumptions and anticipations of something not yet realized, elaborated, or otherwise present.

1  INTRODUCTION: REMITTING, RESTORING, AND BUILDING… 17

(de Rapper this volume) or creating “new” (Rosen this volume) or “different” realities (Kalo this volume). Kalo, for example, describes a number of artistic works that engage with folklore representations, the communist past, and postcommunist transition and portray ambivalent feelings such as resentment and nostalgia for the past. Thus, artistic production has the capacity to mobilize its audience and allow them to reflect on past atrocities, as well as to evoke pleasant memories. The artworks uncover different layers of history whose vestiges still endure and permeate contemporary lives as active agents that create potentiality for a possible transformation of individuals and society. De Rapper’s chapter also grapples with potentiality, suggesting that the exhibition of communist photography instantiates the past as residue in the present. Communist photography thus becomes an object of a timeless reality that evokes the new “regime of historicity” (Hartog 2003), which can be read as having the potential to offer new or fresh views of the past and present, and to pave the way to a better future. Processes of building different, fresh, or new realities are also addressed in Rosen’s chapter on literature and Albanian literary production. Intimate and comprehensive conversations between the ethnographer and young indie publishers reveal their ambitions to expand people’s knowledge and enrich their mindsets (mentalitet). In their “organic” but at the same time strategic way of translating, publishing, and positioning national and international literary works in the Albanian market, these publishers aim to create “new realities” as an alternative to the uncertain everyday. They see their publishing activity as a social project or mission that aims to disseminate knowledge and “emancipate society.” In this view, publishing activities create the potential for social and individual change—a prerequisite for a better future. Although the studies in this volume do not explicitly address or elaborate in detail the meaning of potentiality, all tackle it implicitly. Hence, the chapters present various potentialities as “latently imagined” possibilities (Taussig et al. 2013, S4) of something that seems to appear, or that might or might not appear at all. Potentiality, thus, could be defined as something that is still in the process of becoming and not yet realized. In this sense, these chapters also lay new ground for future directions in Albanian studies. Art, literature, and potentiality; myth and temporality; migrations, emplacements, and displacements are just some of the themes evoked explicitly or between the lines of this volume. These themes reflect recent

18 

S. MUSARAJ AND N. GREGORIČ BON

debates and contributions in the field of Albanian studies at large. We hope that this volume further extends these discussions and offers original perspectives on the recent history and the everyday experiences in twenty-­ first-­ century Albania. In conclusion, we highlight some key contributions.

Conclusion One key contribution of the volume is our reflections on time and temporality as represented, imagined, and experienced in contemporary Albania. The chapters include articulations of different modernities—from the pre-­ war to the communist to the postcommunist/European ones. Additionally, the volume explores multiple contemporary engagements with the communist and pre-communist past. These reflections echo local artistic production and public debate about representations of the past in the present. Our volume examines state-led initiatives to restore the past while also documenting various critical approaches to this past in art, literature, photography, and film. While acknowledging the multiplicity of these approaches, the volume underscores the enduring presence of the communist experience and the imperative to reckon with this presence. A second contribution speaks to the longue dureé of Albanian mobilities, past and present, as well as the emplacements and displacements of different communities under different political regimes. Building upon a burgeoning literature around Albanian migration, our volume also emphasizes the intended and unintended top-down and bottom-up forces that shape, control, and affect migration patterns, remittance flows, and social ties among migrants, their kin, and the state. Last but not least, the volume also provides insight into contemporary claims and aspirations toward different and better futures. We explore these claims to the future in everyday experience and discourse as well as in artistic portrayal and literary expressions. The volume provides new insights into forms of potentiality explicitly or implicitly evoked in contemporary forms of activism, artistic and literary production, and scholarly work. Here we invite readers to immerse themselves in the myriad timescapes experienced in contemporary Albania, and hope to inspire new topics and questions for further research.

1  INTRODUCTION: REMITTING, RESTORING, AND BUILDING… 19

Bibliography Appadurai, Arjun, ed. 1988. The Social Life of Things: Commodities in Cultural Perspective. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Bardhoshi, Nebi. 2018. Ethnographic Temporality and the Ethnography of Time: On Political Economy of Anthropology and the State. Paper Presented in the Conference Practices, Materiality, Places and Temporality: New Approaches in Albanian Studies New Approaches in Albanian Studies, Tiranë, 10–12 October 2018. Bardhoshi, Nebi, and Olsi Lelaj. 2018. Etnografi në diktaturë: dija, shteti dhe Holokausti ynë. Tirana, Al: Akademia e Shkencave e Shqipërisë. Basu, Paul, and Simon Coleman. 2008. Introduction. Migrant Worlds, Material Cultures. Mobilities III (3): 313–330. Berdahl, Daphne. 1999. When the World Ended: Re-unification and ldentity in the German Bor-derland. Berkeley: California University Press. ———. 2009. On the Social Life of Postsocialism: Memory, Consumption, Germany. New York: Indiana University Press. ———. 2010. ‘(N)Ostalgie’ for the Present: Memory, Longing, and East German Things. Ethnos 64 (2): 192–211. https://doi.org/10.1080/0014184 4.1999.9981598. Blumi, Isa. 2011. Reinstating the Ottomans: Alternative Balkan Modernities, 1800–1912. New York, NY: Palgrave Macmillan. Bonifazi, Corrado, and Dante Sabatino. 2003. Albanian Migration to Italy: What Official Data and Survey Results Can Reveal. Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies 29 (6): 967–995. Boym, Svetlana. 2001. The Future of Nostalgia. New York, NY: Basic books. Bryant, Rebecca, and Daniel M.  Knight. 2019. The Anthropology of the Future. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Çajupi, Andon Zako. 1990. Baba-Tomorri. Tirana: Shtepia Botuese ‘Naim Frasheri’. Çaro, Erka, Ajay Bailey, and Leo Van Wissen. 2018. ‘I am the God of the House’: How Albanian Rural Men Shift their Performance of Masculinities in the City. Journal of Balkan and Near Eastern Studies 20 (1): 49–65. Dalakoglou, Dimitris. 2010. The Road: An Ethnography of the Albanian–Greek Cross-border Motorway. American Ethnologist 37 (1): 132–149. ———. 2012. ‘The Road from Capitalism to Capitalism’: Infrastructures of (Post) Socialism in Albania. Mobilities 7 (4): 571–586. Dalipaj, Gerda. 2008. The Otherness Outside and Within: The Challenge of Shaping and Manifesting a New Image of the Other and of the Self in Post Socialist Albania. In Dynamics of National Identity and Transnational Identities in the Process of European Integration, ed. Elena Marushiakova, 76–87. Cambridge Scholars Press: Newcastle.

20 

S. MUSARAJ AND N. GREGORIČ BON

———. 2016. Migration, Residential Investment, and the Experience of “Transition”: Tracing Transnational Practices of Albanian Migrants in Athens. Focaal 76 (2016): 85–98. De Rapper, Gilles, and Pierre Sintès. 2006. Handling Risks: Albania's Southern Border Running Between State Policies and Local Solidarity. Revue d'études Comparatives Est-Ouest 37 (4): 243–272. Dërhemi, Eda. 2003. New Albanian Immigrants in the Old Albanian Diaspora: Piana degli Albanesi. Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studie 29 (6): 1015–1032. Foucault, Michel. 2001. Dits et écrits, T.II, 1976–1988. Paris: Quarto/Gallimard. Gëdeshi, Ilir. 2010. Global Crisis and Migration: Monitoring a Key Transmission Channel to the Albanian Economy. Tirana: UNDP & IOM. Gëdeshi, Ilir, and Nicolas de Zwager. 2010. Global Crisis and Migration  – Monitoring a Key Transmission Channel to the Albanian Economy. Tirana: International Organization for Migration and United Nations Development Programme with the support of the World Bank. Ghodsee, Kirsten. 2011. Lost in Transition: Ethnographies of Everyday Life after Communism. Durham, North Carolina: Duke University Press. Glytsos, Nicholas P. 2006. Is Brain Drain from Albania, Bulgaria and Greece Large Enough to Threaten Their Development? Report of Center for International Relations. https://core.ac.uk/download/pdf/11870142.pdf Green, Sarah F. 2005. Notes from the Balkans: Locating Marginality and Ambiguity on the Greek-Albanian Border. Princeton, NY: Princeton University Press. Gregorič Bon, Nataša. 2016. Rooting Routes: (Non)movements in Southern Albania. In Moving Places: Relations, Return and Belonging, ed. Nataša Gregorič Bon and Jaka Repič, 63–84. Oxford, NY: Berghahn Books. ———. 2017a. Movement Matters: The Case of Southern Albania. Ethnologie Française 47 (2): 301–308. ———. 2017b. Silenced Border Crossings and Gendered Material Flows in Southern Albania. In Migrating Borders and Moving Times: Temporality and the Crossing of Borders in Europe (Rethinking Borders), ed. Hastings Donnan, Madeleine Hurd, and Caroline Leutloff-Grandits, 140–156. Manchester: Manchester University Press. ———. 2018. Neither the Balkans nor Europe: The “Where” and “When” in Present-Day Albania. In Everyday Life in the Balkan, ed. David W. Montgomery, 201–210. Bloomington: Indiana University Press. Gregorič Bon, Nataša, Damir Josipovič in Urša Kanjir. 2018. Linking Geomorphological and Demographic Movements: The case of Southern Albania. Applied Geography 100: 55–67. Guyer, Jane I. 2007. Prophecy and the Near Future: Thoughts on Macroeconomic, Evangelical, and Punctuated Time. American Ethnologist 34 (3): 409–421. Hartog, François. 2003. Régimes d'Historicité. Paris: Présentisme et Expériences du Temps, Seuil.

1  INTRODUCTION: REMITTING, RESTORING, AND BUILDING… 21

Hatziprokopiou, Panos. 2003. Albanian Immigrants in Thessaloniki, Greece: Processes of Economic and Social Incorporation. Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies 29 (6): 1033–1057. Hemming, Andreas, Gentiana Kera, and Enriketa Pandelejmoni, eds. 2012. Albania: Family, Society and Culture in the 20th Century, Vol 9. Münster: LIT Verlag Münster. Hirsch, Marianne. 2008. The generation of postmemory. Poetics Today 29 (1): 103–128. Hoxhaj, Andi. 2019. The EU Anti-corruption Report: A Reflexive Governance Approach. London: Routledge. Kajsiu, Blendi. 2016. A Discourse Analysis of Corruption: Instituting Neoliberalism Against Corruption in Albania, 1998–2005. London and New York: Routledge. Kalo, Sofia. 2017a. ‘The Red Kiss of the Past That Does Not Pass’: State Socialism in Albanian Visual Art Today. Visual Anthropology Review 33 (1): 51–61. ———. 2017b. “They Don’t Even Know How to Copy”: The Discourse on Originality in Albania’s Art World. Focaal 78 (2017): 65–76. King, Russell. 2005. Albania as a Laboratory for the Study of Migration and Development. Journal of Southern Europe and the Balkans, Special Issue: New Perspectives on Albanian Migration and Development 7 (2): 133–155. King, Russell, and Julie Vullnetari. 2016. From Shortage Economy to Second Economy: An Historical Ethnography of Rural Life in Communist Albania. Journal of Rural Studies 44 (2016): 198–207. Korovilas, James. 1999. The Albanian Economy in Transition: The Role of Remittances and Pyramid Investment Schemes. Post-Communist Economies 11 (3): 399–415. Koselleck, Reinhart. 2004. Futures Past: On the Semantics of Historical Time. New York: Columbia University Press. Kosic, Ankica, and Anna Triandafyllidou. 2003. Albanian Immigrants in Italy: Migration Plans, Coping Strategies and Identity Issues. Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies 29 (6): 997–1014. Lelaj, Olsi. 2015. Nën Shenjën e Modernitetit: Antropologji e Proceseve Proletarizuese Gjatë Socializmit Shtetëror. Tiranë: Pika pa Sipërfaqe. Lleshanaku, Luljeta and Agron Tufa, 2014–2016 Zërat e kujtesës: (Cikël bisedash dhe shënimesh me të mbijetuarit e diktaturës komuniste). In Tiranë: Instituti i Studimit të Krimeve dhe Pasojave të Komunizmit (ISKK) Tiranë: Instituti i Studimit të Krimeve dhe Pasojave të Komunizmit (ISKK). Mai, Nicola. 2005. The Albanian Diaspora-in-the-Making: Media, Migration and Social Exclusion. Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies 31 (3): 543–561. Mai, Nicola, and Stephanie Schwandner-Sievers. 2003. Albanian Migration and New Transnationalisms. Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies 29 (6): 939–948.

22 

S. MUSARAJ AND N. GREGORIČ BON

Mëhilli, Elidor. 2017. From Stalin to Mao: Albania and the Socialist World. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press. Musaraj, Smoki. 2017. Pyramid Firms and Value Transformation in Postsocialist Albania. Ethnologie Francaise 2 (2017): 321–330. ———. 2018. Corruption, Right on! Hidden Cameras, Cynical Satire, and Banal Intimacies of Anti-Corruption. Current Anthropology 59 (S18): S105–S116. ———. 2020. Tales from Albarado: Ponzi Logics of Accumulation in Postsocialist Albania. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press. Oushakine, Serguey A. 2020. Second-Hand Nostalgia: Composing a New Reality Out of Old Things. KnE Social Sciences 4 (13): 180–198. Papailias, Penelope. 2003. ‘Money of Kurbet is Money of Blood’: The Making of a ‘Hero’ of Migration at the Greek-Albanian Border. Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies 29 (6): 1059–1078. Petrović, Tanja. 2010a. Nostalgia for the JNA?: Remembering the Army in the Former Yugoslavia. In Post-communist Nostalgia, ed. Mariia Nikolaeva Todorova and Zsuzsa Gille, 61–81. New York: Berghahn Books. ———. 2010b. ‘When we Were Europe’. Socialist Workers and their Nostalgic Narratives: The Case of the Cables Factory Workers in Jagodina (Serbia). In Remembering Communism: Genres of Representation, ed. Mariia Nikolaeva Todorova, 127–153. New York: Social Science Research Council. Petrović-Šteger, Maja. 2018. O “odprtem pogledu”: Miselne pokrajine in doživljanje časa družbenih podjetnikov in vizionarjev v današnji Srbiji. Glasnik Slovenskega etnološkega društva 58 (3–4): 7–23. ———. 2020a. On the Side of Predictable: Visioning the Future in Serbia. Etnološka Tribina: Godišnjak Hrvatskog Etnološkog Društva 50 (43): 3–67. ———. 2020b. Calling the Future into Being: Timescripting in Contemporary Serbia. In Biography  – A Play? Poetological Experiments in a Genre Without Poetics, ed. Günter Blamberger, Rüdiger Görner, and Adrian Robanus, 163–179. Paderborm: Wilhelm Fink. Pistrick, Eckehard. 2009. Singing of Pain and Memory. Emotionalizing Mythohistory of Migration in Epirus. Journal of Balkanology 45 (1): 66–76. ———. 2010. Singing Back the Kurbetlli. Responses to Migration in Albanian Folk Culture. Anthropological Notebooks 16 (2): 29–37. ———. 2013. Performing Absences. Seasonal Return in South Albanian Villages. Ethnologie Française 2 (2013): 65–75. ———. 2015. Performing Nostalgia. In Migration, Culture and Creativity in South Albania. London: Routledge. de Rapper, Gilles. 2019. Photography and Remembrance: Questioning the Visual Legacy of Communist Albania. In Between Apathy and Nostalgia: Private and Public Recollections of Communism in Contemporary, ed. Jonila Godole and Idrit Idrizi, 103–119. Albania: IDMC.

1  INTRODUCTION: REMITTING, RESTORING, AND BUILDING… 23

Ringel, Felix. 2014. Post-industrial Times and the Unexpected: Endurance and Sustainability in Germany's Fastest-shrinking City. Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute 20 (2014): 52–70. Rosen, Matthew. 2019. Reading Nearby: Literary Ethnography in a Postsocialist City. Anthropology and Humanism 44 (1): 70–87. Schrapel, Thomas, Enriketa Pandelejmoni, and Andi Pinari, eds. 2016. The Call for Freedom: Studies on Totalitarism and Transition in Albania. Tirana: Botim i KAS and Maluka. Schwandner-Sievers, Stephanie, and Bernd J. Fischer, eds. 2002. Albanian Identities; Myth and History. London: Hurst & Company. Sjöberg, Örjan. 1992. Underurbanisation and the Zero Urban Growth Hypothesis: Diverted Migration in Albania. Geografiska Annaler 74 (1): 3–19. de Soto, Hermine, Peter Gordon, Ilir Gedeshi, and Zamira Sinoimeri. 2002. Poverty in Albania. A Qualitative Assessment, World Bank Technical Paper 520. Washington, DC. Strathern, Marilyn. 1996. Potential Property. Intellectual Rights and Property in Persons. Social Anthropology 4 (1): 17–32. ———. 2017. Gathered Fields: A tale about Rhizomes. ANUAC 6 (2): 23–44. ———. 2019. A Clash of Ontologies? Time, Law, and Science in Papua New Guinea. HAU: Journal of Ethnographic Theory 9 (1): 58–74. https://doi. org/10.1086/703796. Sulstarova, Enis. 2006. Arratisje nga Lindja: Orientalizmi Shqiptar nga Naimi te Kadareja. Tirana: Globic Press. Taussig, Karen-Sue, Klaus Hoyer, and Stefan Helmreich. 2013. The Anthropology of Potentiality in Medicine: And Introduction to Supplement 7. Current Anthropology 54 (S7): S3–S14. Tirta, Mark. 1999. Migrime të Shqiptarëve, të Brendshme dhe Jashtë Atdheut (vitet ’40 të shek. XIX-vitet ’40 të shekXX). Etnografia Shqiptare 18. Tochka, Nicholas. 2016. Audible States: Socialist Politics and Popular Music in Albania. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Todorova, Maria. 2009. Imagining the Balkans. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Todorova, Maria, and Zsuzsa Gille, eds. 2010. Post-communist Nostalgia. New York: Berghahn Books. Vathi, Zana. 2011. The Children of Albanian Migrants in Europe: Ethnic Identity, Transnational Ties and Pathways of Integration. Brighton: University of Sussex, DPhil thesis in migration studies. Vickers, Miranda. 1999. The Albanians. London: I.B. Tauris. Vullnetari, Julie. 2004. Like Stones in the Middle of the Road: The Impact of Migration on Older Persons in Rural SE Albania. MsC diss. in Migration Studies. Brighton: University of Sussex.

24 

S. MUSARAJ AND N. GREGORIČ BON

———. 2007. Albanian Migration and Development: State of the Art Review. Amsterdam: IMISCOE Working Paper 18. http://dare.uva.nl/ document/53744. ———. 2012. Albania on the Move: Links Between Internal and International Migration. Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press. ———. 2019. ‘Dancing in the Mouth of the Wolf’: Constructing the Border through Everyday Life in Socialist Albania. Journal of Historical Geography 63 (2019): 82–93. Vullnetari, Julie, and Russell King. 2008. ‘Does Your Granny Eat Grass?’ On Mass Migration, Care Drain and the Fate of Older People in Rural Albania. Global Networks 8 (2): 139–171. ———, eds. 2011a. Twenty Years of Albanian Migration. Special Issue of Balkan and Near Eastern Studies 13 (3): 269–356. ———. 2011b. Remittances, Gender and Development: Albania’s Society and Economy in Transition. London: I.B. Tauris. ———. 2014. ‘Women here are like at the time of Enver [Hoxha]…’: Socialist and Post-socialist Gendered Mobility in Albania. In Mobility in Socialist and Post-­ Socialist States: Societies on the Move, ed. Kathy Burrell and Kathrin Hörschelman, 122–147. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan. de Waal, Clarissa. 2005. Albania Today: A Portrait of Postcommunist Turbulence. London: I.B. Tauris. Woodcock, Shanon. 2016. Life is War: Surviving Dictatorship in Communist Albania. Bristol: HammerOn Press. de Zwager, Nicolaas, Ilir Gëdeshi, Etleva Germenji, et  al. 2005. Competing for remittances. Tirana: International Organization for Migration.

CHAPTER 2

In the Public Interest: Structures of Feeling in Albanian Literary Production Matthew Rosen

I, doni Gjoni, son of Bdek Buzuku … wished for the sake of our people to attempt, as far as I was able, to enlighten the minds of those who understand. –Gjon Buzuku, Missal, 1555 AN: Publishing is not a conventional business. It concerns a product of the mind. It helps people. It is done in the public interest. Publishing is—. AK: But there are profitable presses. AN: Okay, but the point is that publishing is in the public interest. Books are not like other products or commodities. They’re another thing. –Arlind Novi and Ataol Kaso, in conversation, 2019

In his 1973 book, The Country and the City, Raymond Williams used examples from English writing to trace changing attitudes toward urban and rural life in Britain and its colonies. But rather than viewing his examples just as lines in a play, passages in a novel, or verses in a poem, he saw

M. Rosen (*) Ohio University, Athens, OH, USA e-mail: [email protected] © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2021 N. Gregorič Bon, S. Musaraj (eds.), Remitting, Restoring and Building Contemporary Albania, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-84091-4_2

25

26 

M. ROSEN

them as structures of feeling that shaped readers’ images of the past, organized their value systems in the present, and fed their visions of possible futures. Starting from a similar perspective, I use examples from a variety of Albanian sources to describe and analyze structures of feeling in the field of Albanian literary production. The sources I draw on include the colophon of a 1555 missal, the preface of an 1845 primer, the argument of an 1899 manifesto, and the closing remarks of a 1965 plenum. But the bulk of the material I discuss is drawn from a long conversation, spread out over five summers (2015–2019), with the Tirana-based publishers, Ataol Kaso and Arlind Novi.1 The particular point of intrigue I pursued through fieldwork in Tirana was to understand how Arlind and Ataol saw their world and the place of reading, translation, and publishing within it. What I learned through immersion in their lives was that they viewed these activities as a way to exceed the limits of their given conditions, to produce new ways of thinking, and to create new realities. Reflecting Bruno Latour’s definition of an actor—that is, “what is made to act by many others” (Latour 2005, 46)— the key actor in this analysis is a small publishing house with an unusual name. Pika pa sipërfaqe (Point without Surface) was cofounded in Tirana by Arlind and Ataol in 2009. It has since mobilized thousands of other agents—including authors, translators, readers, activists, and community organizers—operating within and across Albania’s national boundaries. Toward the end of my last period of fieldwork, I asked the publishers to tell me what publishing meant to them. “Let’s put it like this,” Ataol said. “When we started this thing, we were not trying to do anything in particular other than keep reading. We just wanted to keep in contact with good books. And publishing those books came as a consequence of that. It’s a very simple, maybe childish idea, if you like. If you’re on a trip with a friend and you find something nice, the first thing you do is you call your friend, ‘Hey, come here, look what I found!’ This could describe what we were trying to do with publication. We read something really nice and it seemed logical to try and show this nice thing. This is what publishing is to me.” “To share,” Arlind added.

1  I use the term “long conversation” with reference to Maurice Bloch’s (1977) reformulation of Malinowski’s vision of fieldwork.

2  IN THE PUBLIC INTEREST: STRUCTURES OF FEELING IN ALBANIAN… 

27

“It has some other connotations,” Ataol continued. “It’s a complicated activity, and it has some more important consequences than just showing something nice to someone, but the basic idea is in parallel to that.”2 The more important and complicated consequences to which Ataol alluded were bound up with his view of publishing as an activity that could help people “figure out for themselves how they want to live their lives and what they want their lives to mean.”3 My goal in this chapter is to locate this conception of publishing in the longue durée of Albanian modernity. Reading my fieldnotes together with texts from Albania’s national awakening in the nineteenth century and its twentieth-century socialist realism, my intent is to reveal a structure of feeling located at the intersection of the publishers’ ideas about the past and future of their country. My general argument is as follows. Arlind and Ataol experienced everyday life in Tirana as a constant confrontation with stress, violence, and abuse of power. They saw this experience in relation to the damage done to the social fabric during half a century of a harsh dictatorship (1944–1991), when the state controlled virtually every aspect of public life, including the fields of literary and artistic production. But theirs was not only a negative view. For if the assimilation of literature authorized by an oppressive state had the power to perpetuate social problems long after the fall of a regime, it also made sense to think that a different kind of literature could help institute a new value system for an Albania yet to come. By unpacking the structures, meanings, and relationships supporting this proposition, my aim here is not to draw a straight line connecting the past, present, and future of Albanian literary production but to show how two historically situated individuals viewed their own literary enterprise.

Between an Open Book and an Unwritten Future Arlind and Ataol have managed the everyday operation of the publishing house since 2009. “Both of us are doing seven jobs at the same time,” Ataol said. “Translator, editor, distributor, salesmen, maintaining correspondence with the copyright holders, negotiating with the translators, keeping track of the whole process of printing, pagination, book covers.

2 3

 Interview conducted on August 9, 2019.  Interview conducted on June 20, 2016.

28 

M. ROSEN

We’re doing all of that. Just two of us. With some very important help from Arlind’s brother, Orges, and Eligers [a mutual friend].”4 In its first eleven years (2009–2020), Pika pa sipërfaqe produced a total of 110 titles with initial print runs ranging from 300 to 500 books.5 Of the 110 titles, twenty-six were by Albanian authors and eighty-four were by foreign authors in translation. To secure the rights to publish works in translation and to obtain funds to pay the translators, Arlind and Ataol have formed durable relationships with international institutions and agencies such as The Polish Book Institute in Kraków, the Sur Translation Support Programme in Buenos Aires, and the Wylie Agency in New York. The work of translation itself has been carried out by more than fifty individuals with varying secondary linguistic specializations, geographic locations, and areas of expertise. The translations this collective has produced so far include works of literature, philosophy, history, and criticism that were written mostly but not exclusively by American, Latin American, and European (especially Central European) authors. Most but again not all of these authors were originally published during the “short twentieth century” (i.e., 1914–1991).6 Taking a holistic view of the books in Pika pa sipërfaqe’s catalogue, the first question I thought to ask was, “Why translate these particular books and not others?” When I put the question to Arlind in 2015, his answer was brief. “It’s very simple,” he said. “If a friend tells us about a book, we’ll pick it up when we get a chance and begin to read. If we like it, we’ll contact a translator and make a contract to do the translation.”7 Arlind and Ataol later fleshed out another, more intertextual method using Milan Kundera’s book-length essay, Testaments Betrayed (trans. Balil  Interview conducted on August 9, 2019.  It is notoriously difficult to find accurate information on the number of books published in Albania since 1991 (Bedalli 2013). In 2012, however, the Albanian Publishers Association released rough counts indicating more than 100 publishers, about 380 printers, and a total of 1200 to 1500 new titles published in that year (SBSH 2012). A year later, one of the larger contemporary publishers, Toena, which has bookstores in multiple cities including Tirana, Saranda, Vlora, and Pristina, reported publishing an average of more than 130 books per year in its first twenty years (Toena 2013). Whereas Toena’s numbers would place it in the company of the largest Albanian publishers, Pika pa sipërfaqe’s average of ten titles per year since 2009 is comparable to many other small presses in the country. 6  I use the term “short twentieth century” with reference to the historical period Eric Hobsbawm took as the subject of his 1994 book The Age of Extremes: A History of the World, 1914–1991. 7  Interview conducted on July 15, 2015. 4 5

2  IN THE PUBLIC INTEREST: STRUCTURES OF FEELING IN ALBANIAN… 

29

Gjini 2011),  to illustrate. In Testaments Betrayed Kundera constructs a canon of twentieth-century novels that influenced his own understanding of the form. The publishers were thus able to pick out at least half a dozen more recommendations from Kundera himself. These included Witold Gombrowicz’s Guide to Philosophy in Six Hours and Fifteen Minutes, Ferdydurke, and the complete Diary (all translated from the original by Edlira Lloha and published by Pika pa sipërfaqe in 2012, 2014, and 2019, respectively); Robert Musil’s The Confusions of Young Törless (trans. Jonila Godole 2012); a Carlos Fuentes collection titled Natural and Supernatural Stories (trans. Bajram Karabolli 2017); and Bruno Schulz’s collection of interlinked fictions, The Street of Crocodiles (trans. Romeo Çollaku 2019). Each of these works opened onto a dense web of further associations. Consider, for instance, the metafictional link between Schulz’s art and his real life. That the author was shot and killed by a Gestapo officer while walking home in Nazi-occupied Drogobych adds considerable gravitas to his surrealist anticipation (in the 1934 story, “The Comet”) of the thesis that the imagination and equipment of industrial modernity made it possible both to conceive and to carry out the Holocaust. Reading “The Comet” one can appreciate the extent to which Schulz’s vivid imagination resonated not only with the sensibilities of repressed and exiled novelists like Kundera but also with the sociological perspective of a work such as Zygmunt Bauman’s Modernity and the Holocaust (trans. Enis Sulstarova 2015), which translated Schulz’s dark conviction into a book-length sociological argument. In the still expanding list of related translations that issued outward from Gjini’s translation of Kundera, there are now countless other routes for other readers to trace. In 2019, for example, at a meeting in Kamëz (a municipality located on the periphery of Tirana), I spoke with community organizer Diana Malaj about her work for the grassroots organization, ATA. Upon entering Diana’s office, I noticed an open copy of Pika pa sipërfaqe’s 2015 translation of Modernity and the Holocaust.8 Seeing the way the book was left open in front of her computer, I asked Diana if she was using it for something she was working on. “I am just back from Poland,” she said. “We went for a seminar of remembrance and reconciliation. We visited the Gross-Rosen 8  As I have noted elsewhere (Rosen 2019a), ATA’s headquarters in Kamëz housed a small community library that was established with one hundred books the organization received through donations and one hundred books they bought from Pika pa sipërfaqe.

30 

M. ROSEN

concentration camps … I decided my first duty on return was to go back to that book. ‘That’s the first thing you’re going to do when you go back to Kamëz,’ I told myself. ‘You’re going to open that book.’ The camps were a product of modernity and they might happen again. We have a moral duty –.” Diana paused, collecting her thoughts before she continued. “I had a little free time,” she said. “I just came from work. I was preparing the screening for the youngsters. But I am planning to write an article, and this will help me.”9 Diana’s example comes close to what I think Arlind and Ataol meant when they said that publishing can help people. It also illustrates why the meanings I am after are not just those that inhere in the contents of books but those that are located in the points of intersection that connect people like Arlind and Ataol—through Kundera and Gjini, Schulz and Çollaku, Bauman and Sulstarova—to the youth in Tirana and Kamëz whose futures may yet be shaped by the article someone like Diana was writing. What those youngsters might do with the ideas that have passed through the books published by Pika pa sipërfaqe remains to be seen. In the meantime, I am content to keep shuttling back and forth, like Diana, between an open book and an unwritten future.

In the Beginning Was Translation In the preface of his two-volume history of Albanian literature, Robert Elsie (1995) depicted his subject as “a tender shrub … sprouting in the ruins of its own literary traditions” (Elsie 1995, ix–x). The first attested Albanian text larger than a single line or short list of words—The Missal of Gjon Buzuku—was written by a Catholic cleric in 1555. What has survived of the book contains sections of the Bible translated into Gheg (the northern Albanian dialect). The Missal was characteristic of the first strand of Albanian literature: Catholic-inflected, written with a Latin alphabet, and published in Italy. Between the collapse of the Counter-Reformation and the rise of Ottoman power in the Western Balkans, these first shoots of Albanian literature withered from general neglect by the close of the seventeenth century. The eighteenth-century Ottoman-Albanian literature that grew in its place was written in Arabic script, based on Islamic practices, and created 9

 Interview conducted on June 28, 2019.

2  IN THE PUBLIC INTEREST: STRUCTURES OF FEELING IN ALBANIAN… 

31

a new language that mixed Albanian, Turkish, and Persian idioms. Because the intellectual leaders of the emergent movement for national awareness associated this second strand of Albanian literature with foreign cultural imperialism, however, the witty and erudite poetry of the bejtexhinj (couplet maker) would soon be abandoned in favor of developing a new, Western-facing romantic nationalism. The nineteenth-century Rilindja literature of the Albanian Renaissance took inspiration—via European mediators such as Johann Georg von Hahn’s (1854) Albanian Studies—from the ancient oral tradition of Albanian epic verse (Morgan 2016, 102–3). Modern Albanian literature thus turned from themes and styles reflecting its colonial present to ones recalling a mythical past. This turn culminated with the publication of Gjergj Fishta’s (1937) The Highland Lute. Often dubbed “the Albanian Iliad,” The Highland Lute is an epic narration of the Albanian struggle for autonomy. According to Elsie, it constituted “the first Albanian-language contribution to world literature” (1995, 391). The established precedent of cutting off rather than cultivating the roots of Albanian literature was repeated with force after the communist takeover in 1944. Instead of nurturing the mostly noncommunist writers who emerged during the country’s brief periods of independence (1912–1939) and subsequent occupation by Italy and Germany (1939–1944), the new regime led by Enver Hoxha, Koçi Xoxe, and Mehmet Shehu deemed reactionary and anti-patriotic any artist or intellectual—including Gjerj Fishta!—whose work deviated from the doctrine prescribed by Albanian Socialist Realism. Officially adopted at the Second National Congress of the Writers’ Union in 1952, Albanian Socialist Realism adhered to the Soviet model that linked the “truthful, historically concrete representation of reality … with the task of ideological transformation and education of workers in the spirit of socialism” (Pipa 1991, 7–8). Noncompliance was subject to sanctions ranging from demotion and relocation to arrest, imprisonment, torture, and execution (Pipa 1991, 18–23). Despite these constraints, a genuine literature again managed to take root, for example, in the best poems and novels of Dritëro Agolli (1931–2017) and Ismail Kadare (b. 1936). In the calamities that shook the foundations of Albanian culture forty-­ five years later, Elsie saw clear indications of the recurring pattern he traced through his 1000-page history. Writing in the early 1990s, he described the postsocialist literary landscape in the bleakest of terms. “Virtually all

32 

M. ROSEN

Albanian language publishing companies have either gone bankrupt or been shut down. No money, no paper, no ink, no jobs and, worse than anything at present, no hope” (1995, xiii). But true to pattern, it was not long before a new crop of publishers emerged from the ruins of state socialism. Onufri in 1992. Toena in 1993. Çabej in 1994. Aleph in 1996. IDK in 2001. Zenit in 2004. Pika pa sipërfaqe in 2009. While these companies also published original works by Albanian authors, nearly 80 percent of their collective output consisted of translations. This is a strong indication of how important translation has been for the book publishing industry in Albania. But the link between literary translation and transnational circuits of knowledge and imagination is not something that applies only to small nations. No literature can develop in isolation. And just as the “Authorized Version” of the Bible (King James Version, 1611) was both a work of literary translation and a “treasure house of English prose” (Lewis 1950, 23), so too Buzuku’s Missal was not only a work of translation, but also the first Albanian book. The lines of connection between Albanian readers and the universe of world literature that extended outward from the sixteenth century were put under severe strain by the ideology of “self-reliance” that developed in the last third of the former Communist dictatorship (Mëhilli 2017, 228). What began after World War II with the persecution of intellectuals seen as representatives of the old regime (Elsie 2005, 162) extended by the 1970s to the condemnation of any “alien ideological manifestations” (Pipa 1991, 33; Prifti 1978, 167). Responding to a 1973 report that young people “wanted to read other kinds of books than those offered to them,” the Party boss, Enver Hoxha, for instance, said, “No, comrades … We have nothing to learn from this [European, imperialist, revisionist] culture … but should discard it contemptuously and fight it with determination” (Pipa 1991, 74). To the main subjects of the account that follows, the residual effect of that contempt was one of the great tragedies of modern Albanian history. Indeed, of all the statements about the past I recorded in my fieldnotes, the ones that spoke of the damage done by “celebratory histories” of the state and “narrow views” of the outside world were among the most frequent and, it seemed, most deeply felt. The essential idea about the future I scribbled in the same notebooks had two parts: First, that changing the conditions of social life in Albania for the better would require new ways of thinking; and second, that a new kind of literature could help bring about that change.

2  IN THE PUBLIC INTEREST: STRUCTURES OF FEELING IN ALBANIAN… 

33

It was no accident that Arlind and Ataol rendered the tragedy of Albania in terms that overlapped (albeit in a structurally inverted form) with Milan Kundera’s (1984) thesis in “The Tragedy of Central Europe.” As we have seen, Pika pa sipërfaqe has already published translations of many of Kundera’s heroes. Among them, the Polish émigré Witold Gombrowicz emerged as a favorite among readers I met in Tirana. In 2018, for example, I attended a public lecture billed as “Ferdydurke-interpretime kritike— a critical lecture on Witold Grombowicz’s novel ‘Ferdydurke,’ brought to Albania from ‘Pika pa sipërfaqe.’” In the talk, Klodi Leka, then a twenty-­ four-­year-old activist studying law in Tirana, had the room rolling with laughter as he read out a passage in which an unnamed teacher begged his pupils to submit to his circular logic: A great poet! Remember that, it’s important! And why do we love him? Because he was a great poet. A great poet indeed! … we love Juliuisz Słowacki and admire his poetry because he was a great poet. (Gombrowicz 2000, 42; Gombrowicz 2014, 62)

The passage is absurd in any language. But behind the absurdist humor, I detected in the audience that evening a heightened sense of identification with the defiant student Gałkiewicz (rendered Dybeku in the Albanian translation). Dybeku’s flat refusal, “nuk mundem, nuk mundem” (I can’t, I can’t), brings the pleading, sweating teacher to “a terrible impasse.” Any moment there could be an outbreak of—of what?—of inability, at any moment a wild roar of not wanting to could erupt and reach the headmaster and the inspector, at any moment the building could collapse and bury his child under the rubble. (Gombrowicz 2000, 43–44; Gombrowicz 2014, 63–64)

What was it in the sketch Gombrowicz penned in Warsaw around 1937 that the Tirana youth at Leka’s talk in 2018 recognized as true to their experience? My sense is that it was a recognition of the absurdity—and fragility—of the totalitarian mindset that has stubbornly persisted in many sectors of Albanian public life. It was, to extrapolate further, a feeling about real people—like many of the parents of the youth at Leka’s talk— who believed, who supported, who were manipulated by the state ideology, and who did not know what to do when communism fell. Though I hesitate to generalize the sentiments of the audience in this way, my translation of their translation was not something I brought with me to the

34 

M. ROSEN

field. Rather, it was mediated by—and is in fact a paraphrase of—something Arlind said to me one afternoon as we waited out the rain under the portico of the Palace of Culture, built on the site of Tirana’s old Bazaar, facing the temporary concert scaffolding emblazoned with ALBtelecom and other corporate sponsors’ vision of a then cluttered Skanderbeg square. “They’ve ruined the city,” Arlind said. (I recalled Ataol making a similar comment the day before. “It’s not a city anymore,” he said as we stepped over the ubiquitous hazards of broken pavement.) “There was something very wrong about conditions under communism,” Arlind continued. “But rather than correcting that course after the nineties, it was la même chose, the same mistakes, the same problems, repeating under a different economic system.”10

The Romantic Model One of the forerunners of the Albanian Rilindja (lit. Rebirth) was the writer and activist Naum Veqilharxhi (1797–1846). Embracing the idea of Albania as a nation, Veqilharxhi opposed the division of Albanian schools along religious and linguistic lines. In his view, Albanians had not been able to form a national consciousness because rather than using Albanian as the medium of education, the communities classified as Muslim used Turkish, the Orthodox used Greek, and the Catholic used Latin or Italian. Believing Albania’s cultural and political development depended on the creation of an alphabet suited to writing in Albanian, Veqilharxhi began working on an alphabet of his own invention in 1824. The result of this work, A Very Short and Useful Primer, was a small book written in Tosk (the southern Albanian dialect) and published in 1844. In the preface of the second edition, Veqilharxhi wrote: Why should it be that we, Albanians, are standing apart … so deprived of writing and reading in our language? … We can learn properly and work well enough. But only some of us are lucky enough to profit from this, while many others live in a darkness that falls heavily upon them … Such considerations, my dear boys, have prompted me to take up this task without fear of the weariness I knew it would bring, not with an appetite for fame but with a feeling of duty towards my country and my mother tongue. (Veqilharxhi 2013, 260–261)  Interview conducted on June 15, 2018.

10

2  IN THE PUBLIC INTEREST: STRUCTURES OF FEELING IN ALBANIAN… 

35

Veqilharxhi’s words echo Buzuku’s sentiments. He speaks of his labor as a duty, carried out not for personal profit but to create durable benefits for a societal “we.” In this, Veqilharxhi’s intimate address also resonates in some respects with the socially minded vision I would hear articulated by the cofounders of Pika pa sipërfaqe. A related structure of feeling that reaches back to the time of the national awakening appears as a critique of the present which is set against visions of a glorious past. Located sometime between a writer’s or speaker’s memories of childhood and ancient times, these visions recall the problem of perspective that Williams outlined in the context of British history (Williams 1973, 9–12). In published works and in statements I recorded as fieldnotes, I found certain analogues to English formulas such as “Oh, happy Eden,” “organic community,” and “Old England.” Consider, for instance, the tone and substance of the following example from Pashko Vasa (1825–1892). In his 1879 book, The Truth on Albania and Albanians, Vasa wrote, Up to the period mentioned [that is, until 1831, when Vasa was six years old], the condition of Albania was brilliant … Unfortunately, the change in the governmental system … brought disorder to the public mind. Deprived of its ancient forms by successive governors, Albania found itself the butt of the most corrupt covetousness, of innovations without consistency, of acts without cohesion. Thereby the minds of people have been troubled—torn between the recollection of the past, astonishment at the present, and uncertainty as to the future. (Vasa 2013, 124)

Between Vasa’s statement and one’s I heard in conversations in Tirana, there were clear differences. The main one was that my contemporary interlocutors were far less inclined to speak of a golden age. They may scoff if you ask them when the country was brilliant, rich, happy, and powerful. But if you substitute neoliberal governmentality and state capture for Ottoman domination, the resulting picture of public confusion and disorder remains intact. A similar vision animated the political writings of Sami Frashëri (1850–1904). Several themes from his manifesto, Albania, what was it, what is it, and what will it be? (1899), recurred in changed but recognizable forms in the notes from my fieldwork in Tirana. What Albania was and is, according to Frashëri’s account, recalled Vasa: “Albania was once a rich and prosperous country. This is no more the case” (Vasa 2013, 303). From a romanticized narration of Albania’s history and a sharp critique of

36 

M. ROSEN

its present condition, Frashëri went on to construct a detailed plan for moving Albania toward self-determination. The following excerpts are instructive. 1. Albanians speak one of the oldest and most beautiful languages in the world … How was it possible that the Albanian language survived without changes or damage despite the lack of letters, writing, and schools, while other languages written and used with great care have changed and deteriorated so much that they are now known as other languages? The answer to all these questions is very simple: Albanians preserved their language and their nationality not because they had letters, or knowledge, or civilization, but because they had freedom, because they always stood apart and did not mix with other people or let foreigners live among them. This isolation from the world, from knowledge, civilization and trade, in one word, this savage mountain life allowed the Albanians to preserve language and nationality. (Frashëri 2013) 2. There can be no Albania without Albanians; there can be no Albanians without the Albanian language; and there can be no Albanian language without a writing system for it and schools in which to teach it. Therefore, language is the first thing. The Turkish government must be compelled to rescind the ban which it has imposed upon the Albanian language. It must allow Albanian schools to be opened and must let books and periodicals in Albanian enter the country unimpeded. Every Albanian must learn to read and write in Albanian, and then must learn other languages. (Frashëri 2019) It is interesting to reflect on Frashëri’s notion of isolation in light of the history of continuous migrations in this area (Vullnetari 2021). Indeed, in setting up the juxtaposition of freedom and isolation—of preserving “the oldest and most beautiful language” and of living a “savage mountain life”—it would seem that Frashëri was playing at mythmaking on both sides of the equation. (He himself not only migrated from his native village in southern Albania to establish a professional life in Istanbul but also worked for a time in Tripoli.) Introducing the fictive character of isolation in this context is even more curious given the recommendation of the second passage, which suggests that the preservation of the Albanian language and nationality, which once apparently depended on isolation, now

2  IN THE PUBLIC INTEREST: STRUCTURES OF FEELING IN ALBANIAN… 

37

required the opposite—an education that would allow Albanians to bring the knowledge of the world into Albanian language and literature. And though this was not something Frashëri could have foreseen, it was in fact from translations of Marx, Engels, Lenin, and Stalin in the 1930s that a new Albanian society would be born.

The Stalinist Model Albania emerged from World War II under the leadership of an inexperienced communist party. Drawing on the model of Soviet socialist realism, the Party made literature an important focus of a totalizing program of social, political, and economic transformation. According to Arshi Pipa, who spent ten years (1946–1956) in an Albanian prison before escaping to Yugoslavia and migrating to the United States, Albanian literature between 1944 and 1990 “came to be the main channel for the distribution of Marxism-Leninism, through poems which were versified elaborations of party slogans and with novels fleshing out Stalin’s formula that writers are the ‘engineers of the human soul’ ” (Pipa 1991, iii). The Party, Pipa wrote, “wanted Albanian literature sifted, eliminating the darnel from the grain. The darnel included the coryphaei of Albanian literature, people such as Fishta, Noli, Schiro, Konitza, Lumo Skendó, Nikaj, Prendushi, Koliqi” (Pipa 1991, 18). Cutting these thinkers out of the important work of building a new society was particularly damaging because Albania at that time, again according to Pipa, “did not have many intellectuals” (Pipa 1991, 22).11 Of the Prime Minister, Pipa wrote, “[Enver] Hoxha’s level of culture was such that he did not know that the classics of Marxism occupied themselves with theoretical rather than technical problems of economy” (Pipa 1991, 22). The basis for this assessment came from Hoxha himself, who justified his decision against equalizing the Albanian and Yugoslav currencies by noting, “I completed a real course for the ‘intensive assimilation’ of economy. For whole days and nights I read that literature from Marx, Engels, Lenin and Stalin that I could get a hold of in French, which dealt with the problems of economy” (Hoxha 1982, 317, cited in Pipa 1991, 22).

11  To substantiate this claim, Pipa mentions that the first Minister of the Economy, Nako Spiru, was an economics student who had not completed his studies and the Minister of the Treasury in the first Albanian government, Ramadan Çitaku, was a land surveyor.

38 

M. ROSEN

Compared to the lack of economic expertise in the upper administration, the initial situation in the literary field was considerably better. I say “initial situation” because many established writers did not survive the early years of the socialist era. “Nine writers (seven of them Catholic clergy) were shot, five died in prison, and nineteen served prison sentences” (Pipa 1991, 22). Some twenty years later, in 1965, Enver Hoxha delivered the closing remarks of the 15th Plenum of the Central Committee of the Party of Labor of Albania. In a lengthy speech titled, “Literature and Art Should Serve to Temper People with Class Consciousness for the Construction of Socialism,” the Party boss laid down a set of rules and expectations for developing Albanian cultural production from a “Marxist-­ Leninist angle.” The title of the speech provides an adequate summary of the overall message. Starting from the idea that the collective morality of a people was variable and changeable, that it could be improved or degraded, made stronger or weaker, the Party’s task, Hoxha said, was to develop a new literature and art that would strengthen and improve the consciousness of the people. The objective of literature and art, in short, was to prepare the people to accept the values and morality that were the prerequisite for “a better, more bountiful and more beautiful life and future” (Hoxha 1980, 836). Before commencing any work, writers and poets were to ask themselves, “Does this thing I am doing serve the great cause of the people?” (Hoxha 1980, 854). The great cause! Remember that, it’s important! Like the teacher we met from Ferdydurke, Hoxha insisted that writers and artists should love and admire the proletarian morality of the working class because the proletarian morality of the working class was great. But for every Dybeku who refused, many more would accept the charge and would extoll in prose and poetry the new national virtues of independent life, perseverance, and social progress.

The Postsocialist Model In June 2018, I walked down Rr. Qemal Stafa to meet Arlind. I went a little out of my way to avoid the torn-up road that ran past his office and entered the outdoor seating area of a nondescript (and unnamed) café off of Rr. Barrikadave. It was ten minutes to ten, and I was about to sit at an open table when Orges, Arlind’s brother (also a bookseller), called my name. He was having a coffee with Elvis Hoxha, a translator who studied

2  IN THE PUBLIC INTEREST: STRUCTURES OF FEELING IN ALBANIAN… 

39

philosophy in France and was now based in Tirana. I sat with them. We were joined a moment later by Enis Sulstarova, Lecturer in Sociology at the University of Tirana who studied political science in Turkey, and Enis’s daughter, then eight years old, who brought a copy of Harry Potter in translation. Arlind was last to arrive. What turned into a good opportunity for fieldwork came about because Arlind had double-booked a meeting with me and two of his authors/ translators. I was happy to postpone that day’s lesson in Albanian language and literature for the chance to see how Arlind conducted his regular business. The reason for meeting with Elvis concerned a translation of Alan Badiou’s hypertranslation of Plato’s Republic, which Pika pa Sipërfaqe was interested in publishing. The business with Enis concerned a re-­publication of Democracy and Totalitarianism by Claude Lefort, which was first translated into Albanian by the French-Kosovar philosopher, Muhamedin Kullashi, and published in 1993 by Shtëpia Botuese Arbri, whose copyright, I understood, was soon to expire.12 After concluding their business, Arlind, Enis, and Elvis shifted into casual discussion. (By then Orges had left; Enis’s daughter remained content reading Harry Potter.) Although I listened with attention, some of their conversation eluded my understanding. When the topic of Arlind teaching me Albanian came up, for instance, I was not sure if they were simply noting this as a fact or lightly making fun of the enterprise. My uncertainty must have shown because Enis broke in just then, in English, saying, “We are discussing language, so it’s very complicated.” Arlind clarified, “The philosophy of language.” “Ska problem (no problem),” I said. “Vazhdo (go on).” Their conversation from here went into literature. They talked for some time about a recent book on Migjeni (1911–1938), the Albanian poet from Shkodër who published mainly in Albanian periodicals from 1933 to his premature death in 1938. When the name of Arshi Pipa (1920–1997) came up, I interjected. I had a quote in my notebook I wanted to read out: “Our inquiry has shown so far that Albanian literature is inseparable from Albanian politics and that a study of the former amounts to a sociological study of the various manifestations of Albanian nationalism” (Pipa 1978, 195). 12  Pika pa sipërfaqe published both Alain Badiou’s Republika e Platonit (trans. Elvis Hoxha) and Claude Lefort’s Demokracia dhe totalitarizmi (trans. Muhamedin Kullashi) in November 2018.

40 

M. ROSEN

“Okay,” Elvis said. “But it’s nothing special. It’s a general statement. And it’s normal.” In other words, “It goes without saying.” Or, “Isn’t that true of any national literature? Isn’t it true, for example, if we were speaking of French, or Russian, or Indonesian literature?” (Elvis did not actually say these “other words” but this is what he seemed to imply.) Enis responded by affirming the statement. “Yes,” he said, “historically, this is true. It’s valid. The emergence of Albanian nationalism was explicitly bound up with the emergence of the written language. The literature was a functional literature. It was not an accidental or an organic connection, as might be said with Anderson’s [1991] Imagined Communities. It was engineered. The Congress of Monastir. The establishment of the written language. The teaching of the language in Albanian schools. The first major works of literature. These all intended to establish the idea of Albania as a nation. There was an explicit political purpose in all of this. The purpose was to create and affirm the nation and national consciousness.” Elvis debated some of these points. He was making a kind of philosophical argument, talking about the universal, the singular, and a contradiction. I had some trouble following his argument but understood it to be related to a reference Enis made to Pascale Casanova’s (2004) model of literature divided into major (world) and minor (national) traditions. According to this division, Enis said, an author like Ismail Kadare would be seen as a national (i.e., minor) writer, whereas Jorge Luis Borges was a major writer, concerned with humanity in global terms. Here I interjected again. “If Kadare is an author of the national scale,” I said, “are there any Albanian authors you would put on the world scale?” “We don’t have novelists of world literature status,” Arlind said, “but poets, we have.” Arlind named Martin Çamaj (1925–1993) as one who had “something to give to the experience of Europe.” He likewise recommended Mitrush Kuteli (1907–1967). Also mentioned (though by whom is not clear from my notes) were Petro Marko (1913–1991), Kasëm Trebeshina (1926–2017), and Agron Tufa (b. 1967). When I asked about one of the Albanian novelists recently published by Pika pa sipërfaqe, Elvis looked away with a gesture that said, “hm, I don’t know about that.” He then said, “We have writers but not literature.” After a brief pause, again moving from the particular to the universal, Elvis extended the “we” beyond the nation: “That’s the problem in the world today.”

2  IN THE PUBLIC INTEREST: STRUCTURES OF FEELING IN ALBANIAN… 

41

Structures of Feeling From conversations such as the ones reported in this chapter, I built up a picture of my interlocutors’ vision of publishing as a public service that was at odds with the harsh realities they experienced in everyday life. To keep that picture grounded in verbatim statements about how Arlind and Ataol saw things, I arranged in late summer 2019 to record a conversational interview in their office near Sami Frashëri High School in Tirana. The discussion that follows moves chronologically through an edited version of that interview, the full transcript of which came to a little more than 10,000 words. A few days before recording the interview, I explained in separate meetings with Arlind and Ataol what I had in mind. I told them I wanted to try to pin down why they used three specific words in the short description they posted on their publishing house’s official website.13 The words were i pavarur (which in English would be the equivalent of “independent”), jofitimprurës (which translates as “nonprofit”), and social (which is pronounced differently but has the same broad and multivalent connotations as the English word derived from the same Latin roots).14 It was apparent to me by then that the meanings of these common Albanian adjectives diverged in certain respects from my concepts. For example, when I thought of an independent publisher, I thought of a small press that had not been subsumed by a big publishing group. But since there were no big publishing groups in Albania, saying Pika pa sipërfaqe was i pavarur had to convey something else. Wanting to know what that something else was, I opened the conversation by asking, “Do you think it might be misleading for me, when writing about your project, to translate i pavarur as independent?”15 “The Albanian term has some similarities with the original term in English,” Ataol said. “But there are some important differences. I know something of what ‘independent publisher’ means abroad, which is basically ‘not connected to some business conglomerate.’ This is not the case here … To me, i pavarur has more political connotations, meaning we are  See https://www.facebook.com/PikaPaSiperfaqe  Bruno Latour has given the relevant etymology: “[In] Latin socius denotes a companion, an associate. From the different languages, the historical genealogy of the word ‘social’ is construed first as following someone, then enrolling and allying, and, lastly, having something in common”(Latour 2005, 6). 15  Interview conducted on August 9, 2019. 13 14

42 

M. ROSEN

independent from any political party or any other state or public institution.” “He wrote that [description for the website],” Arlind said, referring to Ataol. “But for me, it’s not a problem.” “But does being i pavarur,” I replied to Arlind, “have some kind of –”. “Reality?” Arlind said. “This is difficult to say. We are dependent on our collaborators and our public and many others who support us. Our families. Our funders. So, we are dependent. But I think what Ataol is saying is that we are open. We don’t have an ideology, a program, or a political agenda. We are independent insofar as we don’t have a ‘hidden side.’ Otherwise, we are dependent. Very, very dependent. Because our families support us, our friends, collaborators, you, the public … Maybe here i pavarur has more significance than ‘independent’ does abroad because, here, after the nineties, the modern publishing houses were created by people who were dependent on the old communist regime … So this is one reason. The second is that the people with the ability to go into publishing in the nineties were privileged, from the state.” “They had political affiliations,” Ataol said. “Or were family members of someone with political power.” “This was the context I think Ataol had in mind,” Arlind said. “And he chose that word to distinguish from this.” “This is fairly correct,” Ataol said. “Another way to put it would be to consider the history. Since the end of World War Two, with the formation of the Socialist Republic of Albania, and later on, we never had publishers who established themselves in some sort of intellectual pursuit. We either had state publishers or commercial opportunists. The activity of the state publishers depended on an ideology of the modern state. After that idea collapsed, publishing landed at the feet of the commercial opportunists, who viewed it like a job. They picked it just like they would any other, like if they had dealt in vegetables, they would have become vegetable producers. There were a few exceptions. I don’t consider us to be unique. But they are mostly like us, independent, small publishers.” “Before 1945,” Arlind said, drawing the perspective farther back, “there were a lot of publishing houses, but the quality and the range of the catalogue was very limited. Publishing in the Albanian language really only started near the end of the nineteenth century. And from that period to 1945, the mainstream publishers only published books to spread Albanian nationalism. There were many translations but few classics …

2  IN THE PUBLIC INTEREST: STRUCTURES OF FEELING IN ALBANIAN… 

43

After 1945, the situation was as Ataol said. But after the nineties it was different. Translation flourished.”16 “So you both agree about the state publishers during communism, but the picture of publishing after the nineties was more complicated?” I said. “If you want to construct a sort of history or genealogy of book publishing in Albania right after the fall of communism,” Ataol said, “you would find that the first major publishers were established by the people who worked in the hierarchy of the old publishing houses [i.e., Naim Frashëri and 8 nëntori] during communism. You either had someone working as an editor there or in the lower part of the hierarchy, like administration, warehouse management, or distribution. These were the main and major publishers that were founded in the first five or ten years after the fall of communism. Along with them there were some very small individual initiatives that you might also call what I mean by i pavarur.” This discussion helped me understand the specific connotations i pavarur had for the publishers. But it was still not clear to me whether Arlind and Ataol thought the connotations they attached to the term were likely to be shared by other members of the Albanian reading public. So I asked, “Do you think the word has a positive connotation for your readers?” Ataol began his response by reminding me of some basic facts and perspectives that, although quite important, were sometimes easy for me to lose sight of. “We do at best 500-copy print runs,” he said. “300 in many cases. And even those print runs take at least two or three years to run out. Sometimes four, five years. So we’re talking about a really small public. But even though the number is very small, I wouldn’t feel comfortable in putting all these readers in the same box. Saying ‘our readers.’ That’s a very broad generalization.” I appreciated Ataol’s refusal to generalize, not least because it kept me honest about my own commitments to writing “ethnographies of the 16  Thanks to prolific twentieth-century translators such as Fan Noli (1882–1965), Skënder Lurasi (1900–1982), Mitrush Kuteli (1907–1967), Petro Zheji (1929–2015), and Robert Shvarc (1932–2003), many classics of world literature (e.g., Prometheus Bound, Don Quixote, Gulliver’s Travels, Madame Bovary, and Anna Karenina, among many others) have been established as popular staples among Albanian readers. For a sense of the high volume but narrow range of books published during communism, see Peter Prifti’s (1978, 133), accounting of book publishing between 1945 and 1960, when the state-controlled publishing apparatus based in Tirana brought out approximately 3000 titles, totaling nearly 30 million copies.

44 

M. ROSEN

particular.”17 I also appreciated that after establishing these limitations, Ataol went on to answer my question. “For these readers,” he said, “small number though they might be, I don’t think this word ‘independent’ has ever played any role in their interpretation of our work. If you ask, I’m pretty sure, no one will refer to us as an independent publisher. And by independent I’m using the Albanian conception [i pavarur].” “For some groups here,” Arlind said, “we seem like Communists. For some actual Communists, we seem like Liberals. For some religious groups, we seem like agnostics. But I think they feel something very near to that word. During our contacts with our readers, I feel that they perceive us as people who are not connected directly with the establishment.” After an exchange of anecdotes that helped me get an idea of the kind of readers that appreciated the work they were doing with the publishing house, I steered the conversation back to the topic of cultural translation. “I want to return,” I said, “to the meaning of the phrase, ‘conceived as a social, nonprofit project.’ ” “Well,” Ataol said, “we wouldn’t necessarily mind being able to have, by Albanian standards, two good salaries on which to live and keep doing what we’re doing. But in the last ten, eleven years, this has not been possible … Again, we might have diverging opinions, me and Arlind, but I wouldn’t want this to turn into a profitable business because then, I think, at a certain point along the way we would lose control over our ideas concerning publication, why we started it, and why we’re doing it.” “Profit is not our goal,” Arlind said. “We’re doing what we’re doing,” Ataol continued, “because we like books … That was what I meant when I stated, ‘it was conceived from the beginning as a social project.’ I meant that it was not meant to be profitable but to benefit society.” It was at this point in the conversation that Arlind made the statements I put in the epigraph of this chapter—that publishing was not a conventional business, that it concerned a product of the mind, that it was supposed to help people, and that as something produced in the public interest, books were not like other products or commodities. 17  As I have noted elsewhere (Rosen 2019b), I use the term “ethnographies of the particular” with reference to the approach Lila Abu-Lughod outlined in “Writing Against Culture” (1991). I was first drawn to this approach because the term “Albanian culture” never seemed adequate to the task of understanding and conveying what life was like for Arlind and Ataol.

2  IN THE PUBLIC INTEREST: STRUCTURES OF FEELING IN ALBANIAN… 

45

“I know of conceptions of profit as benefiting society,” Ataol said, continuing the conversation. “But personally, I don’t see individual profit as a contribution, at least not in publishing. It’s probably a bad establisher of value. If you want to formulate a set of criteria that will measure what you’re doing in terms of, ‘Is it in the benefit of society or not?’ I don’t think profit would rank among those criteria. I’m not sure they’re directly related, like one can be the consequence of the other, or they’re just two foundational ideas, but if you want to try to formulate what we are, those two probably stand together. We’re both a socially minded activity and a not-for-profit organization.” “But ‘social project’ does not mean we are just socialists,” Arlind said. “Publishing is a public activity, to spread knowledge. It’s one of the means to emancipate society. This is why this is a social project … But now, we’re confronting new difficulties. Maybe now it’s time to have more sure steps, a strategy. I’m more stressed now than I was five or ten years ago. Ten years ago we didn’t know what we were doing.” “Our life quality has been in decline,” Ataol said. “Yes,” Arlind said, “I think we need to change something. A new experience or new strategy, a new method. But I find this very difficult. I like our way of working, but it has consequences.” “The workload has become very difficult to manage,” Ataol said. “On the one hand, the number of books in publication has been growing. We are now more than one hundred titles. On the other, we are already operating at very strained budgets … The number of books keeps growing and the amount of time [we have to work] is being restricted. We both have small children.” “Everyday life in Albania is difficult,” Arlind said. “It’s crazy here, in Tirana.” “You have to imagine creatures living in very extreme conditions,” Ataol said. “Like the animals at the bottom of the sea or those living at very high temperatures in the desert. This is the kind of existence.” “When we say, ‘the power’ here, ‘the corruption,’ all these things are bonded with our everyday life,” Arlind added. “We experience corruption,” Ataol said. “We experience abuse of power, we experience violence.” “Everyday life in Albania is the key to understanding all these things,” Arlind said. “Because in my everyday life, year after year, I’ve had a lot of difficulties, of a kind I never imagined. Never. The politicians and corrupt people here have colonized our everyday life with buildings, with

46 

M. ROSEN

corruption, with mafia, with all their instruments of power. Everyday life here is very, very stressful. And they say, ‘The only way to improve your everyday life is to have money.’ To become like them.”

Conclusion: Literature’s Historicity The living social histories of Albanian publishing companies such as Onufri, Toena, Çabej, Aleph, IDK, Zenit, and Pika pa sipërfaqe remain largely untold. Outside a relatively small but transnational circle of contemporary readers, even the names are mostly unknown. From the standpoint of ethnographic storytelling (McGranahan 2020), however, I think the likes of Bujar Hudhri of Onufri, Gentian Çoçoli of Aleph, Piro Misha of IDK, and Krenar Zejno of Zenit Editions would all make excellent informants. Drawing from my own fieldwork with Ataol Kaso and Arlind Novi, the cofounders of Pika pa sipërfaqe, my intent here has been to contribute to the inevitably larger project, which I hope future researchers will join me in pursuing, of doing literary anthropology with Albanian sources. Ultimately, my discussion of the ethnographic material in this chapter sought to show how my interlocutors’ decisions about what and how to read, translate, and publish in the present have been structured by their past experiences and future expectations. My argument thus built on and can contribute to a body of contemporary theory dealing with overlapping experiences of past and future times in the present (Koselleck 1985; Lambek 2003; Napolitano 2015; Hartog 2016; Stewart 2016; Hodges 2019; Musaraj this volume). Arlind and Ataol had a social vision that was irreducibly their own. But their conception of Pika pa sipërfaqe as an independent, nonprofit, social project also resonated with earlier public projects in Albania. My analysis of the projects in question has shown that, despite very significant differences, they overlapped in three important ways. First, they all were grounded in a critique of the present. Second, they all were oriented toward a vision of a better future. And third, they all operated with an idea of literature as a means of social transformation. Evidence for these claims appears in documents authored by the intellectual leaders of the Albanian National Awakening in the nineteenth century, by the communist Party ideologues who dominated the public sphere in the second half of the twentieth century, and in statements I recorded as fieldnotes in the present of the ethnography.

2  IN THE PUBLIC INTEREST: STRUCTURES OF FEELING IN ALBANIAN… 

47

Viewing these areas of overlap as structures of feeling can help explain my interlocutors’ views of publishing as a social activity. For even as their conception of books took shape in a space built on the ruins of a past in which literature was made to function as a tool of totalitarian control, they saw publishing as something to be done in the public interest. Publishing, they said, was a way to emancipate readers by spreading knowledge and raising social awareness. Operating according to a strong feeling of social responsibility, Arlind and Ataol did not speak of literature’s function in the abstract. They referred to concrete knowledge and new realities that were different from the precarious everyday life they and their readers knew all too well. And though one cannot necessarily point to a given book or a collection of books and say, “Here is a new way of thinking,” or “There is a new social reality,” there are clear indications that among the many books Pika pa sipërfaqe has published, some have already begun to help people—including activists and community organizers such as Diana Malaj and Klodi Leka—overcome the inertia of ambivalence and mistrust that has long permeated public life in Tirana. Acknowledgments  I would like to thank all of my interlocutors in Tirana, especially Arlind and Ataol, for sharing their time and experience with me. I would also thank the editors for their generous reading and helpful suggestions for improving the manuscript.

Bibliography Abu-Lughod, Lila. 1991. Writing Against Culture. In Recapturing Anthropology: Working in the Present, ed. Richard Fox, 137–162. Santa Fe: School of American Research Press. Anderson, Benedict. 1991. Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origin and Spread of Nationalism. London: Verso. Bedalli, Elona. 2013. Kaosi Me Biznesin e Librit. Revista Monitor 23: 2013. https://www.monitor.al/kaosi-­me-­biznesin-­e-­librit/. Bloch, Maurice. 1977. The Past and the Present in the Present. Man 12 (2): 278–292. Casanova, Pascale. 2004. The World Republic of Letters: Convergences. Cambridge, Mass: Harvard University Press. Elsie, Robert. 1995. History of Albanian Literature. Vol. 2 vols. New  York: Columbia University Press. ———. 2005. Albanian Literature: A Short History. London: I.B. Tauris.

48 

M. ROSEN

Frashëri, Sami. 2013. Albania, What It Was, What It Is and What It Will Be? In Discourses of Collective Identity in Central and Southeast Europe 1770–1945, Volume 2. National Romanticism: The Formation of National Movements, ed. Balázs Trencsényi and Michal Kopeček, 297–304. Trans. R. Halili. Budapest: Central European University Press. ———. 2019. Shqipëria  - Ç’ka Qënë, ç’është e ç’do Të Bëhetë? Mendime Për Shpëtimt Të Mëmëdheut Nga Reziket Që e Kanë Rethuarë. In Texts and Documents of Albanian History. Trans. R. Elsie. http://www.albanianhistory. net/1899_Frasheri/index.html. Gombrowicz, Witold. 2000. Ferdydurke. Trans. D. Borchardt. New Haven: Yale University Press. ———. 2014. Ferdydurke. Trans. E. Lloha. Tiranë: Pika pa sipërfaqe. Hartog, François. 2016. Regimes of Historicity: Presentism and Experiences of Time. Trans. S. Brown. New York: Columbia University Press. Hobsbawm, E.J. 1994. The Age of Extremes: A History of the World, 1914-1991. New York: Pantheon Books. Hodges, Matt. 2019. History’s Impasse: Radical Historiography, Leftist Elites, and the Anthropology of Historicism in Southern France. Current Anthropology 60 (3): 391–413. Hoxha, Enver. 1980. Literature and Art Should Serve to Temper People with Class Consciousness for the Construction of Socialism. In Selected Works of Enver Hoxha, III, 832–859. Tirana: Institute of Marxist-Leninist Studies. ———. 1982. The Titoites. Tirana: Institute of Marxist-Leninist Studies. Koselleck, Reinhart. 1985. Studies in Contemporary German Social Thought. Futures Past: On the Semantics of Historical Time. Trans. K. Tribe. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. Kundera, Milan. 1984. The Tragedy of Central Europe. Trans. E.  White. The New York Review of Books, April 26, 1984. Lambek, Michael. 2003. The Weight of the Past: Living with History in Mahajanga, Madagascar. New York: Palgrave Macmillan. Latour, Bruno. 2005. Reassembling the Social: An Introduction to Actor-Network-­ Theory. New York: Oxford University Press. Lewis, C.S. 1950. The Literary Impact of the Authorised Version. London: The Athlone Press. McGranahan, Carole, ed. 2020. Writing Anthropology: Essays on Craft and Commitment. Durham: Duke University Press. Mëhilli, Elidor. 2017. From Stalin to Mao: Albania and the Socialist World. Ithaca: Cornell University Press. Napolitano, Valentina. 2015. Anthropology and Traces. Anthropological Theory 15 (1): 47–67. Pipa, Arshi. 1978. Albanian Literature: Social Perspectives. München: R. Trofenik.

2  IN THE PUBLIC INTEREST: STRUCTURES OF FEELING IN ALBANIAN… 

49

———. 1991. Contemporary Albanian Literature. New  York: Columbia University Press. Prifti, Peter. 1978. Socialist Albania Since 1944. Cambridge: MIT Press. Rosen, Matthew. 2019a. Reading Nearby: Literary Ethnography in a Postsocialist City. Anthropology and Humanism 44 (1): 70–87. ———. 2019b. Between Conflicting Systems: An Ordinary Tragedy in Now-­ Capitalist Albania. Anthropological Journal of European Cultures 28 (2): 1–22. SBSH. 2012. Shoqata e Botuesve Shqiptarë. https://shbsh.al/wp2/. Stewart, Charles. 2016. Historicity and Anthropology. Annual Review of Anthropology 45 (1): 79–94. Toena. 2013. Historiku i Shtëpisë Botuese. http://www.toena.com.al. Vasa, Pashko. 2013. The Truth on Albania and Albanians. In Discourses of Collective Identity in Central and Southeast Europe 1770–1945, Volume 1. Late Enlightenment: Emergence of the “National Idea”, ed. Balázs Trencsényi and Michal Kopeček, 118–124. Trans. E.  St. John Fairman. Budapest: Central European University Press. Veqilharxhi, Naum. 2013. A Preface to Young Albanian Boys. In Discourses of Collective Identity in Central and Southeast Europe 1770–1945, Volume 1. Late Enlightenment: Emergence of the “National Idea,”, ed. Balázs Trencsényi and Michal Kopeček, 258–262. Trans. R.  Halili. Budapest: Central European University Press. Vullnetari, Julie. 2021. ‘Can Love Be Transferred’? Tracing Albania’s History of Migration and the Meaning of Remittances. In Remitting, Building, and Restoring Contemporary Albania, ed. Nataša Gregorič Bon and Smoki Musaraj. New York: Palgrave Macmillan. Williams, Raymond. 1973. The Country and the City. New  York: Oxford University Press.

CHAPTER 3

Photography and Régime d’historicité: Past, Present, and Future in Two Photographic Albums on Communist Albania Gilles de Rapper

Photographs are in themselves temporal objects that arouse feelings about the passage of time, about what has been and what is no longer, about the traces of the past and their own future. A very large part of the scientific literature on photography is thus interested in the relationship of photography with memory, with history, and with death.1 The history of photography in general, as well as the history of certain photographic genres (ethnographic photography in particular), also gives much space to

1  Not to mention here fiction literature. Among the seminal essays on photography, time, and memory are of course Sontag (1979) and Barthes (1980). Recent works include Shevchenko (2014) and Brunet (2017).

G. de Rapper (*) French School at Athens, Athens, Greece e-mail: [email protected] © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2021 N. Gregorič Bon, S. Musaraj (eds.), Remitting, Restoring and Building Contemporary Albania, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-84091-4_3

51

52 

G. DE RAPPER

reflections on how photographs generate our relationship to the past, to memory, and time.2 The history of Albanian photography dates back in the period of the late nineteenth century when the Italian photographer Pietro Marubbi moved to Albania where he became one of the first professional photographers in the country. By the time the Second World War broke out, photography was practiced in most Albanian cities and had also penetrated the countryside. However, it remained limited to certain categories of the population and its diffusion seems to have been primarily urban. During the communist period (1944–1991), a (mainly state) organization of photographic production was gradually set up, resulting in an increase in the quantity of photographs produced and circulating throughout the territory. Photography, as shown by the archives and the testimonies of those who lived through this period, was then a means of recording all kinds of activities, both public and private, and a means of disseminating, in the hands of the state, messages aimed at the whole population. The major part of the production of this period thus has a political and ideological dimension which explains both its forms and reception during the communist period and what it has become in post-communist Albania. Photographs are also material objects. As such, they can be “remitted” or “restored” (or destroyed), and can arouse emotions. In this chapter, I discuss how certain photographs produced during the communist period still affect us today, determining our way of imagining the communist past and the post-communist present. I also ask whether, and to what extent, these same photographs give us access to “structural terrains” on which our perception of the past, present, and future might be based. To do this, I examine two photo albums published in Albania at around the same time (2013 and 2014), with the common feature that, almost twenty-five years after the end of the communist period, they both show a wide selection of photographs produced during this period. In this they are remarkable, given the long-lasting and widespread lack of interest in this type of images since 1991. I therefore hypothesize that their almost simultaneous publication constitutes a turning point in the way the communist past is perceived today in Albania and that these albums are an indication of a change in the “regime of historicity,” that is to say, in the 2  Photography also has a fundamental spatial dimension—because it allows movements of a certain type in space, because it is the object of “placements” that determine its meaning and power—which, for reasons of space, will not hold me here.

3  PHOTOGRAPHY AND RÉGIME D’HISTORICITÉ: PAST, PRESENT… 

53

way in which past, present, and future are articulated. I borrow the notion of “regime of historicity” (régime d’historicité) from François Hartog’s book on “presentism” as the typical regime of our times (Hartog 2003). It reflects the way in which society, at a given time, conceives its history and the relationship between past, present, and future. It is, in the words of François Hartog, “a way of translating and ordering the experiences of time—ways of articulating past, present and future—and giving them meaning” (Hartog 2003, 118). First, I briefly recall the anthropological approach to photography in the communist period, according to my own experience and practice, and why it can be conceived of as a specific access to the communist past. Second, I situate the two albums in question in a double rupture or “regime change,” suggesting that they reflect both the rupture constituted by the advent of communism and the construction of socialism in Albania after 1944, and that constituted by the collapse of the communist state in 1991. In the third part, I show how the “restoring” of photographs from the past in the two albums is carried out, in order to raise the question of what such restoring reveals about the regimes of historicity at work. Finally, I ask what kind of “structural terrains” can possibly lie within, or underneath, the images of the communist past remitted by the two albums.

Anthropology of Communist Photography I became interested in photography of the communist period around 2008, after more than ten years of field research in Albania on subjects that had nothing to do with communism or photography. In retrospect, my investigation into photography seems to me to be a way of capturing the presence of the communist past in contemporary Albania, a presence that had always struck me but which, until then, I had found difficult to analyze. All those who, like I did, discovered Albania in the 1990s were struck by the omnipresent traces left by what had been presented since 1991 as the communist past. These were material traces, of course, but also included everything that, in social relations and in ways of behaving as well as in ways of interpreting events and new conditions of existence, showed continuities with the previous period. Photography appeared to me a richer and more complex means of access to this relationship between the communist past and the

54 

G. DE RAPPER

post-­communist present.3 Indeed, photography, observed from the contemporary moment, made it possible to approach the legacy of the communist period in the two senses that Maria Todorova gave to this word in relation to the Ottoman legacy in the Balkans (Todorova 1996): legacy by continuity, because these images and the photographers who produced them were always present and alive; and legacy by representation, because of the iconic dimension of photography and the way in which it gives rise to interpretations. Inspired by similar approaches adopted in other locations (Strassler 2010; Wright 2013), I developed an anthropological approach to photography that was initially based on an ethnography of photography, understood as the observation of the relations between people and photographs (de Rapper 2019). The aim was not to consider photographs as a tool for recording ethnographic data, nor as a historical source providing access to the communist period, but as objects occupying a certain place in contemporary Albania, whose trajectory involved places, people, and objects that could still be observed. It is through these intermediaries—photographs, their producers and consumers, their places, the technical objects linked to them—that I was able (tentatively) to reconstruct what photography was like during the communist period, that is to say, to propose a picture of the photographic production of that period. Drawing on material evidence (places, objects, photographs, and other archival documents), this reconstruction is largely based on the memories of the people I met and on the narration of a memory, whether prompted by my investigation or meeting other needs. Unlike a historical investigation involving the researcher with archival documents alone, it is an investigation focused on the contemporary moment but seeking to understand and explain two lines of inquiry: what has become of photographers and photographs from the communist period since the fall of the political regime in which they originated; and the way in which these trajectories today help to inform the relationship between the present (post-communist) and the past (communist). In other words, I argue that the communist past is constructed in the present and that photographs from the past contribute to the simultaneous construction of the communist past and of the post-communist present. When I undertook this survey, photography from the communist period was not the subject of any research in Albania. The few publications 3  This turning point owes much to the photographer Anouck Durand and the research we conducted together between 2008 and 2013.

3  PHOTOGRAPHY AND RÉGIME D’HISTORICITÉ: PAST, PRESENT… 

55

dealing with the history of Albanian photography mentioned it very quickly and mostly in a negative way (e.g. Vrioni 2009). The former photographers I met had contrasting attitudes toward their production at that time. Some recognized it as being of great value; others seemed to disdain it. Many of the images had been destroyed, either deliberately or through negligence, as early as 1991 and in the years that followed. Among non-­ photographers—users and spectators of photography from this period— the mention of photography from the communist period referred to dull and monotonous images and at the same time aroused a form of tenderness and nostalgia.4 Photographs are ambivalent objects. However, there were signs that there was a curiosity about, and a desire to acknowledge communist-era photography. Among these signs, two albums of photographs published in 2013 and 2014 retain my attention in particular. To my knowledge, they are the first and only ones so far to be devoted almost exclusively to photography of the communist period (de Rapper 2020). The general hypothesis which motivates this chapter is that these two albums are signs or symptoms of a changing relationship with time, and more particularly with the communist past, which I propose to explore. I would like to show here how past, present, and future are articulated in these two albums, and how this articulation can be interpreted in terms of a “regime of historicity”; the analysis that follows does not, therefore, exhaust the content and meanings of the albums. Above all, it aims to show a particular modality of the presence of the communist past in contemporary Albania.

Photographs and Regime Changes The two albums mainly bring together photographs produced during the communist period which are thus given to a new public, with different motivations. It is therefore necessary to briefly retrace the social life of these photographs and, more broadly, of the genres to which they belong, in order to grasp how their meaning and reception have evolved up to the present day. Interestingly, this presentation can be made in terms of ruptures; in the conditions of communist Albania as in those of today, 4  I am dealing here with local reception alone. Reception of photographs from communist Albania in the West after 1991 is another topic, which would prompt reflections similar to what Sofia Kalo (this volume) reports for art, but which is beyond the scope of this chapter.

56 

G. DE RAPPER

photography contributes to establishing and visualizing temporal ruptures while itself being subject to ruptures. The same images thus bear witness to different relationships to time. Moreover, the two albums in question bear witness to changes in the trajectory of state photographers. The Communist Period: Presence of the Future The two albums belong to two major photographic genres of the communist period. The first (Kumi 2013) gives an account of the production over three decades of Petrit Kumi (born in 1930  in Elbasan), a professional photographer presenting himself as a “photo reporter” (alb. fotoreporter) (Fig. 3.1). This category of photographers was among the most highly valued in the profession and in society in general and, within this

Fig. 3.1  Petri Kumi Album Cover

3  PHOTOGRAPHY AND RÉGIME D’HISTORICITÉ: PAST, PRESENT… 

57

category, Petrit Kumi held and still holds an eminent position among Tirana photographers. Appointed photo reporter for the magazine Ylli for some twenty years (1964–1985), he then became head of the photographic laboratory of the Albanian Telegraphic Agency (ATSH), the only press agency in communist Albania. After 1991, he opened a private studio in Tirana. I met Petrit Kumi at the very beginning of my fieldwork; his name was mentioned to me by my first interlocutors and he was an essential reference when it came to photography during the communist period. For several years, he talked to me for hours about his work and his conception of photography, but was always reluctant to show me his archives. Most of his work, he said, had already been published, all you had to do was go to the library and leaf through the collection of the magazine Ylli. The album published in 2013 is a retrospective of his activity and photographic production. It follows on from several exhibitions organized in Tirana in 2009 and 2010. Both the album and the exhibitions are a self-­promotional enterprise aimed at exploiting the material accumulated over more than thirty years of activity. The second album (Dokle 2014) differs from the first in the photographic genre and in the editorial lens displayed (Fig. 3.2). It presents the production of a couple of photographers, Safet (1923–1981) and Gjylzade (1923–1996) Dokle, who were active in the town of Kukës in north-­ eastern Albania during most of the communist period. The spouses were employed in the public studio in the town from 1955 to 1970. As practitioners of “public service photography” (alb. Fotografia e shërbimit publik), their task was both to meet the needs of the population in souvenir, identity, wedding, and more generally family photography and to serve the needs of local institutions (political, economic, cultural, educational) in terms of representation and archiving. This organization was meant to respond to the scarcity of private cameras (but also to prevent the private practice of photography) and shaped popular uses and expectations of photography for three decades until it collapsed in 1991. The two albums thus present two extremes on the scale of prestige which seems to have distinguished photographers at a time of full nationalization of the profession with, on the one hand, the so-called institutional photographers (alb. Fotografët e institucioneve), often having access to high quality Western material, gravitating around power and enjoying relative freedom of movement and creation; and, on the other hand, the so-called cooperative photographers (alb. Fotografët e kooperativave), less

58 

G. DE RAPPER

Fig. 3.2  Safet and Gjylzade Dokle photo album

well equipped and, above all, subject to high work rates and repetitive tasks that kept them away from the ideal of the artist photographer. However, both were subject to the same demand from the state authorities: to represent the “construction of socialism” (alb. Ndërtimi i socializmit), that is, to show the new society whose project had to justify the power exercised by the state and by the communist party. The two albums thus illustrate what was called “socialist realism” in photography: a visual propaganda tool which was aiming to convince people that socialist happiness had arrived. A large part of the photographic production of the time was therefore oriented toward the future. More precisely, it was a question of documenting the present as a prefiguration of the future, as a “futurised” present, to use

3  PHOTOGRAPHY AND RÉGIME D’HISTORICITÉ: PAST, PRESENT… 

59

another of François Hartog’s expressions (Hartog 2003, 120)—this, for a number of reasons: firstly, because the profession itself had been subject from the start to a process of modernization in line with the transformation of society desired by the communists. In this process, the photographers of the new times had to move away from the practices of those of the previous period, even if the rupture was never really total. The new photographers, however, embodied modernity and were themselves part of the new society, just as their predecessors were represented as belonging to the old order. Secondly, photography of the communist era was oriented toward the future in that its objects belong to socialist modernity. The themes favored by the photographers and their commissioners were those of industrialization, mechanization, urbanization, and all the social transformations which were in line with the model of the future socialist society (literacy, hygiene, family relations, culture, etc.). Visually, the valorization of modernity was regularly performed through the juxtaposition of two images supposed to represent the “past” (yesterday) and the “present” (today), as in the example published in the magazine Ylli in November 1962, where two views of Durrës city center separated by a fifty-year time span are meant to visualize the changes brought by socialism (Fig. 3.3). This type of process spatializes time: two moments are put on the same plane, that of the page, as if two historical moments could be embraced by the human gaze. It also separates what, in reality, coexists, because elements of the old

Fig. 3.3  Ylli Magazine, 1962

60 

G. DE RAPPER

remain, next to or in the background of the most modern achievements, and the photographers’ task was also to keep out of the picture that which did not belong to modernity. In any case, in such “dialectical” montage, both images receive their meaning from their opposition. If the dominant tendency was to represent the present as a future being realized, it should not be forgotten that communist Albania was also strongly rooted in the past, even if it was recent past: the political authorities constantly recalled that their legitimacy dated back to the participation of communist partisans in the Second World War battles for the liberation of the country occupied by foreign armies. Photographers were involved in making and keeping alive the memory of this original event alongside many other professionals in the field of culture and the arts. This can be seen, for example, in the recurrence of photographs of monuments and commemorative ceremonies. It is significant that one of the first photographic albums produced by Communist Albania took as its theme the memorials of the “war of liberation” (Buza et al. 1973).5 It seems that the late 1960s and early 1970s saw a turning point in expectations of photography, a turning point that may reflect a new conception of the relationship between past, present, and future or, in any case, a new relationship between photography and the past, or photography and history. As early as the 1960s, the magazine Ylli had begun publishing photographs from the period of the Second World War to keep alive the memory of the partisan struggle, at a time when a new generation of Albanians who had not experienced war was reaching maturity. At the same time, the establishment of “village museums” throughout the country was accompanied by the collection of photographic evidence of the war period from the families of former partisans. This trend was intensified as the celebrations of the twentieth anniversary of the end of the war approached (1964), and it continued beyond. Moreover, older photographs began to resurface. By his own admission, Petrit Kumi himself was involved in this movement. In 1970 he published in Ylli the now famous photograph of Enver Hoxha standing on the balcony of the town hall of Shkodër, after having massively retouched it; surrounded by other speakers in 1930, the future leader of Albania now appeared isolated as the only protagonist of the official ceremony.6 5  Before that date, most albums were produced abroad, especially in China. For a contemporary treatment of these monuments, see van Gerven Oei (2015). 6  See Kumi (2013, 246–247) for Kumi’s recollections.

3  PHOTOGRAPHY AND RÉGIME D’HISTORICITÉ: PAST, PRESENT… 

61

A new era then began, that of the appearance of the category of “ancient photography” (alb. Fotografi e hershme), marked by a founding event: in September 1970, the newspaper Zëri i Popullit announced that Gegë Marubi, the third generation in a line of Shkodër photographers, had donated the entire archive of the Marubi family studio to the State. This event had two related consequences. Firstly, it served as an incentive for other “historical” photographers to deposit their archives in the new photo library created for this purpose. It was the beginning of a state mechanism aiming to build up a photographic archive from private funds. After the nationalization of the profession, it was now the past of the profession that was sought after. Then, the first attempts to write the history of photography in Albania appeared in the form of articles published in the magazine Ylli and elsewhere. Photography was therefore no longer just a modern technology at the service of the future; it also gave access to the past and had a history of its own. The photographic past of Albania was being invented. In 1982, the celebrations of the seventieth anniversary of the declaration of independence in November 1912 saw the release of an album of photographs of a purely historical nature (Ulqini 1982). In this album, as more generally in this new trend, the focus was quickly shifted to the oldest history of photography, that of its origins. As can be seen, ancient photography was valued for its “national” character. The turn of the 1970s is no doubt not unrelated to the nationalist orientation taken by the political power in the previous decade, following the 1961 break with the Soviet Union. An examination of the images published by the magazine Ylli suggests that this turning point also corresponds to the worsening of the country’s economic situation; modernist imagery, particularly that of the major industrial sites, gives way to imagery in which tradition and the pre-Communist past are increasingly present (Durand and de Rapper 2012, 58–59). When the image of the future erodes, the past reappears. 1991, the Break with the Past The rupture constituted by the end of communist power is noticeable in the organization of photographic production. The state system set up in the previous decades is interrupted in the same movement which sees the brutal end of the planned economy and the collectivization of the means of production in all other fields of activity. Public service photography, in

62 

G. DE RAPPER

particular, is being transformed by the privatization of studios and laboratories. The profession of photographer is once again primarily a private profession. The Dokle couple are not directly affected by this transformation; they ceased their activity in the 1970s. Petrit Kumi, on the other hand, embodies to a large extent this transition to “capitalism”; he opens a private studio and uses his experience and connections as head of the ATSH laboratory to import photographic equipment and materials from abroad and resell them to the growing numbers of private photographers. This new technology is thus at the service of new needs and new expectations regarding photography. The 1990s saw, for example, a massive and popular craze for color photography, previously inaccessible to the clients of public studios. These ruptures are in themselves the producers of temporal otherness and constitute the category of photography of the communist period, the “photography of the time” (alb. Fotografia e kohës, meaning, “from the time of communism”), which spectators identify or believe they can identify at first glance. The genre is characterized by the use of black and white film (although propaganda photography made great use of color and colorization) and by the static and monotonous nature of the poses (although photography was supposed to reflect the dynamism of society on the road to socialism). The Dokle album is in this sense a materialization of this category, since the layout accentuates the repetitive and stereotypical effect of the motifs, settings, and poses; the images are reproduced in small format, up to ten per page, and the first visual impression thus created is one of uniformity. It is the insignificance of these overly mechanical or artificial photographs that seems to be asserted here, in clear contradiction to expectations and feelings about photography. As it is currently received, the category of communist photography is also associated with the repressive aspects of the state and the notion of secrecy. Since the 1990s, newspapers and television have contributed significantly to making photography evidence of “communist crimes” by publishing images from previously unpublished or classified institutional archives. This use of photography from the past was particularly evident in the room at the National Historical Museum displaying crimes from the communist period from the perspective of the 1990s. There is also a novel by Ismail Kadare written at the end of the 1990s, in which we find the widely shared idea that the communist leaders photographed their crimes—because everything was recorded for official purposes and because the leaders were fond of souvenir photography—and that, at the moment

3  PHOTOGRAPHY AND RÉGIME D’HISTORICITÉ: PAST, PRESENT… 

63

of the breakup, they sought to make these compromising photographs disappear (Kadare 2000). In opposition to propaganda photography, which was oriented by socialist realism, counter-images or counter-­ photography of the communist period appear, mostly on the imaginary level, but revealing the need to restore images in order to draw the picture of the communist past. In addition, the interest in the history of photography mentioned above has been maintained. The rediscovery and reappropriation of the work of the first photographers continued in the 1990s in Albania and has also spread abroad. What is at stake in this movement is asserting the place of Albania in the general history of photography; it is also a question of showing a pre-communist Albania, presented as eternal and immutable, as illustrated, for instance, by the northern mountain dwellers pictorially recorded by the three generations of Marubi photographers whose work was donated to the State by Gegë Marubi. The text written by Ismail Kadare for the album Albanie, visage des Balkans (1995), which assembles pictures taken by generations of Marubi photographers, is exemplary in this respect (Kadare 1995). Finally, this interest in the history of photography provides an opportunity to draw up portraits of photographers who personify the independent photographer, one who is both an artist and involved in the destiny of the nation. Such were the Marubis, in marked contrast to the figure of the photographer during the communist period, one reduced to the rank of craftsman and subjected to an ideology perceived as antinational. One can think that these pre-1945 photographers are also valued today as models for contemporary photographers. They are regularly celebrated by the new Museum of Photography in Shkodër (2016) and the diffusion of their work was central in the celebration of the 100th anniversary of the 1912 declaration of independence. My hypothesis is that the Kumi and Dokle albums in question testify to a new way of looking at the communist past. Along with other events, they are part of a new mnemonic moment, appearing in the 2000s and strengthening in the 2010s, as evidenced, for example, by the holding of several conferences on this theme (e.g. Godole and Idrizi 2019). At the same time, the communist period is becoming an object of study for anthropological research, as Olsi Lelaj reports (Lelaj 2017). Although the scientific study of photographs from the communist past is still marginal, it will certainly gain importance in the future. In the field of photography, the publication of the two albums was preceded, at the end of the 2000s, by

64 

G. DE RAPPER

attempts to bring together the former photographers of the communist period, those who call themselves “the masters of the basins” (mjeshtrat e baçinelave) to distinguish themselves from photographers of the new generation who only know digital photography and have never developed film in basins full of chemical solutions. Although he says he has reservations about this initiative, Petrit Kumi has nevertheless taken part in the meetings in which his colleagues reserved the place of honor for him. It is not insignificant that it was at the same time that he presented a series of exhibitions of his work as a photographer from the communist period, first in November 2009 on the occasion of events celebrating the twentieth anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall, and again in November 2010. The 2013 album is the result of these exhibitions, both in its content (the selection of the photographs took into account the reactions of visitors to the exhibitions) and in its production (the sale of prints at the exhibitions was used to partly finance the publication of the album). Perceptions of the communist past have long been subject to the bipolarity of society and politics: a matter of condemning or, on the contrary, defending a system. These two albums, while generally condemning the communist period, nevertheless rehabilitate one of its emblematic achievements, photographic propaganda. They thus bear witness to a more ambiguous perception of the communist past. I would now like to analyze how they do this and show that this new perception is the result of a new articulation of the past, present, and future, and therefore of the establishment of a new regime of historicity.

What Photography Transmits How much of the past is passed on or, to use the terms of this volume, “remitted” and “restored” by these two albums? First of all, they reflect personal trajectories and life stories that took place during the communist period and that continue, in one way or another, into the present. This is evident in the titles of the two albums themselves; the Dokle album bears the names of the two photographers, without further embellishment, and, while the cover of the Kumi album carries a title (Life through the lens), it is the photographer’s name that is written in large letters, underlined by his title (received during the communist period) of “emeritus artist” (alb. Artist i merituar). Both albums open with reminders of the careers and, more broadly, the lives of the photographers they feature. We are thus informed about the childhood,

3  PHOTOGRAPHY AND RÉGIME D’HISTORICITÉ: PAST, PRESENT… 

65

studies, and activity of the Dokle couple until their retirement (Dokle 2014, 3). Moreover, Safet Dokle’s work as a photographer is said to have lasted for “half a century”—that is, longer than the communist period itself—thereby inserting the communist past into a time line and into individual experiences of time. The two albums thus attempt to connect the photographers in question with an older history and with the legacy of the first generations of photographers. The introduction of the Dokle album places the work of the two photographers in an Albanian and local history of photography. As for Petrit Kumi, he repeatedly reminds us of what he owes to the photographers of the previous generation, those for whom the beginning of the communist period constituted a radical break in their careers and in the way they practiced photography. Both albums then offer a selection of photographs (1100 for the Dokles, 325 for Kumi). It should be noted at the outset that these photographs, which are certainly images from the communist past, are also presented as traces of the individual trajectories of the photographers; just as much as the product of an era, they are the product of a personal past that their publication brings to life. The Dokle album is particularly interesting both in terms of the number of photographs reproduced and its organization into chapters. The large number of photographs is made possible by the layout, which favors the accumulation of small-format images on a single page. This is achieved at the expense of the visibility of the individual images, but is in keeping with the accompanying text, which emphasizes the quantity of the Dokle couple’s production (22,000 photographs) and its repetitive and systematic nature; the public service photographers were paid according to the quantity of photographs produced and they had the task of documenting all kinds of activities. It is even more noteworthy that the album’s layout includes the main categories of photographs used at the time, thus reproducing, for instance, the organization of the “village museums” or “village histories” in which the photographers were involved, particularly from the 1960s onward. The first chapter that follows the presentation of the photographers’ career focuses on the city and the region in which they worked throughout the communist period. This presentation makes it possible to define both a space, that of the town of Kukës and its immediate surroundings, and a history. The images are arranged chronologically and show the transformation of the town, a radical transformation since the original town was engulfed in 1976 by the waters of a reservoir and a New Kukës (Kukësi i Ri) was built some distance away.

66 

G. DE RAPPER

The following chapters of the album are devoted to a number of fields of activity, probably in descending order of importance, in a succession reminiscent of the history textbooks and photo albums of the communist period: (1) political life, made up of parades, inaugurations and commemorations, public meetings and elections; (2) economic life, organized around the idea of modernization (of agriculture, industry, trade, and crafts) and the opposition between “yesterday” (alb. dje) and “today” (alb. sot); (3) education; (4) artistic and cultural life; (5) sports activities; and (6) the health system. The photographs are presented chronologically in each chapter, except in the final two, which escape temporality: one deals with regional ethnography (representations of dances and songs); the other focuses on “artistic” photography (i.e. in the communist era, photographs in which formal research accompanied or replaced the political message) and displays landscapes and portraits of family members. In this sense, the Dokle album restores in the present a cognitive framework that guided the activity of photographers during the communist period and through which political power communicated its actions and results. The adoption of this plan undoubtedly responds to the archiving practice of the spouses. Nevertheless, its reiteration in an album published in 2014 and prepared by publishers who were not obliged by publishing standards to adopt it seems to show that this cognitive framework is still admissible when it comes to thinking about locality. The definition of a territorial unit, its inscription in the political history of the state and the nation, its productions and its insertion in an economic model, and its conformity with the educational, hygienic,7 and cultural model could thus constitute a “structural terrain” on which changes and ruptures are lived and thought about, in the present and no doubt as early as the communist period. This cognitive framework articulates a temporal line (that of progress toward socialism) with a political and territorial organization. One of the recurrent modes of visualizing the temporal line involves the juxtaposition of photographs showing the “before” and the “after.” The main features of political and territorial organization are the distinction between the city and the villages (another temporal dimension, since the city is more “advanced” on the road to progress than the villages) and the distinction between those who govern (the Party) and those who are governed (the people). The cognitive framework is also built on an opposition 7  Here I refer to the hygiene campaigns promoted during the regime with the goals of making houses and villages cleaner and the life of their inhabitants healthier.

3  PHOTOGRAPHY AND RÉGIME D’HISTORICITÉ: PAST, PRESENT… 

67

between the visible and the invisible, or more precisely between the showable and the non-showable. In this case, domestic life,8 military organization, and the border situation of the region are part of what cannot be shown. Petrit Kumi’s album differs from the previous one in that the logic of his plan is much less perceptible. It also differs in its relationship to the territory. In contrast to the Dokle couple’s work, Petrit Kumi’s activity was not limited to a small region; on the contrary, it covered the entire national territory and could even go beyond it, as the images from reports in Kosovo and China show. In spite of this, there is a tendency to restore the photographic categories of the communist era, with different categories for a photographer working for the propaganda press. The theme of urbanization and the modernization of cities is, for example, well represented, especially with regard to Tirana. The modernization of the countryside, including the mechanization of agriculture, is also present. The theme of “actions” (alb. aksione), campaigns of voluntary collective work, is dealt with extensively, but in a different way from the Dokle album: in the latter, “actions” are the subject of a photographic representation which emphasizes the number, the mass effect, and the collective character; in Kumi’s album, the emphasis is on individual commitment and personal development. There are many portraits of young smiling “actionists” and, even in group compositions, certain individualities are highlighted against a background of collective work (Fig. 3.1). The theme of education is also treated differently in the two albums. There are few images of school life in Kumi (and the central figures are the teachers rather than the lined-up pupils); instead, there are many portraits of professionals bearing witness to the results of education policy: engineers, doctors, artists, and intellectuals illustrate the progress made by communist Albania in the field of education. The inclusion of a few more recent photographs showing the educational and professional achievements of several members of the Kumi family suggests that the pattern of making education a vehicle for progress is still active. Finally, the distinction between those who govern and those who are governed is embodied here in the figure of Enver Hoxha, of whom Petrit Kumi was one of the appointed photographers.

8  It should be remembered that the family portraits mentioned above do not pertain to “domestic life”; they were realized in public studios or in public space and rarely showed domestic interiors, for instance.

68 

G. DE RAPPER

The Kumi album thus also restores a number of cognitive frameworks and values that were characteristic of photography in the communist period. It can be argued, however, that unlike the Dokle album it conveys an aestheticization of politics that is also characteristic of Albanian photography of the communist period. Much more than public service photographers, institutional photographers were concerned with making photography an art and not just a craft. Their position allowed them to experiment and also to learn about the practices of photographers from the past or from abroad. Petrit Kumi is one of those who, because of their longevity at the head of propaganda institutions, imposed a visual language that was in perfect conformity with the political language of the time and on which the identification of communist photography largely relies today.

What Is There Under Communism? From 1991 until recently, photographs from the communist period, when published or exhibited, served as a repellent against the former political regime. They were intended to provoke indignation about its crimes and fear of its “return” or “restoration.” The two albums signal a change in the way this era can now be conceived; photographs from the communist period are now both a medium of knowledge—not so much in what they represent as in what they reveal about the work of photographers and their relationship with both the government and the people—and a medium of reminiscence. As we have seen, the publication of the two albums accompanies the emergence of the theme of the “memory of communism” in the public space and the possibility of expressing a depoliticized (or at least non-binary) nostalgia for this period of the past. In this new articulation of past, present, and future, three points seem to me to be worth noting. The first is that the two albums, even though they show images from the past, are explicitly directed toward the future. However, it is no longer a question of showing what the future will look like, but of ensuring that an image of the communist past and of the value of its photographers will survive and that it can serve as a lesson for future generations. Petrit Kumi’s album is aimed directly at the new generations and, by reproducing images of his own grandchildren, he creates a physical continuity between today’s younger generations and the images he passes on to them, which are those of their parents in their youth. The process is different in the Dokle album, but the emphasis on the heritage value of this

3  PHOTOGRAPHY AND RÉGIME D’HISTORICITÉ: PAST, PRESENT… 

69

collection is of the same order; the communist period is a past whose memory must endure, and photography makes it possible to construct this memory.9 Just as the rediscovery of ancient photography in the 1970s and the heritage initiatives to which it was subjected reflected a “crisis of time” (Hartog 2003, 166),10 can the publication of these two albums be seen as a sign of a new crisis? As we have seen, the heritage dimension of photography was not absent before 1991; it can even be argued that it was introduced and encouraged by the photographers of the communist period. But what is missing now is the role that this photographic memory should play in the future. It is no longer a question of keeping the heroism of the war of national liberation present (on the model of a heroic or exemplary history) or of recording the progress made by socialism in a movement which is gradually seeing the old world disappear. This time, it is not specified what the photographs of communist Albania will make possible to construct in the future or how they will remain active; their memorial value alone is affirmed. But it must be affirmed because it is threatened. The two albums insist on the fragility of photographs, subject, as material objects, to the passage of time. The authors of the Dokle album recall that the photographs taken by the two spouses were first donated to the Kukës Museum (1984), then they were transferred to another archive under the difficult conditions of 1991–1997. The publication of the album is explicitly justified by the deterioration suffered by the photographs in the years 2006–2010 and by the desire to preserve them from irretrievable loss. The album is also presented as “the best way [to preserve the photographs] for the moment,” without specifying what might be a better way in the future (Dokle 2014, 4). So, if there is a time crisis, it affects both the perception of the past, which is conceived neither as a Golden Age nor as a repellent, and that of the future, which is conceived as uncertain and unpredictable. The valorization of heritage and the devaluation of the past and the future in favor of the present alone are symptoms of what François Hartog calls “presentism” (Hartog 2003, 126). Secondly, the texts accompanying the photographs in the two albums attempt to distinguish between the initial function of the images, which is one of propaganda, and their “truth” as a reflection of the realities that  See Musaraj, this volume, for another approach in terms of “temporality of endurance.”  In this case, the crisis of time is connected to the break with the Soviet Union, which was also a break with the temporality of the communist world at the time. 9

10

70 

G. DE RAPPER

show through under the ideological varnish. Not only is the indexical value of photography affirmed, but the emphasis is placed on the “humanity” of the photographers who, through the emotional and sincere relationship they establish with their models, manage to overcome the constraints of propaganda photography. The authors thus invite the reader to see in these images both the testimony of a timeless reality (that of ethnography, of human feelings, of the land and the people) and of the threat that communism has posed to it. In any case, communism no longer appears as a present or a “presentized” future; it is a moment in history, reduced to an accident in a deeper and more structural history, one of family lines and the succession of generations. In this respect, the two albums can be compared with other contemporary publications with a historical and memorial vocation, such as the many village or family histories written by scholars or enthusiasts of history or genealogy. These publications do not ignore the communist period and do not deny its traces on present-day society, but they make it one episode among others in a much longer history, a history that carries an identity that communism has not altered. The two albums thus articulate the idea of the permanence of certain realities—a strong territorial anchorage on the scale of a small region, an attachment to the idea of nationhood, the link between generations—to that of a duty of transmission, that is to say both piety toward the past and responsibility toward the future. The “communist” character of this past is thus bracketed or, more precisely, the imprint it may have left on these realities is described as superficial and passing. My argument, on the contrary, is that the publication of these albums reveals exactly the opposite. The restoration of the communist past is a condition of this new regime of historicity in which the future can only be built on the resemblances of the past, be it communist or pre-communist. We can indeed ask ourselves, and this is the third point, what this articulation between timeless realities and the duty of transmission owes to the communist period itself. Was not the notion of region (alb. krahinë), for example—even if it testifies to territorial attachments prior to the communist period—largely reworked both by political discourse and practice and by the ethnological discipline itself, as it was established at that time? The same could be said of the idea of nationhood or the conception of kinship and family (Dalipaj 2016), all possible structural terrains to which Albanians would regularly return. The common feature of these terrains, however, is that they are subject to contradictory interpretations in a given

3  PHOTOGRAPHY AND RÉGIME D’HISTORICITÉ: PAST, PRESENT… 

71

time and given place. Their meaning and the way they affect us are determined by these internal contradictions in the post-communist present, as they were in the communist past and in the pre-communist past, and so on. If the notion of “structural terrains” is to be used, is it not as much for the geological metaphor of erosion that it allows as because it reminds us of structural oppositions? The two albums could then be compared to the “dialectical images” referred to by Walter Benjamin to express how History, as a passage from Yesterday to Today (and not only from the past to the present), is made from such figurative encounters (or collisions) between past and present (Benjamin 1989, 478–480). To conclude, photography appears a means of capturing temporal ruptures and various temporalities of the communist and post-communist periods. While the dates of 1944 and 1991 are undoubtedly important in the history of photography in Albania, an examination of photographic production reveals other turning points, such as the first forms of history writing on the heritage of photography in the 1970s. Photography also appears as the material and instrument of a regime of historicity; it is used by institutions but also by individuals to express relations between past, present, and future. This is made possible because, above all, photography has the power to leave open the field of its interpretation. It is their temporal (and spatial) setting that gives photographs their meaning. In this respect, the publication of these two albums, as well as the opening of a museum of photography and the organization of exhibitions on photography from the communist period may appear to be symptoms of a new way of looking at the communist past and at its own articulation of past, present, and future. For the first time since 1991, photography of the communist period is presented from the point of view of the photographers and as their creation, albeit constrained, but nevertheless personal. It is neither propaganda tool or instrument of power, nor is it insignificant and doomed to oblivion. The publication of these two albums, as a symptom of a new regime of historicity, may suggest that images play a fundamental role in the reconfiguration of the relationship between past and present. This is what Walter Benjamin has already suggested when speaking of dialectical images as a place where past and present meet and collide. Revisiting and restoring images of the communist past, therefore, also means questioning the present and its origins. Like the juxtaposition of images of yesterday and today in the propaganda press, the publication of these albums in post-­communist Albania transforms the relationship of past and present into a dialectical

72 

G. DE RAPPER

and figurative one, since these images have the capacity to provoke both condemnation and adherence to the communist past. And, in a way, as long as such dialectical images circulate, the present will remain a post-­ communist present.

Bibliography Barthes, Roland. 1980. La chambre Claire: Note sur la photographie. Paris: Cahiers du cinéma Gallimard Seuil. Benjamin, Walter. 1989. Paris capitale du XIXe siècle: Le livre des passages. Paris: Editions du Cerf. Brunet, François. 2017. La photographie histoire et contre-histoire. Paris: Presses universitaires de France. Buza, Kujtim, Kleanth Dedi, and Dhimitraq Trebicka. 1973. Përmendore të heroizmit shqiptar. Tiranë: 8 Nëntori. Dalipaj, Gerda. 2016. ‘The Houses of Transition’: Post-communist transformations, migration and uncertainty in Albania. PhD thesis. Département d'anthropologie. Aix-en-Provence: Université d'Aix-Marseille. Dokle, Nazif. 2014. Fotografët Safet e Gjylzade Dokle. Tiranë: Geer. Durand, Anouck, and Gilles de Rapper. 2012. Ylli, les couleurs de la dictature. Paris: Autoédition. Godole, Jonila, and Idrit Idrizi, eds. 2019. Between Apathy and Nostalgia: Private and Public Recollections of Communism in Contemporary Albania. Tirana: IDMC. Hartog, François. 2003. Régimes d'historicité: Présentisme et expériences du temps, La librairie du XXIe siècle. Paris: Seuil. Kadare, Ismail. 1995. Albanie, visage des Balkans: Ecrits de lumière. Paris: Arthaud. ———. 2000. Lulet e ftohta të marsit. Tiranë: Onufri. Kumi, Petrit. 2013. Jeta përmes objektivit: Fotografi & shënime. Tiranë: Ideart. Lelaj, Olsi. 2017. Le communisme et l’ethnologie albanaise contemporaine: Le point de vue d’un natif. Ethnologie française 166: 229–240. de Rapper, Gilles. 2019. Photography and Remembrance. Questioning the Visual Legacy of Communist Albania. In Between Apathy and Nostalgia. Private and Public Recollections of Communism in Contemporary Albania, ed. Jonila Godole and Idrit Idrizi, 103–119. Tirana: IDMC. ———. 2020. Albums de photographies et mémoire du communisme en Albanie. Balkanologie 15 (1) https://doi.org/10.4000/balkanologie.2485. Shevchenko, Olga, ed. 2014. Double Exposure: Memory and Photography. New Brunswick, NJ: Transaction Publishers.

3  PHOTOGRAPHY AND RÉGIME D’HISTORICITÉ: PAST, PRESENT… 

73

Sontag, Susan. 1979. On Photography. Harmondsworth: Penguin. Strassler, Karen. 2010. Refracted Visions: Popular Photography and National Modernity in Java. Durham: Duke University Press. Todorova, Maria. 1996. The Ottoman Legacy in the Balkans. In Imperial Legacy: The Ottoman Imprint on the Balkans and the Middle East, ed. L. Carl Brown, 45–77. New York: Columbia University Press. Ulqini, Kahreman. 1982. Gjurmë të historisë kombëtare në fototekën e Shkodrës. Tiranë: 8 Nëntori. van Gerven Oei, Vincent W.J., ed. 2015. Lapidari, Volume 1: Texts. New  York: Punctum Books. Vrioni, Qerim. 2009. 150 vjet fotografi shqiptare. Tiranë: Milosao. Wright, Christopher. 2013. The Echo of Things: The Lives of Photographs in the Solomon Islands. Durham, London: Duke University Press.

CHAPTER 4

Within the Same Frame: Past, Present, and Difference in Contemporary Albanian Art Sofia Kalo

Introduction The fall of the Berlin Wall, the fragmentation of the Soviet Union, the rise of global trade agreements, and the transformation of China into a partially capitalist economy had profound influence on the artworld (Belting 2013; Stallabrass 2004, 10). Before 1989, art production in Europe had been strongly affected by the Cold War division of East and West but, with the supposed triumph of capitalism, it would reconfigure itself, taking evermore global proportions. Among other things, this new climate produced an exponentially increased audience for and financing of contemporary art, as well as an expanded travel network and exchange of information among constituents of the artworld at all points of the compass (Jameson and Myoshi 1998). Since the collapse of communism in 1991, Albanian artists have also been increasingly part of global trajectories. Many artists have studied

S. Kalo (*) Chicago, IL, USA © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2021 N. Gregorič Bon, S. Musaraj (eds.), Remitting, Restoring and Building Contemporary Albania, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-84091-4_4

75

76 

S. KALO

abroad and continuously exhibit their work internationally, while still based in Albania. Others, who might have completed their formal art education in Albania, have attended art residencies in other European countries or the United States, where they have worked on individual and collective projects with artists from all over the world. Even artists who might not have studied or worked abroad have exhibited their work in different locales; whether featured in galleries in Tirana, New  York, Stockholm, or Marrakesh, it is viewed by local inhabitants, visitors, tourists, and artists. Print or internet-based catalogues and discussions of artists’ work also extend in unpredictable and complex directions. While professional success at the local level is something to which Albanian artists aspire, visibility, recognition, and marketability beyond Albania’s borders are ultimately regarded as the quintessence of their success. In this chapter,1 I explore how Albanian artists negotiate the forces of the local and the global in their work and in relationship to their status as artists working in the so-called European periphery (cf. Green 2015). I argue that the incorporation of local histories, experiences, and subjectivities is one way in which they negotiate these countervailing forces. More specifically, I elaborate on how Albanian artists selectively restore the distant or more recent past in their work in order to comment on their presents and even their futures. I organize this discussion by elaborating on several tropes that have become prevalent in Albanian visual art in the past thirty years, which artists express within the universally recognized parameters of contemporary art. I argue that such artworks are sense-making strategies as artists critically reflect on the histories and realities of people living in post-communism, further unsettling notions of the past as being neatly separate from the present or a future that is necessarily headed in a desirable direction. However, given that portrayals of difference at the level of culture, history, or identity are highly marketable in the global artworld, a focus on these themes may also work to reify Albania as stuck in the past, anomalous in comparison to the West, and in perpetual need of developmental attention. 1  This chapter is based on sixteen months of fieldwork (between 2011, 2010, and 2006), in Tirana, Albania’s capital, where I sought to understand the discourses and practices of art production after communism. I interviewed thirty-six art producers from different generations and conducted participant observation in private and state-funded art spaces. This specific discussion is based on visual and textual analysis of the work of various artists, most of whom I have interviewed.

4  WITHIN THE SAME FRAME: PAST, PRESENT, AND DIFFERENCE… 

77

Making Art in the So-Called European Periphery At present, a seemingly unified artworld has emerged across the globe, one with shared “game rules” and approaches as well as languages and sense-making strategies (Carroll 2007). Connections between museums, galleries, and biennales have also deepened due to the explosion in the means of communication and transportation. Despite this apparent unity, criteria for the inclusion of non-Western artists have often entailed the portrayal of conditions that exude difference on the level of content while being represented in the shared vernacular of contemporary art, one that includes, among other elements, a critical engagement with debated issues, new ways of taking positions regarding these issues, and the employment of a variety of new media (Belting 2013; Stallabrass 2004, 70). As Coco Fusco (1994) has argued in an essay that discusses the work of non-Western artists, the Western eye tends to seek cultural mixing, irony, and the over-performance of identity, a statement that also holds true of artists working in post-communist countries. Western accounts of art during communism have often relied on the distinction between “official” and “unofficial” art, which was also the case for Albanian artists (Kalo 2017). These categories have been debated and the politics of the taxonomies have been problematized; however, they continue to inform the preferences of Western audiences and consumers (Boyer and Yurchak 2010). Since 1989, Western audiences have sought art which foregrounds “the real” of life in former communist countries: that is, art that focuses on lived realties and highlights the personal and collective traumatic effects of the transition. The appeal of such work is the “exotic brew of burgeoning capitalism and of the birth of a European Third World; the romance of a crumbling ‘evil’ Empire; and of an ideology passed into history” (Stallabrass 2004, 50). “The real” of post-communist life, as well as its culture, history, and identity, also emerge as dominant themes in the work of Albanian artists. The desire for marketability, visibility, and recognition is strong, and this might drive some artists to gravitate toward these themes, given the perceived demand abroad; however, as I illustrate, in the process of engaging with and fleshing out such topics in their art, artists are also restoring continuity between past and present, as well as making sense of the complex predicaments faced by people in post-communism. By surfacing and materializing these concerns in art that can circulate in myriad and unpredictable directions within and beyond Albania, artists are hoping to

78 

S. KALO

influence and propel their audiences to think critically and reflectively about issues that might be ignored or only considered in binary, non-­ nuanced terms in other forms of public discourse. Hinging on the narratives of artists as well as visual analyses of their work, I suggest that, in the realm of art, social criticism and relevance need not be antithetical to marketability. This idea is echoed in the words of Enkelejd Zonja (b. 1979), a prolific Albanian artist whose work deals primarily with the communist past and the transition, and which I reference at various points in this chapter. “It’s for me”, he said when explaining why he had been incorporating communist-­era newspapers and books into his work. “It’s to discover a past that I experienced but cannot really remember because it ended so abruptly. I was young when communism ended. Things just happened. So, it’s a past that belongs to me, but it also doesn’t. It’s important for us to think about this.” Zonja had studied art in Sweden and mentioned that he had ambitions to exhibit abroad, so I asked whether he thought that this work would have appeal beyond Albania, given the contextual specificity of the material. He responded, “These topics are really interesting to galleries abroad. They want from us what they can’t do themselves. The Swedish are good at installations; they’ve been doing that for a long time. They want from us what is unfamiliar, and communism is unfamiliar.” By bringing elements from the not-so-distant past into his art, Zonja wishes to create continuity between an era that ended abruptly and what is going on in the present. In doing so, he hopes that he and his audiences can get to know the past better and think about it more critically, all the while leveraging it to gain more access and recognition as an artist in the transnational artworld. While this statement might refer to communist-era topics and aesthetics, the sentiment behind it holds true for other work that engages with Albania-specific themes. Indeed, the sentiment behind Zonja’s words was present in the narratives of many of my informants who were also concerned with Albanian experiences and histories, which I amplify by highlighting a number of themes that emerged in Albanian art after 1991. I begin with a discussion of how elements of Albania’s traditional and folk culture are represented in the work of different artists, then explore how Albania’s history of exclusion and “isolation” from Europe, both during and after communism, are critically explored in art. This specifically refers to the impact of Enver Hoxha’s isolationist politics in the 1970s, as well as the strict visa regime to which Albanians were subjected in the first decade or so after communism. A third theme is the aftermath

4  WITHIN THE SAME FRAME: PAST, PRESENT, AND DIFFERENCE… 

79

of the transition from communism to a pluralistic society and a market economy (1991–present).2 Lastly, I discuss how the communist experience (1945–1991) and its lasting ramifications are represented in art.

Local Content, Contemporary Expression Traditional and Folk Culture I encountered the work of Artan Shabani (b. 1969) in the very early stages of my fieldwork, in 2006, after seeing a large banner announcing his solo exhibit at the National Art Gallery (NAG) in Tirana. Typically, personal shows at the NAG are prestigious affairs—the work of well-established artists tends to be featured in such productions—which indicated that Shabani, whose name I had not heard before, must have had some success in Albania or perhaps even abroad. The exhibit was titled “Balkan Metamorphosis” (2006) and consisted exclusively of portraits and idyllic landscapes. Painted in mostly cool colors with sparse backgrounds, the protagonists of the portraits were blurred and represented by various symbols typically associated with the Balkans: traditional clothing, musical instruments, head dress, and jewelry (Fig. 4.1). According to the curatorial statement, the contrast between the idyllic Mediterranean landscape and the hardened faces of the men dressed in traditional clothes was intended to highlight “the hardness and the tragedies of this part of the earth”. There were no individualizing characteristics to these works; similarly dressed, the protagonists were subsumed under one species, “Homo Balkanicus”. Born and raised in Vlora, a southern coastal town in Albania, Shabani moved to Italy soon after the end of communism. Over time, he acquired a circle of upper-class European clients who purchased his work and helped him exhibit in Italy and other Western European countries. As I discovered during our interview in 2006, Shabani had returned to Tirana both for his solo show and to integrate more into Albania’s artworld, speaking passionately of art as a “bridge” between Albania and “the West” which 2  These themes are by no means exhaustive, and this discussion is not meant to suggest that the artworks that are being discussed can or should be neatly categorized within specific themes, since what they are relaying can be layered, complex, and inconclusive. A thematic categorization, however, allows us to highlight and focus on some of the dominant issues with which Albanian artists have grappled in the past thirty years.

80 

S. KALO

Fig. 4.1  Artan Shabani. Via Egnatia (part of Homo Balkanicus series). 2003 (oil on canvas)

could also help improve Albania’s image in Europe. Shabani continues to produce art work in different media; however, the theme of “Homo Balkanicus” persists and has, to a large extent, come to define his work: the traditionally clad male figure with no discernable features that would grant subjectivity, an entity that is stuck in the past, subject to age-old tragedies and profound disorientation. Shabani is one of many Albanian artists for whom symbols associated with Albanian traditional and folk culture are used to draw out continuities between past and present. These have proven to be productive topics for artists from the younger generation as well, including Endri Dani (b. 1987). Dani lives and works in Tirana, and his artwork spans various media, including photography, video, and installation, frequently engaging with material culture, particularly that which is seen as representative of local traditions. In “Suvenir i Atdheut Tim” (Souvenir of My Homeland) (2012, video/installation) (Fig. 4.2), one of Dani’s most widely circulating projects, he slowly scrapes the top layer off small clay figurines of

4  WITHIN THE SAME FRAME: PAST, PRESENT, AND DIFFERENCE… 

81

Fig. 4.2  Endri Dani. Still from Souvenir of My Homeland. 2012 (video/ installation)

Albanian men and women dressed in traditional clothing. These figurines are mass produced and ubiquitous in tourist kiosks all over the country, and while they might appear to be painted with folkloric motifs, their decorative symbols are all kitschy, recent creations. This disconnect is at the root of Dani’s work, as he records the process of stripping these artifacts of their symbolism to the point of exposing the clay that constitutes them. The fact that Dani’s artwork is a video, an art medium that has little commodity potential, whereas the souvenirs are commodities par excellence, implies an inherent critique of the commodification of traditional culture and ethnicity and the transformations that happen in the process. Another one of Dani’s pieces, entitled “Palimpsest 05” (2012, video/ installation), focuses on stripping down the color of another traditional object in Albania, the woolen quilt. Whereas the souvenirs are mass produced and sold for relatively little money, these quilts, which consist of intricate geometric and colorful patterns, tend to be produced by skilled artisans. In his artwork, Dani records the process of submerging the quilt in a liquid that removes the colors almost entirely from the thread. The colorful liquid is then poured into glass jars, where the stripped colors undergo a process of sedimentation. The chemical process shatters the aura that surrounds the quilt as representative of Albanian culture and tradition, reducing it to its constitutive material elements.

82 

S. KALO

I now turn to the work of Anri Sala (b. 1974), who is perhaps the best-­ known Albanian-born contemporary artist on an international platform. Currently based in Berlin, Sala graduated from the Academy of Arts in Albania in the early 1990s, where he studied under Edi Rama, Albania’s current Prime Minister. The two have collaborated throughout the years, most notably in Sala’s video “Dammi  i Colori” (Give me the Colors) (2003) which focuses on Rama’s work as mayor, when he painted Tirana’s gray facades in bright pastels. Sala continues to work primarily with video and has dealt with topics ranging from his Albanian heritage, to communist propaganda, to music. One of his earlier videos, entitled “Byrek” (2000), is a recording of Sala’s grandmother skillfully making byrek, a savory dish whose different iterations are considered culinary staples all over the Balkans. His grandmother’s handwritten recipe, which she sent to Sala after he left Albania, flows superimposed over the recording of her cooking. While the video documents a process that is undoubtedly familiar to most Albanians, it also captures the longing that many immigrants feel after leaving home, particularly for the more prosaic moments of life which come to take a different kind of significance abroad. Moreover, the perpetual return to the grandmother, the dish, and her recipe that the medium of video affords—one can watch it endlessly—helps create continuity following the ruptures and losses caused by immigration. What might such returns to Albania’s traditions and cultural symbols mean, as these art pieces circulate in front of different audiences, local and beyond? According to Maria Todorova (1997), the Balkans historically have invoked temporal and spatial metaphors, having been seen as a bridge between East and West, Europe and Asia, as semi-developed, semi-­ colonial, semi-civilized, or semi-oriental. This process of objectification has been underway at least since the beginning of the twentieth century, and countries in the region have been linked with ethnic essentialism, barbarism, and tribalism, which Todorova calls Balkanism (Todorova 1997; Coles 2002). Given the history of how the Balkans have been more broadly represented, certain works by Albanian artists appear to be following in a similar vein. Some of the pieces I have discussed do indeed have the potential to reify Albania as “backward”, or stuck in the past, and Albanian people as subject to timeless conflicts which continue to plague them in the present—especially for Western audiences. This appears to be particularly the case with Shabani’s “Homo Balkanicus” series, whose characters are presented as victims of tragedies that have left them in stasis, helplessly confused, and disfigured. These works present a self-balkanizing

4  WITHIN THE SAME FRAME: PAST, PRESENT, AND DIFFERENCE… 

83

image of Albania and Albanians which Western audiences might find readily accessible and affirming of long-standing ideas about the Balkans (Todorova 1997). And yet, other “returns”, like Dani’s preoccupation with Albanian tradition and its symbols, manage to raise issues that are of concern to people within but also beyond Albania: the commodification of ethnic or national identity and its subsequent alienation. For Sala, zooming in on his grandmother making her own recipe of a pan-Balkan dish allows him not only to invoke its locally specific iterations, but potentially also to trigger emotional responses from anyone who might fondly remember their grandma’s cooking, whether they have tried byrek or not. In other words, artistic returns to traditional and folk culture, and the temporal and spatial leaps that this sometimes involves, can reify prejudices about Albanians, but also help relate local subjectivities to broader concerns. Albania, Europe’s Isolated “Other” Albania is geographically “in” Europe, but it is also “outside” as a result of various mechanisms of exclusion that have spanned centuries. This sense of exclusion vis-à-vis Europe was rendered profound during communism, as Albanian citizens became subject to Enver Hoxha’s isolationist politics.3 And, while the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989 was celebrated everywhere as the beginning of a new era, it was also followed by the creation of new borders that for some were just as difficult to penetrate (Sampson 1996). For most Albanian citizens, the sense of exclusion from Europe did not end in 1991, as they had hoped, but was followed by a two-decade-long visa regime which severely restricted travel abroad, lasting until 2010. Those who did make it abroad, legally or illegally, often faced disillusionment and exclusion in their new countries of residence, sometimes simply for being Albanian. The sense of Albania as “isolated” from Europe has exerted influence over many artists’ experiences and work. As representatives of Albania’s elite, Albanian artists—during communism as well as after—have typically 3  This was pronounced in the 1970s, once ties with the People’s Republic of China, Albania’s only ally at the time, began stagnating, to be severed in 1978. Preceding the Sino-­ Albanian split, strained relations with the Soviet Union over Khrushchev’s politics of de-­ Stalinization, to which Hoxha was opposed, led to the end of diplomatic ties in 1961. Ties with Yugoslavia had ended more than a decade earlier, in 1948, resulting from Josip Tito’s idea of “separate roads to socialism” and the decentralization of economic life.

84 

S. KALO

had more access to resources enabling them to travel abroad, including visas, than the general population. Indeed, the concept of “isolation” as a rubric through which to look at life in Albania during communism or after has been critiqued, including in my own work, where I argue that Albanian artists were subject to various international trajectories (Kalo 2016). Nevertheless, many artists do see their identities as being inextricably linked to Albania’s position simultaneously “inside” and “outside” of Europe and have used their work as a platform to articulate this. A poignant example from the very early stages of my fieldwork in 2006 are Lume Blloshmi’s (1944–2020)4 paintings, titled “Europa 1 and 2” (2005), which I encountered at a group exhibition at the NAG in 2006. In these works, the notion of isolation and the desire to escape it emerge with a rather direct metaphor: an old wooden door behind which lies Europe, out of reach for most. In “Europa 1” the door is locked, and there is no key in sight, a sign of hopelessness perhaps, referring to the great hopes that Albanian citizens had for freedom of movement, and the inability of many to attain this after communism. In “Europa 2”, the door is slightly ajar, and a pair of slippers lies on the sill, a comment on the great number of Albanians who immigrated without looking back. When I finally met and interviewed Lume in 2007—despite a speech impediment, she communicated powerfully and elaborately—I discovered that, for her, the notion of “isolation” had a particular and personal poignancy. Under communism, she was not allowed to exhibit her work for almost a decade, since her father was imprisoned for the crime of agjitacion propagandë (agitation and propaganda). Lume went on making art nevertheless and, until her untimely death in 2020, she was very prolific and highly regarded by artists of all generations for producing fearless and critical work, broaching topics such as rampant consumerism, misogyny, and sexuality. In 2006 I also encountered a number of powerful works that dealt with the sense of isolation from Europe that Albanians continued experiencing after communism, shown within the purview of a show entitled, “Ky Ushqim Nuk Përmban Mish Derri” (This Meal Does Not Contain Pork) (2003) at Galeria e Vogël (Small Gallery), a private gallery in Tirana. The show had taken place a few years before I went to Albania, but it was one of the few that Genc Mulliqi (b. 1966), the owner and curator of Galeria 4  Lume Blloshmi died in 2020 due to complications from COVID-19. I dedicate this chapter to her memory.

4  WITHIN THE SAME FRAME: PAST, PRESENT, AND DIFFERENCE… 

85

e Vogël, singled out in order to illustrate his work and that of the gallery during our interview. As an artist and gallery owner, Mulliqi had the opportunity to travel with more ease than most to different European countries, encountering discrimination in the process. The premise of “This Meal Does Not Contain Pork” was based on one of Mulliqi’s own experiences when traveling to Switzerland, one that mirrors the experiences of countless other Albanians when crossing borders. In the show’s introductory notes, Mulliqi describes his encounter with one of the officers at the Swiss airport after presenting his Albanian passport: He grabbed my passport and asked me to wait. Wasn’t I waiting already? He observed my passport very closely—every page of it. He checked my Swiss visa with a UV light and scrutinized my face very carefully, probably to discern a hint of criminality in it. For me it’s not a problem; I am used to it. It happens always, everywhere. I mean, at every state border. That day in the Swiss airport I witnessed a brutal truth. The differences between people are based on the types of passport they hold. … With the fall of the Berlin Wall our hopes rose. But for Albanians the wall has not yet fallen; it is no longer a concrete wall, but an impenetrable one, nevertheless. VISA, EMBASSY, PASSPORT—the most frequently heard words in our everyday conversations.

The artists who participated in this exhibition had contributed works in different media, including painting, sculpture, video, and installation, all of which dealt with the issues of isolation and separation, and the longing for freedom of movement. Mulliqi described the show as an artistic testimony to the humiliation and discomfort experienced by Albanians who are often considered “unwanted pork”, especially when they step into embassies or airports, through the doors that separate Albania from Europe. Isolation from the West, and the desire to transcend it, has also been considered by Gentian Shkurti (b. 1977), in his piece “Go West”, (2001) (Fig.  4.3) an interactive video game. Primarily a video artist, Shkurti resides in Tirana and as part of his day job he makes commercial videos, while themes of false promises, desire, and disappointment have been constant in his artwork as well—be it to expose the absurdity of the Ponzi Schemes of 1997 (in “Alice in Wonderland” video/1997) or to critique Edi Rama’s mayoral project of painting over Tirana’s facades as a fake veneer under which lies structural decay (“Color Blind” video/2004).

86 

S. KALO

Fig. 4.3  Gentian Shkurti. Still from Go West. 2001 (video animation)

“Go West” covers a clandestine trip from the coast of Albania toward Italy, one that countless Albanians have taken at night over the years. The illegal immigrant floats on the open seas in a gomone, or small inflatable motorboat, aiming to evade Italian coastguards to make it to the other side. There are two potential outcomes in “Go West”. In one scenario, the gomone blows up after being machine gunned by border guards, at which point the game ends. In the other scenario, the Albanian migrant manages to get to the Italian coast. In the latter variant, the dreams of the migrant are materialized: he encounters cheap entertainment in the form of pizza, naked women, and TVs which appear on the screen in quick, dizzying succession. These images, however, are of low quality, which creates the impression of dissonance between how life in Italy might have been imagined and how it turns out to be in reality: one of hard work, discrimination, and the hardships that accompany being an illegal immigrant. As such, Shkurti’s work is a commentary on the nature of migration and the disillusionment brought by the path “West” for many Albanians. Artistic returns to the themes of isolation do not pertain only to the post-1991 period, but also to what Albanians experienced during

4  WITHIN THE SAME FRAME: PAST, PRESENT, AND DIFFERENCE… 

87

communism, a significant symbol of which are the hundreds of thousands of concrete bunkers Enver Hoxha built between 1967 and 1986, turning the landscape into a space that Paul Virilio described in his Bunker Archaeology as symbolically prepared for a continuous state of exception (Virilio and Collins 1994). These round, concrete structures of various sizes, positioned halfway underground, were intended to be used as shelters or fighting posts in order to protect Albania from possible foreign invasions. They were never actually used to these ends, but they persist as ubiquitous parts of the Albanian landscape, punctuating cityscapes, beaches, mountains, and cemeteries. Since 1991, bunkers have come to personify Albania’s isolation as well as Enver Hoxha’s paranoia. Many, however, have undergone various types of reappropriation. A few have spontaneously been turned into cafes, shops, and public bathrooms, whereas others have been part of larger government-­sponsored efforts to memorialize communist-era objects and spaces or, as Edi Rama has put it, give them a “blood transfusion” (Obrist et al. 2014). In 2013, for instance, a bunker, two pillars from the notorious Burgu i Spaçit (Spaç Prison),5 and a segment of the Berlin Wall (a gift from the German Embassy in Albania) were placed along Tirana’s central boulevard in the former Blloku (Block) area6 as a “Memorial to Communist Isolation”. This was followed by the inauguration of Bunk’Art, in 2014, housed in the premises of a massive, underground bunker on the outskirts of Tirana which was intended to serve as shelter to Albania’s communist elites in the event of a nuclear attack. Bunk’Art is a museum and contemporary art exhibit dedicated primarily to rethinking the communist past through the lens of material culture from the era. Since 1991, bunkers have also been taken up by artists as objects of artistic representation. They were, for instance, the main subject of Violana Murataj’s (b. 1984) 2010 MFA thesis for the School of Visual Arts in NYC, entitled “My Birthday Celebration”. In this video, Murataj documents the process of organizing and celebrating her 25th birthday party inside a large bunker in the outskirts of Tirana with the goal of converting its associations with fear and aggression into those connected with 5  Spaç Prison was a notorious political prison during communism (1968–1988), where some artists were also imprisoned. 6  Blloku is a central neighborhood in Tirana and the hub of leisure, shopping, and nightlife in the city. During communism Blloku was the gated community where the communist elite, including Enver Hoxha, resided.

88 

S. KALO

hospitality. Murataj’s guests express a mixture of surprise and delight at the idea as she beautifies and decorates the space, complete with a fresh coat of paint and a disco ball. Documentary footage from the present is punctuated by footage from the past, particularly focusing on celebrations of Enver Hoxha and his rule. Local residents offer their perspectives too. In their view, Murataj’s project is evidence of how things change and shift in both meaning and substance. Anila Rubiku (b. 1970) is another artist who has dealt with bunkers in her work. Rubiku’s life and art is traversed by local and global trajectories, as has been the case with many Albanian artists since the end of communism. Graduating from the Academy of Arts in Albania in 1995, she pursued a graduate degree in the arts in Brera, Italy, and today lives between Milan and Tirana. She primarily works in the media of drawing and installation, and touches on numerous themes, including history, memory, and architecture; while I have not interviewed her, I have encountered her work frequently in web-based discussions or exhibit catalogues. One of her installations, presented at the 2012 edition of the Kyiv Biennale, entitled “Bunker Mentality/Landscape Legacy” (2012) (Fig.  4.4), features small bunkers—some smaller than others, some alone, some clustered and interconnected—all laid out in a large, otherwise empty exhibition space through which the visitor can walk. A brightly lit neon bunker sits at the very center, creating the impression that all the objects are satellites of a centralized operation which controls and perhaps surveils them. While the bunkers themselves emphasize the uniformity, paranoia, and surveillance that are seen as characteristics of the communist regime in Albania, the title “Bunker Mentality/Landscape Legacy” highlights the lasting impact of these objects and the regime that created them, not only on the landscape but also on the minds of people. “Bunker Mentality” echoes the common Albanian expression, mentalitet  i  mbyllur (closed mentality) often used to refer to the constraining and ongoing effects of communism on people’s knowledge and worldviews. Concrete bunkers, as means of military defense and fortification, are not unique to Albania or to communist regimes; however, their sheer number is specific to Albania’s landscape, past and present, as well as the country’s communist past. Because of their ubiquity and perceived over-­ representation as kitsch objects, any efforts to treat bunkers as art subjects tend to be criticized locally. These reactions reflect decades old tension between “art” and “kitsch”, first discussed by the critic Clement Greenberg in 1939, that continues to remain salient in contemporary art discourse

4  WITHIN THE SAME FRAME: PAST, PRESENT, AND DIFFERENCE… 

89

Fig. 4.4  Anila Rubiku. Bunker Mentality/Landscape Legacy. 2012 (installation)

(1965). Indeed, many Albanian artists consider bunkers as an easy if cheap means some contemporaries deploy to gain attention abroad. In their view, highlighting a feature of Albanian history and landscape that is easily recognizable and has piqued the interest of the Western gaze acquires attention largely from balkanizing Albania’s strangeness. Talking about the problematic of “bunker as art” and what it means for contemporary Albanian art, not just locally but also abroad, one informant in his late 20s noted, “Bunker art is a way of showing off what makes us strange to entertain foreigners. That is not art, it’s prostitution. People might take a moment to look at it, but nobody will take you seriously as an artist.” I understood this statement to mean that while all topics can be the subject of artistic representation, those that merely highlight cultural or historic difference without advancing a critical statement will not be taken seriously in the transnational artworld.

90 

S. KALO

In this section, I have discussed how the persisting sense of isolation that has framed the Albanian experience, during communism and after, has been represented in art since 1991. While most Albanian citizens might no longer be subject to the same restrictions as they were only some years ago—today most can travel in the Schengen region without a visa, if they can afford to—the trials and tribulations experienced throughout the twentieth century have partly come to constitute what it means to be an Albanian citizen in Europe. As artists engage with and reflect on this history, its material and symbolic remains as well as its lived dimensions, they are making a statement about the complicated geopolitics of Europe in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries, about what was and what continues to linger. And as with art that deals with traditional and folk culture, the pendulum swings from efforts that self-balkanize the Albanian experience (Todorova 1997) to those that engage critically with the lived realities of Albanians during and after communism. Some pieces, as is the case with the so-called bunker art, highlight this sense of isolation through readily recognizable symbols of Albania’s difference and strangeness on a global platform, thus offering spectacles of Albania and presenting it as “other” from the idealized and imagined European “self”. Other works, including “Europa”, “Go West”, and “This Meal Does Not Contain Pork”, produced before Albania’s visa regime were lifted, expose injustice and articulate social and political issues that have concerned Albanians since 1991, including the disillusionment, discrimination, and risks. These artworks, circulating in front of different audiences, raise important issues regarding marginality and xenophobia in Europe. The Ruinous Aftermath of Transition The transition from communism to a market economy in Albania, which many consider an ongoing one, has been a period rife with high hopes and expectations as well as great disappointment and disillusion. As noted early on by anthropologists, the transition did not entail a total rupture, and the collapsed system did not leave behind a void in which markets and new institutions materialized out of thin air and could be readily and uncontestably infused with new knowledges and practices (Burawoy and Verdery 1999). On the contrary, countless studies have shown that the post-­ communist transition has been full of unexpected outcomes. In a parallel discourse, Albanian artists have articulated similar critiques, focusing particularly on the main predicaments of the past thirty years: immigration,

4  WITHIN THE SAME FRAME: PAST, PRESENT, AND DIFFERENCE… 

91

corruption, urban decay, and transformation. In dealing with such themes, they often offer nuanced commentaries and layered critiques which are not commonly articulated in other forms of public discourse. The majority of the artists I interviewed emphasized that the social relevance of their work—that is, using their art to intervene critically in pertinent social and political issues—was a vital motivating factor. While my informants were often referring to local impact, their narratives also hinged on what art historian Claire Bishop has called the “social turn” in contemporary art, a broader trend wherein engagements with social and political issues, whether ignored or considered prominent, are defining features (Bishop 2006). This is certainly the case in the work of Enkelejd Zonja (b. 1979), whose hyperrealist paintings—a style that has been relatively uncommon in Albania’s visual art since 1991, perhaps because of its associations with Socialist Realism, which was the official artistic method under communism—resemble theatrical scenes, with characters scattered around in apparent dissociation from each other. In “ISS” (2010) (Fig.  4.5), for instance, a woman clad in a white bikini, recalling a pageant participant, stands at the center, flipping around a large red cloth, invoking the color of the Albanian flag. She appears young and confident, but while she is

Fig. 4.5  Enkelejd Zonja. ISS. 2010 (oil on canvas)

92 

S. KALO

smiling, her sandaled feet stand in splashes of red, suggesting that she might be bleeding. Behind her other characters are scattered around in a nondescript Tirana street, where decaying buildings are juxtaposed with new ones. An older woman, dressed in black, looks longingly into the horizon. An elderly man with a cane is standing in front of a staircase, perhaps debating whether he will be able to climb it. A middle-aged man, dressed in a suit, stands in front of his reflection in a mirror, which he refuses to face. There are other characters which could represent different aspects of Albania’s post-communist transition: fear, abandonment, poverty, hypocrisy. While the symbolic layers of this painting may be deeply complex, certain principal themes are discernable even for someone who is only tangentially familiar with Albania’s current reality, and could perhaps serve as a window onto greater learning. The ambiguity of the title also leaves room for interpretation: ISS could be either “Miss” or “Piss”, perhaps both. One of Zonja’s other works, “A Fairytale from 1997” (2009) (Fig. 4.6), is composed in a similar way to “ISS”, with many characters who seem to be doing things in a disjointed manner, despite being within the same frame. In the center, a grandmother is telling a story, presumably about the riots and unrest of 1997 which followed the elaborate Ponzi Scheme

Fig. 4.6  Enkelejd Zonja. A Fairytale from 1997. 2009 (oil on canvas)

4  WITHIN THE SAME FRAME: PAST, PRESENT, AND DIFFERENCE… 

93

that befell Albanians and to which the title of the piece refers. The children listen to her intently. On their left, policemen wearing lifebuoys in place of weapons are looking for something, walking toward a sculpture of the angel of death. Nude manikins adorn windowless stores, referring to the emptiness, fear, and hopelessness that overwhelmed Albania at the time. A herd of sheep is being led somewhere by a wolf. Centrally placed, the forefinger of a clenched fist points directly at the viewer. When I talked to Zonja I learned that his process had affinities with that of a historian or even an anthropologist. As I noted at the beginning of this chapter, around the time that we met, in 2009, he was actively collecting materials from the communist era and having conversations with people who had spent the majority of their lives during the period. These materials have provided the foundation for a lot of his recent work, which engages predominantly with communism (discussed in the next and final section). The chaos and unpredictability that followed the end of communism, particularly as it relates to infrastructure and urban spaces, has also been a frequent subject for Ardian Isufi’s (b. 1973) work. Isufi, who is a prolific artist and educator, has worked with a variety of media. His work is versatile thematically, focusing on sexuality and the body, conspicuous consumption, the communist past and its effects in the present, and contemporary cityscape, to name a few subjects. For instance, in a 2010 solo show entitled “Theater of Shadows”, Isufi presented large paintings depicting the unique juxtapositions that have come to define Albania’s cityscapes in post-communism: loads of concrete, unfinished construction sites, older buildings in various states of decay, omnipresent advertisements, all punctuated by the materiality of the communist past (Fig. 4.7). An interesting number of works that grapple with the communist transition have addressed Edi Rama’s now well-known artistic-political work, “Return to Identity”, which he instituted during his time as Tirana’s mayor. Starting in 2000, in addition to the demolition of structures built illegally during the preceding decade, this project famously involved the painting of Tirana’s facades in pastel colors. According to Rama, this was intended not only to cover the drab gray of communism but also to give the citizens of the capital city a fresh start. While Rama’s work was and continues to be praised internationally, at the local level this project was often criticized as superficial and for ignoring important structural issues which could have real impact on the lives of citizens.

94 

S. KALO

Fig. 4.7  Ardian Isufi. Unknown Partisan. 2010 (oil on canvas)

Through the years, “Return to Identity” has become a meta art project, as other artists have reacted to or incorporated it into their work. As early as 2003, just three years after its start, Anri Sala produced the short film “Dammi i Colori” (Italian for “Give me the Colors”). The film’s footage consists of scenes of Tirana at various times of the day, accompanied by a voiceover in which Rama explains what motivated the endeavor. It was screened in major institutions of contemporary art, garnering Rama much international renown, and likely contributing to his winning the World Mayor contest in 2004 (Kramer 2005). Other artists have taken a more critical stance on the project. In his video “Color Blind” (2004), Gentian Shkurti, whose work I discussed earlier in this chapter, stages a conversation between a young girl and a color-blind man. The former tries to describe the painted facades to the man who cannot see color and for whom everything looks the same as it did before they were painted. This interaction ultimately questions the potential of this intervention to produce real change for Tirana’s citizens.

4  WITHIN THE SAME FRAME: PAST, PRESENT, AND DIFFERENCE… 

95

Yet another art piece by Alban Hajdinaj (b. 1964), who is one of Rama’s contemporaries, further criticizes the project. Entitled “Eye to Eye” (2004), this short video contemplates how, from a local perspective, Rama’s visual intervention in Tirana’s cityscape does not do much to conceal the city’s badly planned architecture. On the contrary, the colors can sometimes make the buildings look even more grotesque, a commonly held view by many of Tirana’s citizens. Albanian artists continue to be preoccupied with issues such as corruption, immigration, and unruly urban transformation, all seen as endemic to an ongoing post-communist transition. Most of my informants characterized themselves as politically neutral, but not indifferent; however, many considered artistic engagements with the social and political reality surrounding them as an inevitable part of living and working in Albania, centered on a need to stimulate reflection and potentially propel social action at the local level. In returning to these topics in their work, artists often present nuanced commentaries on contemporary Albania that challenge dominant narratives which tend to focus on progress and democracy, eclipsing issues such as corruption, poverty, and other social ills. On the other hand, engaging with prominent social or political issues, intervening in social relations, and embracing a politics of democratization are defining features of contemporary art’s “social turn” more generally (Bishop 2006; Gardner 2015). Contemporary artists everywhere are concerned with offering cultural critique and often do so in ways that aim to have some impact on society. I would thus argue that Albanian artists’ turn to socially relevant art, including a return to the predicaments of the transition—past and present—is not only a result of their dissatisfaction and desire for debate and social change; it also signals their efforts to integrate more fully with the transnational artworld. The Communist Past—Today In this final section, I discuss another salient topic in Albanian contemporary art: the communist past. Particularly during the last decade, a number of artists who have emerged as central protagonists in Albania’s artworld and who were born in the late 1970s and early 1980s, the late communist period, have turned their attention directly to communism—its symbols, topics, and aesthetics—which they treat in ironic, playful, and critical ways. Ironic approaches to communism are not confined to the work of Albanian artists and have occurred elsewhere in Eastern Europe, often much

96 

S. KALO

earlier.7 However, like their counterparts in other post-communist societies, Albanian artists’ statements on communism are critical of official, binary discourses on the period, and are employed to highlight the present predicaments of life in Albania. As such, they offer a productive form of cultural politics that helps create continuity between past and present, then and now. It would be difficult to account conclusively for why, in Albania, this phenomenon appeared and gained momentum in the past decade. It is possible that these artists’ limited lived experience during communism affords them a certain productive and imaginative distance that, in turn, allows them to approach the past, even its painful dimensions, lightheartedly and yet with a more soberly critical lens. As such, their work is a form of post-memory—to use Marianne Hirsch’s term for the relationship of second generations to powerful experiences that preceded their births— that strives to reactivate and re-embody distant memorial structures not by direct recall but by imaginative investment, projection, and creation (Hirsch 2008, 106–107). Their works also exhibit what Svetlana Boym has called the “reflective” properties of nostalgia, including inconclusiveness, humor, and fragmentation, which are influenced by present concerns, with potential impact on future realities (Boym 2001, 41). A significant part of Enkelejd Zonja’s work precisely embodies these qualities. Zonja made me aware of his growing interest in Albania’s communist past during our first encounter in 2007 at his studio, which was coincidentally located opposite Enver Hoxha’s former villa. I had been asking questions about his future plans, when he brought out a thick book of photographs of Hoxha he had just purchased from a street vendor for a significant sum. “I’m dying to see Enver in my studio”, he said while perusing the book in front of me. “I don’t know how or when, but it’s building up.” In less than a year, Zonja finished “Në  Venat e Tua” (In Your Veins) (Fig.  4.8), a large oil painting in which Hoxha appears as Christ, referencing a piece by the Italian painter Michelangelo da 7  See, for instance, Alexei Yurchak’s (2008) analysis of the work of Russian artists who are too young to remember the communist experience and whose playful approach to Soviet themes and aesthetics seeks to separate them from the political agendas of the regime that manipulated them and reincorporate them in the present context of Russian life. The edited volume, Postmodernism and the Postsocialist Condition: Politicized Art under Socialism (Erjavic [ed.] 2003), discusses this trend and I have also written about this topic in greater depth in “‘The Red Kiss of the Past that Doesn’t Pass’: State Socialism in Albanian Visual Art Today” (Kalo 2017).

4  WITHIN THE SAME FRAME: PAST, PRESENT, AND DIFFERENCE… 

97

Fig. 4.8  Enkelejd Zonja. Në Venat e Tua (In Your Veins). 2010 (oil on canvas)

Caravaggio titled “The Incredulity of Thomas”(1601–1602), in which Thomas, needing physical proof of Christ’s resurrection, is depicted inserting his finger into Christ’s chest wound. Replacing Christ with Hoxha was a way for Zonja to draw a parallel between religion and communism, messiahs and dictators. Zonja is everywhere in this painting, which emphasizes the personal relevance of his foray into the communist past. Hoxha’s body is modeled after Zonja’s, whereas the man inserting his finger into Hoxha’s wound is modeled after the artist’s father, representing the generation of Albanians who lived most of their lives during communism. The younger generation is implicated, too. Despite appearing disinterested and sporting a Western aesthetic—earrings, jeans, Coca Cola in hand—the younger man, also modeled after Zonja, is at the center of the frame. “People are a product of the past”, said Zonja in response to my question on why Hoxha, who seems frail, paradoxically seems to have a pretty strong grip. “We can pretend there has been a total rupture, but that’s not the case.

98 

S. KALO

That is why I gave Enver that smile … as though he’s saying, ‘I’m still here, in your veins.’” Artists like Zonja are neither concerned with recovering any absolute historical truths nor making judgmental statements specifically about the past (Boym 2001). Instead, their art can be playful, and their art-making process often emphasizes research and questioning in the hope that their audiences will also meditate on Albania’s past and its ramifications in the present (Boym 2001). Another example is Ledia Kostandini’s (b. 1983) large-scale and, at least superficially, lighthearted work, which features juxtapositions from the communist past and the present that create the impression of different temporal and spatial realities. During our interview, I discovered that Kostandini’s return to communism had motivations that reflected Zonja’s: a curiosity and desire, if not a need, to understand it better, a process that had also led her to represent it in terms more complex than those offered by the demonizing rhetoric of the right-­ wing government at the time. Kostandini’s Drejt Evropës  (Toward Europe) (2010) (Fig.  4.9), for instance, is based on photographs of major events found in pre-1991 magazines which she then rendered into a painting, thoroughly transforming it by layering details from present social and political events. In Albania, 2010 was a year of political euphoria. The lifting of the visa regime to which Albanian citizens had been subject since the end of communism was a landmark moment, one that was celebrated as a major accomplishment of the then ruling government for having brought Albania “closer” to Europe. The central streets of Tirana were covered with symbols that celebrated the newly granted right to Albanian citizens of traveling abroad without the arduous, expensive, and often humiliating process of getting visas. Structures in the city center were draped with the EU flag, while Tirana’s streets were punctuated with blue signposts to European cities, claiming that for the first time in almost six decades they were now within everyone’s reach. Kostandini brings all of this symbolism and euphoria into her painting, juxtaposing it with communist era symbols, be it the red star of communism or Enver Hoxha’s caricaturized image. The spatial and temporal layers in Kostandini’s work suggest that today’s government-sponsored euphoria is not all that different from that of communist-era demonstrations or parades, with their exaggerated displays of pride and optimism. According to Kostandini, this euphoria, manufactured in celebrations intended to glorify the government, was and is a strategy to deflect attention from pervasive poverty, isolation, fear, and

4  WITHIN THE SAME FRAME: PAST, PRESENT, AND DIFFERENCE… 

99

Fig. 4.9  Ledia Kostandini. Drejt Evropës (Toward Europe). 2011 (oil on canvas)

censorship. “Despite appearances the message of these paintings is melancholy”, she emphasized in our interview. “I have painted arrows that shoot toward Athens, Prague, Berlin. People are smiling, they are energetic … they are closer to Europe. But this idea [of being closer to Europe] is an illusion, since we continue to be surrounded by the same reality, the same problems.” Zonja and Kostandini, as well as many other Albanian artists, most often present selective deployments not as an end in themselves, but as a way to say something about the present. In doing so, these artists mobilize

100 

S. KALO

a productive form of (post)memory which allows them and potentially their audiences to remember and reflect on communism in nuanced ways, while also grappling with the present predicaments of life in Albania. Their work is motivated by myriad longings: to know the past better, to reflect on and incorporate themselves into it, to complicate it, and, importantly, to provoke their audiences into further reflection, sometimes in playful or ironic ways. Yet, while art that deals with communism is indeed highly desirable in the transnational artworld, which could well play a part in these artists’ motivation to return to the era, the most salient statement embedded in this work is that Albanians must work through undigested aspects of past, a process that can enable a more critical approach toward the social and political issues they face today.

The Allure of “the Real” and Its Implications Art and cultural production is not a passive expression of ideas; it is a productive site of social meaning where people deal with and struggle over their past, present, and future, and where they produce and enact changing identities (Hall 2003; Mahon 2000; Marcus and Myers 1995; Winegar 2006; Zolberg 1990). As such, the critical approaches portrayed in the artworks I have discussed throughout this chapter are fertile, layered, and important sites which social scientists could explore and reference in order to reach a better understanding of the history and the legacy of change in the post-communist era. In discussing themes that have become prevalent in the work of Albanian artists after communism—symbols that are associated with traditional and folk culture, Albania’s isolation from Europe, the communist past, and the post-communist transition—I have also tried to illustrate the specific ways in which their creative identities are shaped by the local and the global, given their positioning as artists working in the so-called European periphery. As these artists present different temporalities, different generations, and many places at once, they bring them all into one frame. In doing so, they wish to prompt their audiences to reflect on important socio-political issues that Albanian citizens are facing, often by reaching to the recent or distant past, its symbols and aesthetics, and the textures and energies of Albanian life. On the other hand, they are also keen to gain visibility, locally as well as abroad, and are conscious of the fact that Western galleries and audiences expect art from them that emphasizes difference at the level of culture, history, or identity.

4  WITHIN THE SAME FRAME: PAST, PRESENT, AND DIFFERENCE… 

101

Some of works I have discussed (e.g., “Homo Balkanicus”; “Bunker Mentality/Landscape Legacy”) have focused on topics that highlight Albania’s strangeness and mirror and affirm long-standing Western notions about Albania, such as being stuck in the past, being closed-minded due to communism, or subject to age-old tragedies that continue to be enacted in the present. These works have the potential to deepen the distinction between “self” and “other”, ultimately presenting Albania as “other” from the perspective of the idealized and imagined European “self”, one that is stuck in the past, in limbo or in ruins, in need of developmental attention. Yet other artists are working with “the real”—that is, the lived reality of post-communist life (e.g., “Go West”; “ISS Albania”; “Drejt  Evropës”)—in ways that create opportunities for audiences to engage more deeply with pertinent issues in Albania, treating these issues as more than a spectacle, the latter offering only an imagistic surface of a given subject that prevents any depth of involvement. These artists are simultaneously responding to external demands for artistic representations of difference while actively incorporating salient cultural critiques that are intended to provoke, stimulate, and engender debate among audiences, as well as creating webs of relatedness between local actors and those beyond. As such, they are creating works that explore and express the subjectivities, identities, experiences, and spaces rooted in the local while articulating them in the artistic and economic spaces of the global.

Bibliography Belting, Hans. 2013. Contemporary Art as Global Art: A Critical Estimate. In The Global Contemporary and the Rise of New Art Worlds, ed. Hans Belting, Andrea Buddensieg, and Peter Weibel, 1–25. Boston: MIT Press. Bishop, Claire. 2006. The Social Turn: Collaboration and Its Discontents. Artforum 44 (2005): 178. Boyer, Dominick, and Alexei Yurchak. 2010. American Stiob: Or, What Late Socialist Aesthetic of Parody Reveal about Contemporary Political Culture in the West. Cultural Anthropology 25 (2): 179–221. Boym, Svetlana. 2001. The Future of Nostalgia. New York: Basic Books. Burawoy, Michael, and Katherine Verdery. 1999. Uncertain Transition: Ethnographies of Change in the Postsocialist World. Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers. Carroll, Noel. 2007. Art and Globalization: Then and Now. Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism 65 (1): 131–143.

102 

S. KALO

Coles, Kimberly. 2002. Ambivalent Builders: Europeanization, the Production of Difference, and Internationals in Bosnia-Herzegovina. Political and Legal Anthropology Review 25 (1): 1–18. Erjavec, Ales, ed. 2003. Postmodernism and the Postsocialist Condition: Politicized Art under Socialism. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press. Fusco, Coco. 1994. The Other History of Intercultural Performance. TDR 38 (1): 143–167. Gardner, Anthony. 2015. Politically Unbecoming: Postsocialist Art against Democracy. MIT Press. Green, Sarah. 2015. Making Grey Zones at the European Peripheries. In Ethnographies of Grey Zones in Eastern Europe: Relations, Borders and Invisibilities, Anthem Series on Russian, East European and Eurasian Studies, ed. I.H.  Knudsen and M.D.  Fredericksen, 173–186. London, New  York: Anthem Press. Greenberg, Clement. 1965. Art and Culture: Critical Essays. Beacon Press. Hall, Stuart. 2003. Encoding/Decoding. In Culture, Media, Language: Working Papers in Cultural Studies 1972-79, ed. Stuart Hall, Dorothy Hobson, Andrew Lowe, and Paul Willis, 117–128. Abingdon: Routlege. Hirsch, Marianne. 2008. The Generation of Postmemory. Poetics Today 29 (1): 103–128. Jameson, Fredric, and Masao Myoshi. 1998. The Cultures of Globalization. Durham, NC: Duke University Press. Kalo, Sofia. 2016. Change of Sight, Sites of Creativity: The Visual Arts in Albania after Socialism. [Unpublished doctoral dissertation]. Amherst, MA: University of Massachusetts Amherst. ———. 2017. ‘The Red Kiss of the Past That Does Not Pass’: State Socialism in Albanian Visual Art Today. Visual Anthropology Review 33 (1): 51–61. Kramer, Jane. 2005. Painting the Town: How Edi Rama Reinvented Albanian Politics. The New Yorker, June 27: 50-61. Mahon, Maureen. 2000. The Visible Evidence of Cultural Producers. Annual Review of Anthropology 29 (1): 467–492. Marcus, George, and Fred R. Myers, eds. 1995. The Traffic in Culture: Refiguring Art and Anthropology. Berkeley: University of California Press. Obrist, Hans Ulrich, Edi Rama, and Anri Sala. 2014. Hans Ulrich Obrist on Edi Rama and Anri Sala. Artforum 52 (6): 87–96. Sampson, Steven. 1996. The Social Life of Projects: Importing Civil Society in Albania. In Civil Society: Challenging Western Models, ed. C.  Hann and E. Dunn, 121–143. London: Routledge. Stallabrass, Julian. 2004. Art Incorporated: The Story of Contemporary Art. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Todorova, Maria. 1997. Imagining the Balkans. London: Oxford University Press.

4  WITHIN THE SAME FRAME: PAST, PRESENT, AND DIFFERENCE… 

103

Virilio, Paul, and G.  Collins. 1994. Bunker Archeology. New  York: Princeton Architectural Press. Winegar, Jessica. 2006. Creative Reckonings: The Politics of Art and Culture in Contemporary Egypt. Palo Alto, CA: Stanford University Press. Yurchak, Alexei. 2008. Post-Post-Communist Sincerity: Pioneers, Cosmonauts and Other Soviet Heroes Born Today. In What Is Soviet Now: Identities, Legacies, Memories, ed. Thomas Lahusen and Peter Solomon, 257–276. London: Transaction Publishers. Zolberg, Vera. 1990. Constructing a Sociology of Art. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

CHAPTER 5

Temporalities of Concrete in the Communist and Postcommunist City Smoki Musaraj

One thing needs to be done: stop all construction… At least so that this barbarism, this concrete madness does not go on any further. Maks Velo 2013

Intro: The “Betonizim” of the Lake Park In summer 2016, the main topic of public debate in Albania was the construction of a playground.  The playground would be built inside Lake Park (Parku i Liqenit), the only major green space in Tirana, the capital of Albania.  This would be the first significant public works project by the newly elected Mayor, Erion Veliaj. The construction and inauguration of the new playground dominated newspaper headlines, evening talk shows, and café conversations. A group of protestors had opposed the  playground  throughout its construction.  This protest was but one of many other protests against construction projects that have taken place between

S. Musaraj (*) Ohio University, Athens, OH, USA e-mail: [email protected] © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2021 N. Gregorič Bon, S. Musaraj (eds.), Remitting, Restoring and Building Contemporary Albania, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-84091-4_5

105

106 

S. MUSARAJ

2010 and 2020.1 It might seem unusual for a playground to gather so much public attention, but these contestations speak of the central place that construction and urban planning has come to play in Albanian politics and public debate. They also speak to official and popular imaginaries of the future that relate to urban redevelopment. Indeed, the contestations over the construction of the playground were as much about immediate changes to the Lake  Park as they were about the future of public and green spaces in Tirana and other Albanian cities. On the day of its inauguration, June 1—a day locally celebrated as Children’s Day (Dita e Fëmijve)—throngs of children and adults descended upon the playground, eager to experience the new structures that had been the subject of so much public debate (Fig. 5.1). The playground was indeed the best I had seen in Albania so far. The quality of the construction materials was superior to that of a myriad of playgrounds I had visited

Fig. 5.1  Inauguration of the playground at the Lake Park. Tirana, Albania, June 1, 2016. Photo by author 1  Thus, in 2016–2017, another round of protests targeted the rebuilding of Tirana’s Skenderbeg Square and—in 2018–2020—the planned demolition and design for the rebuilding of the National Theater.

5  TEMPORALITIES OF CONCRETE IN THE COMMUNIST… 

107

with my five-year-old daughter. Unlike the majority, which are typically made of poor-quality materials such as plastic, the Lake Park playground is made of wooden structures, concrete, iron, and heavy ropes. Visitors crowded onto the new seating spaces that spread around it. For many, this was additional space to socialize in the shade of the Lake Park trees. Yet others contested the materials of construction as well as the legal process that gave the green light to this project. The playground at the Lake Park would be the first test of Veliaj’s electoral promises. He had campaigned on a platform that called for “more greenery and less betonizim (concretization)” (më shumë gjelbërim, më pak betonizim), one targeting the unregulated and intense construction that has plagued the city since the 1990s and the lack of public investment in the deteriorating infrastructure. Instead, he promised the rehabilitation of public spaces taken over by new housing developments. These were concerns widely shared by Tirana residents. Yet, many lamented that the playground project contradicted these promises. Rather than adding green space, the playground entailed pouring concrete onto the only green space of the city. Most importantly, by legitimizing this intervention in the park, critics and activists were concerned that the playground project would legally pave the way to giving out other plots of public  land to private developers. Civil society groups engaged in ongoing protests; nearly fifty young protestors proceeded to camp near the construction site in Occupy style. Unlike other similar Occupy movements around the world, however, this protest did not share the anti-globalization or anti-neoliberalism ideology. Rather, its main slogan was “kundër betonizimit” (against concretization) (Fig. 5.2). Over the past few years, the idiom kundër  betonizimit  (from beton, concrete) has become a dominant form of political critique in contemporary Albania. Grievances over betonizim tap into specific meanings associated with concrete—a material that has, indeed, often served as an icon of different ideological discourses: from modernity and progress to authoritarianism and decay. In this chapter, I explore the changing qualisigns and temporalities of concrete in Albanian discourse from the communist to the postcommunist period, noting continuities and shifts in the meaning and uses of the material. Here, qualisigns refer to meanings and sentiments attached to specific materialities (Fehérvàry 2013; Keane 2003) which relate to specific physical characteristics, but they also carry cultural and ideological implications. Temporality refers to specific orientations toward the past, present, and future as expressed in public discourse. I draw upon

108 

S. MUSARAJ

Fig. 5.2  “Against concretization (Kundër betonizimit)” banner at the protest against the playground at the Lake Park, June 1, 2016. Tirana, Albania. Photo by author

three notions of temporality: revolutionary or messianic temporality (Bloch et  al. 1995[1986]; Guyer 2007), which envisages a future that breaks from the present; restorative nostalgia (Boym 2008), which looks at the past as a blueprint for the future; and the temporality of endurance (Ringel 2014) which sees the future as building on the present, despite its histories and flaws. Qualisigns and temporalities of concrete have changed over time in Albanian public discourse from the time of communist rule (1949–1990) to postcommunist times  (1990–2020). Historians delineate important periods within Albania’s  communist history (see for instance Mëhilli 2017); here I focus more specifically on the 1960s–1970s—a time of euphoria over the use of concrete in building panel apartments—and the late-communist period of the 1980s–1990s when this euphoria had turned into a disdain for the material. The discussion of the communist period relies primarily on secondary sources. The postcommunist period spans the years 1991–2020 and is also marked by different moments; here I

5  TEMPORALITIES OF CONCRETE IN THE COMMUNIST… 

109

focus on two specific ones. First, I look at the early 2000s as a time of re-­ engagement with communist buildings and urban plans. More specifically, I discuss the world-famous urban renewal project of then-Mayor Edi Rama that entailed painting pre-war and communist era buildings in vibrant colors. The second period is that of the late 2010s which marks the emergence of the anti-betonizim discourse that accompanied an accelerated construction boom. Reflections on the postcommunist period build on my ethnographic research in the cities of Tirana and Saranda from 2015 to 2019. Tirana is the capital of Albania and a new city compared to other major urban centers in the country. Its visual landscape is shaped by various layers of architectural history: scant remains of Ottoman-era mosques and red-roofed houses; Italian neoclassical architecture of government buildings, villas, and the main boulevard; communist-era monumental buildings and housing projects; and the proliferating high towers and high-­rises of the postcommunist era. Saranda is a smaller city by the coast, near the border with Greece; it is  an important tourist destination, drawing visitors from the rest of Albania as well as day visitors from cruise ships and other international travelers. Saranda’s landscape is shaped by the communist-­era urban plan of a layered city with communist-era apartment blocks still visible but also with a new boom of high-rises nestled between the communist-era buildings, the mountains, and the sea. Tirana’s and Saranda’s visual landscapes have been completely transformed by the building booms of the late 1990s and 2000s. By tracing the genealogies of the qualisigns and temporalities of concrete over the course of different historical moments in these cities, I outline changing visions of the future during times of drastic political and economic change. This genealogy allows for further reflection on the relationship between the materialities of the city and the socio-cultural imaginaries of the present and future in a site that perpetually finds itself at the margins of, while also intertwined with, regional and global geopolitical units.

Qualisigns and Temporalities of Concrete It is no coincidence that concrete has become a key signifier in contemporary public discourse in Albania. Concrete embodies multiple qualisigns and temporalities that were at the heart of ideology and practice across the former communist world, but which have, however, changed over time.

110 

S. MUSARAJ

My research suggests that the qualisigns and temporalities of concrete invoked in public discourse represent meanings that are constantly being examined, challenged, and repurposed. Writing about socialist materialities in communist Hungary, Krisztina Fehérvàry (2013, 3) notes how “qualities of things came to provoke affective responses to the socio-­ political and economic ideologies.”2 Fehérvàry uses the notion of qualisigns to capture a dynamic relationship between the physical qualities of a given material and a set of affects attached to it. Prefabricated, concrete apartments are a case in point for understanding how this relationship between materials and affects plays out: The design of a [concrete apartment building] was to effect this social engineering by iconic resemblance. Austere buildings, visibly segmented into equal units, indexed a materialized equality and would naturally produce egalitarian social relations among their residents—people joined in a collective of equal units. (Fehérvàry 2013, 130)

This view of concrete panel apartment buildings captures a relation between materiality, political ideology, and cosmology that spread across the Eastern Bloc. Indeed, a number of scholars of communism have underscored the importance of materiality and the “ideology of infrastructure” in the construction of communist subjectivity (Buchli 1999; Humphrey 2005; Mëhilli 2017). As Fehérvàry (2013) notes, specific qualia of concrete were seen as generative of particular kinds of subjectivities. Qualia such as durability, flexibility, and ability to be mass produced materialized communist socio-cultural ideals of equality and sameness. Writing about the adoption of concrete in construction of mass housing in communist Albania, Elidor Mëhilli (2017) notes how prefabrication became the “magic word” of communist planning and construction, especially after the 1960s. The material and method of construction became state mandated and followed a global trend toward standardization and mass production of housing that cut across the two opposing sides of the Cold War (Mëhilli 2012). The qualia attached to concrete translated into a set of affects that reinforced the ideology of a rational, modest, and functional socialist modernity. This association of concrete with modernity reveals the relationship between materials and temporalities. In the following I note several  Fehérvàry’s work draws on the work of Charles Peirce (1955) on qualisigns.

2

5  TEMPORALITIES OF CONCRETE IN THE COMMUNIST… 

111

temporalities attached to the material of concrete in different historical periods and political contexts. The construction of prefabricated apartment buildings during the communist period evoked a temporality of modernity. Indeed, modernist temporalities were frequently evoked in post-war design and architecture across east and west. Modernist visions, as Buck-Morss (2002) argued, were as much a part of post-war Euro-American ideas of progress as of post-war Eastern European ones (see also Mëhilli 2012; Molnár 2013). In Albania too, modernist visions inspired architecture, social life, and permeated official discourses of progress, industrialization, and emancipation (Bejko, this volume; Lelaj 2015). Concrete panel apartments played a key role in the communist bloc in promising the materialization of these modernist visions. In what follows, I reflect on how these visions and temporalities impacted Albanian urban transformations of the 1960s and 1970s. Another temporality relating to concrete was evoked in public discourse in postcommunist Albania. This is a temporality of nostalgia. Svetlana Boym (2008) distinguishes between a restorative nostalgia that seeks to restore the past in an idealized form, and reflective nostalgia, which looks at the past as a means of reorganizing or experiencing the present. Expressions of postcommunist nostalgia like the East German ostalgie (Berdahl 1999) and other cultural practices (Nadkarni 2020; Todorova and Gille 2010) were legion across Eastern Europe in the 1990s. These practices entailed the fetishization of communist brands and objects, now obsolete (for instance, the Traub car in East Germany). A temporality of restorative nostalgia, I argue in the following, was evident in the award-winning project “Return to Identity” which set out to paint pre-war and communist-­ era buildings in Tirana in vibrant colors. This project implicated many prefabricated panel apartment buildings, changing precisely what was a crucial qualia—their grayness—into yellows, oranges, and reds. This form of nostalgia sought to restore and enhance a sanitized and idealized image of Tirana’s past by changing the color of concrete. A third temporality evoked in twenty-first century Albania is that of “enduring temporality” (Ringel 2014). Writing about grassroots practices in a post-industrial, formerly East German town, Ringel suggests that, rather than a reach for the past as a viable future or for a future that is radically different from the present, residents seek to preserve present buildings and new traditions as a basis for building their futures. These efforts push back against the constant evacuation of such futures due to post-­ industrial and neoliberal transformations. I suggest that the

112 

S. MUSARAJ

kundër betonizimit discourse embodies a similar enduring temporality that imagines a future that builds on the present, however dysfunctional the present might be. Looking at changing qualisigns and temporalities of concrete in Albania, this chapter traces shifting discourses and imaginaries of the future which can inform our analysis of cultural and political visions of the city. While I outline these imaginaries in chronological order, I note the continuities of given temporalities as well as the co-existence and multiple and contested temporalities in a given point in time. Following Marilyn Strathern, I approach these contested temporalities as “gathered fields,” that is, “the manner in which a point of view gathers to itself all its supports, reasons, conditions of existence—its own ecology” (Strathern 2019, 72). Strathern notes that there may be multiple, distinct, contradictory forms of such gatherings over the same set of events. This is indeed the case, I argue in the conclusion, with contested visions of the future embodied in construction projects in late-2000s Albania. These contested perspectives onto the qualisigns and temporalities of concrete speak of competing visions of the future and of the paths to get to that future.

Revolutionary Time and Missed Modernities Construction and concrete played an important role in former communist countries, not just in the building of material infrastructures but, crucially, in the manufacturing of new forms of subjectivity and sociality (see Dalakoglou 2012; Humphrey 2005). In communist ideology, the material environment was key to shaping and potentially transforming society and the individual, an ideology based on a worldview that saw materiality and subjectivity as mutually constitutive. Prefabricated panel apartments were also meant to “transform human experience and social life” (Fehérvàry 2013, 130). In the early years of their consolidation, communist governments across the Eastern Bloc invested in infrastructure and housing for the working classes. These efforts involved a reconceptualization of domestic space and cookie-cutter designs. Building state-owned housing for the growing urban population required immense investment in construction. Among the various other technological innovations, concrete became a preferred material of mass housing projects in both East and West, given its durability, affordability, and ease of mass production. Across the board, concrete was an icon of modernity. In the Eastern Bloc, concrete was also a material that

5  TEMPORALITIES OF CONCRETE IN THE COMMUNIST… 

113

embodied uniformity, equality, and modesty (see Mëhilli 2012, 2017). Concrete was the preferred material of communist construction, the promise of an efficient, modern, durable, affordable construction material of mass housing for the working classes (Fehérvàry 2013). Prefabricated panel construction became widespread across the former communist world in the 1950s and 1960s. The adoption of concrete and of prefabricated apartments as a preferred means of housing the masses was not a simple linear process; rather, it entailed debates and contestations among architects, engineers, urban planners, and state officials about the aesthetics, the ideological meaning, and the social impact of such housing (Mëhilli 2012; Molnár 2013). In Albania, mass prefabricated housing came later but it quickly became standard for new housing developments. This involved the use of prototypes for apartment layout (projekte tip) and the shift toward concrete as the preferred construction material (Mëhilli 2017, 176–182) (Fig. 5.3). As elsewhere in the Eastern Bloc, the preference for concrete panel apartments was justified as a more cost-effective and mass-produced option for the communist housing regime that promised a universal right of access to (state-owned) housing. But the push for concrete also embraced a specific temporality of the future. Concrete embodied a modernist temporality, one that entailed a break from the past rather than evolutionary progress. Concrete was a messianic material in that it represented a tabula rasa in construction techniques. As Mëhilli details, in the 1950s and 1960s, the prime material of construction in Albania was mud bricks (qerpiç), which combined materials and techniques passed on from master craftsmen to younger apprentices; thus, while standardized under the guidance of Soviet experts, qerpiç construction also built on local knowledge. By contrast, concrete was a material that was being manufactured and used in other Eastern European countries. Other communist leaders, such as the former USSR’s Nikita Kruchshev, strongly recommended to Albanian authorities that concrete panel apartment buildings replace other styles of construction. Concrete was promoted as a material of a different (better, transformative) time. Mëhilli documents how Albanian authorities imposed concrete as the material of the future by regulating construction and the materials allowed for construction. This modernist temporality also entailed a particular ethic of “rationality,” “frugality,” and “modesty” (Mëhilli 2017, 180). Authorities critiqued the use of bright colors, such as yellow, and mandated, instead, that “appropriate colors for Albanian cities … were grays, whites and light hues” (Mëhilli 2017, 180). These

114 

S. MUSARAJ

Fig. 5.3  Prefabricated apartment buildings. Tirana, Albania. July 2019. Photo by author

specific qualisigns of concrete in communist Albania—grayness, functionality, durability, simplicity—implicated various aspects of social and individual life, of the economy and also the mores that altogether constituted communist ideology and culture. Despite the discursive euphoria generated by panel apartments, production of, and construction with, concrete took off slowly. Having severed ties with the Soviet Union after Stalin’s death in 1953, Albania sided with the Socialist Republic of China in the Soviet-Sino split in 1958. From this moment till the early 1970s Albanian received Chinese support in major economic investments including a concrete factory. Even when production finally rolled out, the prefabricated buildings were much smaller in size than their peers in other Eastern European cities. Still, they marked the landscape of existing cities and were the dominant form of construction of new industrial towns—in themselves experiments in social engineering that beg further study. Workers in factories came from rural areas, moving from village houses to the block apartments and from multigenerational families to nuclear families. They were encouraged by state

5  TEMPORALITIES OF CONCRETE IN THE COMMUNIST… 

115

propaganda to enter love (rather than arranged) marriages that would transcend religious and clan barriers. The newly wed would move into the new panel apartments. These transformations in construction and the built environment had palpable effects in changing forms of family and the social fabric. But while we have a historical record of the official discourse and practices that led to the building of this housing, there is scant record of the experience of everyday life in these apartments. This, I would argue, is another area for possible future research. Here I briefly discuss some preliminary observations based on my personal experience and memories of growing up in late-communist Albania. I grew up in Tirana in the late eighties and although I myself did not live in such an apartment, I had family members who lived in parafabrikate and who lamented their living conditions. In Tirana, most of these constructions were built in what, at that time, was described as the periphery. Further, the buildings were often completed in a rush without fully executing the original design. One relative I visited frequently seemed always to be involved in some small renovation project in her panel apartment. One time it was redoing the trimming around the windows to reduce draft, another time closing up the balcony to convert it into a kitchen annex, another time fixing different corners of the bathroom. By the late 1980s, I, along with many others in the city, came to associate such housing with flawed construction. With the passing of time, as Fehérvàry notes for Hungary and Mëhilli for Albania, the meanings of concrete, and the lived experience of everyday life in concrete apartments, departed from those intended. Concrete panel apartments came to represent authoritarianism, standardization, monotony, and uniformity (Fehérvàry 2013, 131; Mëhilli 2017, 186), while the gray colors of the buildings recommended by the state as conforming to communist ethics reflected the drab reality of living under communism. As has been documented by socialist and postsocialist scholars focusing on other parts of Eastern Europe, the reality of prefabricated panel apartments was far from their ideal of functionality and practicality. The interior designs of these apartments had many flaws (small hallways and kitchens, fixed walls) and the materials used were often problematic. A recent exhibit, “A History with/of Concrete” (Histori me Beton), a collaboration between the School of Architecture and Design at the University of Tirana and the Central Archive of Construction, showcased photography and archival documents relating to the building of parafabrikate in Tirana in the 1970s. The exhibit revisited the political as well as the

116 

S. MUSARAJ

technical history behind these constructions and also highlighted a number of their problems, including those in the original design (such as lack of thermo-insulation) and others that accumulated with attrition and lack of maintenance. All in all, by the late 1980s, prefabricated apartment buildings had become an icon of a failed modernity, of “missing the train” toward the future. As such, these buildings materialized a historically specific temporality of stagnation, a sense of “waiting for Godot.”3 This temporality of a missed modernity was pervasive across the former communist world but it was even more so in Albania, a country that had severed ties with both east and west during the late Cold War period. And yet, despite the disdain for concrete and for parafabrikate, since the 1990s, there have been several artistic and urban development engagements with the communist constructions that take a more nuanced approach to the meaning and temporality of concrete in the postcommunist landscape. I turn to these engagements in the following section.

Coloring the Grays of Concrete One example of engagement was the urban renewal project spearheaded by former Mayor of Tirana, Edi Rama. Dubbed a “Return to Identity” (Rikthim në Identitet), the project sought to restore the appearance of major state and private buildings from the pre-war and communist eras, buildings that had not been well maintained or renovated for decades. The project took place in the early 2000s, following a decade of democratic transformation that had brought about much destruction of public space and property and a boom in informal construction. Rama’s intervention entailed the demolition of illegal structures that had mushroomed since the 1990s; it also entailed painting in bright colors government and residential buildings from the pre-war era to the communist era (Fig. 5.4). This urban renewal project generated a lot of buzz, locally and internationally, as it was the first major urban redevelopment project in Albania since the collapse of communism. The project made an immediate impact, with residents taking notice of the office of the mayor as one of authority 3  Samuel Becket’s play “Waiting for Godot” performed in Albanian theater in the late1990s is an important point of reference in the Albanian imagination. The waiting for something to come that never actually arrives captures the sense of temporality of this time in Albania (see also Musaraj 2012).

5  TEMPORALITIES OF CONCRETE IN THE COMMUNIST… 

117

Fig. 5.4  Colorful houses along the Lana River. Tabakëve Mosque, Tirana, Albania. Photo by Albinfo, June 2005. https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/ File:Tirana_-­_Colourful_houses_at_Lana.jpg

with the ability to make change. It also gained global visibility as images of the colorful buildings circulated in conferences, art exhibits, and TEDx talks. Rama flaunted his project as an example of creative and radical urban transformation in a poor country. It became the subject of an art exhibit by Rama’s friend and collaborator and internationally renowned artist, Anri Sala, whose installation, Dammi i Colori (Give me the Colors), is housed at the Tate Museum in London.4 And finally, the urban renewal project would also eventually bring Rama the World Mayor award in 2004. In his TEDx talks, Rama discussed the effect of the bright colors as well as the obstacles he faced in executing the project: When we painted the first building by splashing a radiant orange on a somber gray on a façade, something unimaginable happened. There was a traffic jam and a crowd of people gathered as if it were the location of a spectacular accident … The French E.U. official in charge of the funding rushed to block the painting. He screeched that he would block the financing. “But why,” I asked him. “Because the colors you have ordered did not meet European standards,” he replied. 4

 https://www.tate.org.uk/art/artworks/sala-dammi-i-colori-t11813

118 

S. MUSARAJ

“Well,” I told him, “the surroundings do not meet European standards, even though this is not what we want, but we will choose the colors ourselves, because this is exactly what we want. And if you don’t let us continue with our work, I will hold a press conference here, right now … and we will tell people that you look to me just like the censors of the socialist realism era.” Then he was kind of troubled and asked me for a compromise. But I told him no, I’m sorry, compromise in colors is gray, and we have enough gray to last us a lifetime. … So, it’s time for change. The rehabilitation of public space revived the feeling of belonging to the city that had been lost. (Rama 2012)

Rama first frames his project as a break from the past. This break is expressed in the discussion of the colors. His reference to the “somber gray” recalls critiques of the communist aesthetics. As mentioned earlier, this choice of color was mandated from above and represented an ideological and ethical choice. But by late communist times, the concrete gray had come to represent authoritarianism, uniformity, and the temporality of a failed modernity. Rama tapped into these late communist associations with gray to reject EU standards. He framed the painting in bright colors—orange and red, bright blues and greens—as a  radical break from the past. Yet, at the same time, he also describes his initiative as an effort at restoring a city that “had been lost.” Even the title of the project, “Return to Identity,” evokes a temporality of restorative nostalgia. By seeking to restore the city that has been lost due to the informal constructions of the early 1990s, “Return to Identity” seeks to reconstruct the past in an idealized form (Boym 2008). This reflects a broader proliferation of museums and other forms of commemoration of the communist past.5 Similar restorative constructions have taken place across the former communist world (see Fehérvàry 2013; Grant 2014). For instance, in Baku, the capital of Azerbaijan, communist-era apartment buildings have been given new limestone facades “that recalled the townhouses of fin de siècle oil barons” (Grant 2014, 509). In Baku, the restoration of the façades seems 5  For instance, the set of museums, Bunk’Art and Bunk’Art 2, commemorate the communist-era shelters under the infamous bunkers built as a preventative measure for the anticipated (but not materialized) attacks by foreign invaders. These museums are primarily geared toward tourists, but they have sparked local debate about whether they memorialize or fetishize the communist past.

5  TEMPORALITIES OF CONCRETE IN THE COMMUNIST… 

119

to reach back to a pre-communist utopia, namely, the boom in oil wealth that preceded Azerbaijan’s annexation into the former USSR. By restoring the facades of the communist-era buildings in postcommunist Tirana, Rama’s project sought to reclaim a restored version of the communist-era layout of the city. By painting the pre-1990s buildings in bright colors, this project sought to enhance and idealize past architectural forms of the city, including communist aesthetics. Rama’s coloring of the city seeks to correct the ideological and moral implications of grayness as a symbol of modesty, modernity, and uniformity. Thus, the communist past is cleaned up and given a new face via a change in color. Despite the global accolades, Rama’s project was criticized locally. For one thing, critics note that the project was superficial as it only dealt with the facades of buildings; inner parts of the same buildings were left completely untouched and remained gray and in decaying condition. As Grant writes about the facades in Baku, the repainted buildings in Tirana  are two-faced. The colorful wall that faces the main street is nice and clean, projecting an air of order and artistic whim. Walking around the buildings, into the inner sections and courtyards, one is thrown back in time, into buildings that have been left untouched and in disrepair for several decades. The grays and somber hues dominate, broken tiles are splattered around the sidewalks, chunks of wall and stairways are broken, and the construction iron bars are exposed to the public view. Over the years, the painting of Tirana’s buildings in bright colors has faded away, not just because of the scorching sun but also because of the continuous construction and the lack of deep infrastructural renovations. Developers continued to encroach upon public space throughout the extended tenure of Rama as mayor. Many have accused Rama of corruption in the granting of construction licenses. During the time of my research, which took place almost a decade after Rama’s end of term, residents complained about the “intensification” of the city, about the destruction of Tirana as it once was, and of the various ways that they experienced these negative changes. Many criticized the disappearance of public spaces, such as playgrounds and parks, the lack of air circulation within buildings, and the absence of a functioning infrastructure. As the city’s population increased, the existing infrastructure suffered from having to support triple the number of people, and their concomitant trash and sewage. As the bright colors faded under the ruthless beating of Tirana’s sun, many felt that Rama’s project had failed to restore the utopia of an orderly and well-­ managed Tirana with wide boulevards and ample public space.

120 

S. MUSARAJ

The Return of Concrete and The Critique of Betonizim Concrete continues to endure in the postcommunist as a material, as an aesthetic, and as a discourse. Prefabricated apartment buildings are still standing and house many people; concrete as a material is still used widely in construction. Further, and perhaps unexpectedly, the aesthetics of bare concrete have also had a comeback in private construction and state-sponsored projects. Once the ardent critic of the grayness of concrete, Edi Rama has taken a one-eighty degree turn and has embraced exposed concrete in the design of his own private house. Rama described his house boastfully: “it is a house built entirely with the material of concrete. There is no plaster, no drywall, no beams” (Zëri 2017). The house evokes images of the concrete bunkers, yet another communist ruin that continue to dot the Albanian landscape. Despite the avant-garde reappropriations of concrete by designers, architects, and the prime minister, urban residents, public intellectuals, and politicians use the idiom of betonizim as a way to critique urban development in Albania. But while building on earlier qualisigns of concrete as the material of communist construction, the discourse of betonizim also introduces new meanings and temporalities that reflect the affects and aspirations of twenty-first century Albania. These affects and aspirations respond to the rapid urban expansion and neoliberalization of the city since the collapse of the communist regime. The idiom of betonizim signals environmental, aesthetic, and political critique. It combines an ideology of materiality that is not unlike that prevalent during communist times, namely, that the material environment shapes society and individual consciousness; further, by resisting new construction projects in key sites in the city, this discourse advocates an “enduring temporality” (Ringel 2014), a vision of the city that preserves the shape and form of the present, resisting the top-down or market-driven tendency to demolish the old and build the new vertical city. For one thing, the discourse of betonizim laments the disappearance of public space. As new high-rises were built in a rush across the major Albanian cities in the nineties, residents complained that the boom was detrimental to public space. Once widespread in communist building complexes, it has shrunk due to the intensification of the city (Aliaj 2008), which has entailed the construction of new low- or high-rises in the playgrounds and community open spaces that were a feature of communist-­era building. As a result, beyond the main road arteries of the

5  TEMPORALITIES OF CONCRETE IN THE COMMUNIST… 

121

Fig. 5.5  The intensification of the city. Tirana, Albania, June 2017. Photo by Matthew Rosen

city that were “cleaned up” during Rama’s term as mayor, the city looks like a giant Legos set: buildings of different styles, sizes, and shapes nestled against one another following no clear urban plan (Fig. 5.5). Another concern of the discourse of betonizim is environmental degradation, which targets the loss of green space as well as the degradation of air quality. The activists opposing the playground project pointed to the amount of concrete that was poured (at night) into the ground that lies at the heart of the Lake Park; the resulting images of fresh and liquid concrete evoked the specter of the death of green space. Thus, concrete is posited as anti-nature, and construction has come to represent a prime object of critique for the environmentally conscious. Urban residents also see betonizim as a key factor in the decline of air quality in the city. Pollution has risen in Albanian cities, especially Tirana, due to the dust from ongoing construction, the increased number of cars, and the decrease of green space. The intensification of the city, according to many residents, has stopped the air circulation that was once made possible by the open spaces between buildings. In the damp, hot summer

122 

S. MUSARAJ

months, which is when I usually conducted fieldwork in Tirana, residents lamented “nuk qarkullon ajri” (the air does not circulate), complaints that are often cast as a comparison between past and present. I also encountered this discourse of contrasts in conversations with Saranda residents in summer 2016. A mid-size city off the coast, Saranda is built on a hillside that slopes down to a bay on the Ionian Sea. The natural geography of the city is shaped by the white stone of the hill and the breeze coming from the sea and Saranda residents are very much attuned to these natural elements in their everyday life. In my conversations in summer 2015, many of these residents recalled with nostalgia the communist urban plan of the city and decried the building boom of the 2000s. As Gregorič Bon also writes in this volume, this is not necessarily a nostalgia for the communist past or a desire to return to it, but, rather, a longing for something that had a future and, I would add, an ordered plan. The boom took place in an unregulated manner and, as many residents lamented, “pa një plan” (without an urban plan). Residents remembered the constant sound of jackhammers that permeated the city in the early 2000s. At the time of our conversations, the noise had stopped thanks to a moratorium on construction, but the memory of the soundscape of construction was still vivid. Residents denounced the unruly and unregulated construction, while reminiscing about the communist layout of the city, grievances that served as a reference point for imagining how things of the present could be different and that emphasized the natural beauty of their cities that was being destroyed by betonizim. Identification with an idyllic Mediterranean urbanity constitutes a source of local identity and pride. One resident, who runs a small hotel in Saranda, lamented, “The city has become a scribble (zhgarravinë). When I first moved here in 1989, the city had an urban plan. Three main roads with buildings aligned by them in half-moon shape. Now it is all destroyed by construction.”6 These grievances are echoed in the commentaries of public intellectuals and architects. The late architect, Maks Velo, for instance, described his impressions of Saranda in the book, Betonizimi i Demokracisë (the Concrete-ization of Democracy): The first time I came to Saranda in 1957… Saranda was a wonderful thing, it was maintained, it had an [ordered] scaling, it had a very good urban plan. It had wide stairs that went uphill and you could see the mountain when 6

 Interview with author, July 2015.

5  TEMPORALITIES OF CONCRETE IN THE COMMUNIST… 

123

walking up and the sea when walking down. Everything was evenly ­distributed through the veins [of the city] all the way to each house and thus a beautiful community existed in open space. There was freedom and air currents. Now everything is blocked. There is total blockage and urban clots. This city cannot breathe. It is precisely this state that was not recommended by the foreign architects of the 1990s who told us: Careful with the concrete! But we did the opposite. (Velo 2013, 220)

In Velo’s and the residents’ complaints, beton and betonizim stand for ugliness, lack of air circulation, and the opposite of the natural beauty of these cities (Fig. 5.6). In another passage, Velo despises concrete as a material of postcommunist chaos and destruction: Never before has concrete [beton] seemed so criminal, so ugly, so ruthless as in Saranda. How beautiful and graceful is the white [natural] stone and how murderous [vrastar] is this concrete that generates such an anti-aesthetic form. (Velo 2013, 191)

Thus, the betonizim discourse targets the aesthetic and environmental concerns of residents and architects alike. This discourse maintains a notion of an ideal urban form that incorporates natural elements—such as the breeze, the views, the natural stone—as well as open public space as key components of the Mediterranean city. These claims to restoring the Mediterranean city are claims to an enduring temporality. Writing about a post-industrial postcommunist city in Germany, Ringel (2014) describes local movements that seek to protect and restore buildings or projects that exist in the present, rather than aspiring to the new and shiny. Ringel describes this as a temporality of endurance, a sense of time that is not looking to the past as a template for the future, nor is it seeking a messianic future; rather, it is anchored in the present and seeking to build the future from there. Claims for the restoration and preservation of the Mediterranean city of Saranda resonate with this temporality of endurance, of preserving and working with what one has in the present, despite its flaws and troubled past. The imaginary of a Mediterranean city circumvents failed communist modernity as well as the messianic neoliberal modernity projected in official discourse. It is an imaginary based on the present as well as on a timeless temporality of the idealized Mediterranean city that has a longue durée in the imaginations of local

124 

S. MUSARAJ

Fig. 5.6  Saranda’s stairs, stifled by unregulated construction. Saranda, Albania 2015. Photo by author

residents. Interestingly, the Mediterranean city is an imaginary to which both the official and dissenting discourses of urbanity aspire. The designs for high towers, such as the TID tower, and for Tirana’s central square master plan, also reference the Mediterranean city as the ideal type:

5  TEMPORALITIES OF CONCRETE IN THE COMMUNIST… 

125

Fig. 5.7  The TID Tower/Plaza Hotel (left) and the central square at sunset. Tirana, Albania. Photo by author “Together these buildings,” notes the Belgian design firm 51N4E, “generate a multiple and diverse environment, enhancing the most durable quality of the Mediterranean city: urban space” (Fig. 5.7).7

The Mediterranean city is a metaphor that links past and future in a continuous temporality, rather than one of revolutionary or messianic breaks. However, what constitutes the Mediterranean in these urban imaginaries and designs is often contested in manifestations of political discord. Indeed, another aspect of the betonizim discourse is a critique of alleged corruption in construction. Residents, developers, and subcontractors alike bemoan the ubiquitous graft in the issuing of construction licenses, the inspections of the quality of construction and adherence to building 7

 https://www.51n4e.com/projects/tid-tower

126 

S. MUSARAJ

codes, and the processing of public–private contracts. Residents of Tirana who critiqued the construction of Veliaj’s playground in Lake Park were concerned about the process of public procurement, not just with regard to the playground per se but also because the approved construction project opened up the legal pathway to further private development in protected green space. Lake Park is vibrantly verdant, filled with walkers and runners and people sipping coffee all day long. It serves a multigenerational population and is the site of the morning and evening stroll (xhiro)— a staple of urban sociality and downtime in many Mediterranean cities. Since the 1990s, the area of the park has shrunk bit by bit as mayors from both sides of the political spectrum have parceled out land from the park’s edges to private developers. The plan for the playground, for example, envisioned the construction of tennis courts, sports clubs, and underground parking lots—all services to be contracted out to private firms. Thus, critics of betonizim use the idiom to highlight the connections between construction, licenses, and the management of public space. Indeed, over the past five or six years, some of the major protests have targeted construction projects of public works. After the playground was built at Lake Park, civil society groups opposed the rebuilding of the main city square, Skënderbeg Square (Sheshi i Skenderbeut), which entailed the building of an underground parking lot that was contracted to a private company. More recently, a multi-year effort took place protesting the planned demolition of the National Theater. The building, which dated the pre-­ war era, was left to rot so as to make room for a new construction project that, in addition to rebuilding the theater, also entails building several new towers on public land. The protests, which were ongoing from 2017 to 2019, sought to protect the building itself as a historical landmark and targeted the privatization of public space that was implicit in the design of the new theater. The theater was demolished in March 2020 but the legitimacy of this act is still contested in the courts. In all these protests, the focus on concrete and on betonizim seems to be as much about the material histories of the distant and recent past— namely, the legacy of communist housing and the disappearance of public space and public land in the postcommunist period—as discussions about the future of the city: how public investments must be allocated, and how resources such as public spaces and green spaces should be managed and distributed across the urban spectrum.

5  TEMPORALITIES OF CONCRETE IN THE COMMUNIST… 

127

Conclusion: Enduring Presents This genealogy of shifting qualisigns and temporalities of concrete public discourse provides a window onto enduring and emerging imaginaries of past, present, and future in communist and postcommunist Albania. These imaginaries intersect with broader regional and global temporalities. They also tell a specific story of top-down and ground-up ideas and aspirations for the future. Across the former communist world, concrete was used to materialize a temporality of modernity. This was a communist modernity that appropriated some of the qualisigns of concrete—durability, flexibility, strength—to promote specific social and cultural ideals—equality, affordability, modesty—that were central to communist ideology. By embracing concrete and prefabricated apartment buildings, Albania joined a global communist modernity, even as it severed ties with most countries in the former Soviet bloc. The decline of communism in the late 1980s and early 1990s was made visible in the transformation of prefabricated apartments from a symbol of communist modernity to one of communist drab. Whether in the form of decaying apartment buildings or the indestructible and ubiquitous bunkers, concrete became the most emblematic ruin of communism. The drab gray concrete remained a persistent reminder of a failed modernity, a missed train toward the future. Over the three decades of postcommunist change and ongoing construction, however, new engagements with concrete have introduced new temporalities in Albanian public imagination. Concrete persists as a contested material; it is dressed up in urban development projects that seek to restore the city that has been lost to informal construction. These efforts at restoring the communist city echo other local projects of memorialization and musealization of the communist past; they also resonate with other manifestations of nostalgia in art and architecture across the region (Boym 2008; Nadkarni 2020; Oushakine 2020). These local and regional initiatives speak to persisting questions about how to engage with the communist past and with the material remains of this past. In the postcommunist present, concrete is also re-introduced as a material of the future, but this time, under the guise of a romanticized Mediterranean design, preferred by the local elites that aspire toward Europeanization. By contrast, in  local discourse, concrete (beton) and concrete-­ization (betonizim) have become a symbol of the destruction of

128 

S. MUSARAJ

a timeless Mediterranean city that incorporates the natural environment and protects public space. The idiom of betonizim is used to articulate a critique of the neoliberal development of the city. I have argued in this chapter that this critique represents yet another temporality, a temporality of endurance that seeks to develop, conserve, and restore the city from the template of the present. This temporality of endurance does not look nostalgically to the past, nor does it project a messianic future. Rather, it seeks to maintain the shape and spaces of the city that is. Taken together, these changing and competing temporalities speak of contested “gathered fields” (Strathern 2019) of perspectives toward the future. As such, these genealogies also provide a window onto the different voices and experiences, and of competing imaginaries of the future. By exploring these different voices, this chapter invites readers and scholars of Albania to move beyond official histories and cultural profiles of the country and the people and to diversify the vantage points and narratives of the memory and experience of communism and postcommunism.

Bibliography Aliaj, Besnik. 2008. Misteri i Gjashtë: Cili është Kurthi që Mban Peng Zhvillimin dhe Integrimin e Ekonomisë Shqiptare me Botën Moderne? Tirana: Polis. Berdahl, Daphne. 1999. ‘(N) Ostalgie’ for the Present: Memory, Longing, and East German Things. Ethnos 64 (2): 192–211. Bloch, Ernst, et al. 1995[1986]. The Principle of Hope. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. Boym, Svetlana. 2008. The Future of Nostalgia. New York, NY: Basic books. Buchli, Victor. 1999. An Archaeology of Socialism. Oxford: Berg Publishers. Buck-Morss, Susan. 2002. Dreamworld and Catastrophe: The Passing of Mass Utopia in East and West. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. Fehérvàry, Krizstina. 2013. Politics in Color and Concrete: Socialist Materialities and the Middle Class in Hungary. Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press. Grant, Bruce. 2014. The Edifice Complex: Architecture and the Political Life of Surplus in the New Baku. Public Culture 26 (3 (74)): 501–528. Guyer, Jane I. 2007. Prophecy and the Near Future: Thoughts on Macroeconomic, Evangelical, and Punctuated Time. American Ethnologis 34 (3): 409–421. Humphrey, Caroline. 2005. Ideology in Infrastructure: Architecture and Soviet Imagination. Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute 11 (1): 39–58. Keane, Webb. 2003. Semiotics and the Social Analysis of Material Things. Language & Communication 23 (3-4): 409–425. Lelaj, Olsi. 2015. Nën Shenjën e Modernitetit. Tirana: Pika Pa Sipërfaqe.

5  TEMPORALITIES OF CONCRETE IN THE COMMUNIST… 

129

Mëhilli, Elidor. 2012. The Socialist Design: Urban Dilemmas in Postwar Europe and the Soviet Union. Kritika: Explorations in Russian and Eurasian History 13 (3): 635–665. ———. 2017. From Stalin to Mao: Albania and the Socialist World. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press. Molnár, Virág. 2013. Building the State: Architecture, Politics, and State Formation in Postwar Central Europe. New York: Routledge. Musaraj, Smoki. 2012. Alternative Publics: Reflections on Marginal Collective Practices in Communist Albania. In Albania: Family, Society and Culture in the 20th Century, ed. Andreas Hemming, Gentiana Kera, and Enriketa Pandelejmoni, 175–186. Berlin: Lit Verlag. Nadkarni, Maya. 2020. Remains of Socialism: Memory and the Futures of the Past in Postsocialist Hungary. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press. Oushakine, Serguey A. 2020. Second-Hand Nostalgia: Composing a New Reality Out of Old Things. KnE Social Sciences 4 (13): 180–198. Peirce, Charles Sanders. 1955. Philosophical Writings of Peirce. New York: Dover Publications. Rama, Edi. 2012. Take Back your City with Paint. TEDx Talk. https://www.ted. com/talks/edi_rama_take_back_your_city_with_paint?language=en. Accessed 20 March 2021. Ringel, Felix. 2014. Post-industrial Times and the Unexpected: Endurance and Sustainability in Germany's Fastest-Shrinking City. Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute 20 (2014): 52–70. Strathern, Marilyn. 2019. A Clash of Ontologies: Time, Law, and Science in Papua New Guinea. Hau: Journal of Ethnographic Theory 9 (1): 58–74. Todorova, Maria, and Zsuzsa Gille, eds. 2010. Post-communist Nostalgia. Oxford: Berghahn Books. Velo, Maks. 2013. Betonizimi i Demokracisë. (The Concrete-ization of Democracy). Tirana: UET Press. Zëri. 2017. “Bunkeri” në Surrel: Aty ku Jeton Edi Rama.” March 23. https:// zeri.info/kuriozitetet/135906/bunkeri-ne-surrel-atyku-jeton-edi-ramafoto/. Accessed 1 November 2020.

CHAPTER 6

Kuçedra’s Waterways: Restoring Authority and Building Vitality Nataša Gregorič Bon

Numerous Albanian myths, legends, and fairy tales speak of three sisters guarded and ruled by a serpent dragon named Kuçedra. The Beauty of the Sea (E Bukura e Detit) lives in many Albanian rivers and other water bodies such as lakes, springs, waterfalls, and the sea. The Beauty of the Sky (E Bukura e Qiellit) reigns over the sun and the moon, and the Beauty of the Earth and the Underground (E Bukura e Dheut) dwells in the mountains and the underworld. In contrast to the beauties, Kuçedra is known for its ugliness and frightening powers. Due to its ambiguous character, on the one hand, it can bring storms, floods, or droughts, while, on the other hand, it is benevolent and protects the celestial, terrestrial, and waterworlds and creates life. Although it seems to be an almost forgotten mythological being in contemporary Albanian society, its authoritative character permeates the relationship with water, rivers, the environment, and sociality as a whole.

N. Gregorič Bon (*) Research Centre of the Slovenian Academy of Sciences and Arts, Ljubljana, Slovenia e-mail: [email protected] © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2021 N. Gregorič Bon, S. Musaraj (eds.), Remitting, Restoring and Building Contemporary Albania, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-84091-4_6

131

132 

N. GREGORIČ BON

Myths around the world almost universally tell of the importance of water in human and non-human origins, often claiming that the world originated from water, either a river or some other water body. In her extensive study of water and its materiality Veronica Strang (2015) also sets out the universality of the creative water deities. Serpent-like beings are often crucial protagonists in the creation of the world and the procreation and destruction of human and non-human life, frequently embodying the cyclical nature of a river that connects water, sky, and earth to create life. Myths and myth-like stories, often equated with legends and fairy tales, play an important role in Albanian society,1 engendering moral and ethical codes that are part of central traditional institutions, such as kinship, the relationship to authority, honor (nder), keeping a promise  (besa) and trust  (shpresa) (see Gregorič Bon 2018a). Although they are gradually eroding due to political, economic, and social changes in recent decades, such codes remain important pillars of contemporary Albanian society (ibid.). By juxtaposing three seemingly unrelated domains—mythological Kuçedra, water, and the state—this chapter reveals the notion of authority that permeates all three dimensions and rejuvenates the vitality of water. What is the role and meaning of Kuçedra? What overflows when it is embodied in floods, water infrastructure, and its policies? In answering these questions, I focus on the significance of water and riverine environments that are subject to irreversible changes due to contemporary national and transnational infrastructural interventions, such as the construction of hydroelectric power plants (HPPs), which can lead to negative impacts and threaten the sustainability of the local and global environment. Following Strang’s notion that water beings are “good to conceptualize” (2015, 40–44), I define the mythological being Kuçedra as a process and a method through and along with which I explore the meaning of water, rivers, and the infrastructure that pertains to them. Rather than focusing on the details of Kuçedra’s legend-like narrative, I analyze its role and meaning—generated in political and media discourse as well as in everyday conversation—in discussions of water-related disasters such as floods and infrastructural management interventions. I contend that reference to the mythological figure of Kuçedra continuously brings home the 1  While the myth of Kuçedra is rarely recounted in everyday language, two other myths— Constantin’s Besa (Besa e Kostandinit) and Rozafa—are often narrated by people and appear in literature.

6  KUÇEDRA’S WATERWAYS: RESTORING AUTHORITY AND BUILDING… 

133

meanings and relationship to authority attributed to the realms of culture, nature, and mythology.

Myth and Mythohistory The attempt to understand myths and their relation to human thought and cosmology goes back to the classical anthropological studies of the early twentieth century. These studies approached myth from different theoretical standpoints grounded in different ethnographic field sites. A prominent anthropologist, Claude Lévi-Strauss, argues that “men do not think in myths but myths operate in men’s minds without their being aware of the fact” (1994[1981], 12). In his essay When Myth Becomes History (2001[1978]), he contends that history should be understood as a continuation of mythology. Myth serves the same function as history, which is to “ensure as closely as possible … that the future will remain faithful to the present and to the past” (Lévi-Strauss 2001[1978], 36–37). Yet, he continues, in many parts of Western Europe and America, history has replaced mythology. The entanglement of myth and history is also discussed in the seminal volume Albanian Identities, edited by Stephanie Schwandner-Sievers and Bernd J. Fischer (2002), which examines the reconstruction of nationalist politics and ideology in the period of the communist regime and after its demise. They argue that the mythohistories or the “archetypal structures” (2002, 7) that are grounded in the past continue to percolate the processes of building post-communist national identity and its territory. Although their edited volume does not delve into Kuçedra’s waterways, I take their premise as a founding point on which to build the argument of his chapter. How can mythology help us understand water, rivers, and their environments in Albania? In what ways does the hydrological serpent-dragon Kuçedra dwell in Albanian waters, permeate the meaning of the “state”, and generate the relation to authority? By following the waterways of Kuçedra, I delve into the multitude of entanglements between the mythical, social, political, economic, and material realms of water and riverine environments, showing how the hydrological entity of Kuçedra and its agency bring back and restore certain archetypal structures such as the relation to authority.

134 

N. GREGORIČ BON

Water as a Vital Source Water is a vital source of human and non-human life and has therefore been part of classical anthropological studies since the early twentieth century.2 These were primarily concerned with the significance of water and water bodies in social worlds.3 In the 1960s anthropologists started researching water in its relation to the infrastructure (Leach 1961; Mitchell 1976). More recent anthropological research attempts to conceptualize water itself—its substantiality, movement, scarcity, or excess. Particularly important in this context are the works of Veronica Strang (2015) in which she describes water both as a substance and as an object shared by humans and non-humans who are in a mutual relationship. Water is a “total social fact” (Orlove and Caton 2010; cf. Mauss 1990[1966]) as it overflows and entangles all the realms of social institutions, such as politics, the economy, infrastructure, mythology, ethics, and morality. H2O is a polar molecule that invites and binds other water molecules and substances, either human, non-human, or material (Orlove and Caton 2010). Its hydrological nature has always been part of its “sociality” (Krause 2017) and vice versa. During the nineteenth century’s industrialization processes, water became an even more indispensable part of material life. By juxtaposing this material meaning of water, on the one hand, with its vital significance, on the other hand, this chapter explores how its ambiguous understanding and practical use permeates the mythological and sociopolitical understandings of water. As Andrea Ballestero (2019, 405) contends, “water is more than itself; its force and material presence constantly frame people’s efforts to address the fundamental questions of what it means to live life collectively in a world that is always more than human”. In the past decade, a large body of scholarly work based on Science and Technology Studies (STS) has approached water through its technological and infrastructural becoming (Barnes 2014; Wagner 2013; Robertson 2016; Verbeek 2006), examining how infrastructures undergird 2  Examples of these early works are those by Franz Boas (1938), Bronislaw Malinowski (1948), E.R. Emerson (1894), R. Firth (1983), and C. Lévi-Strauss (1994) among others. 3  For example, the studies of its cultural and ecological meaning (Richardson and Hanks 1942; Giblett 1996); analysis of the sensorial and semantic role water had for the Renaissance landscape of Europe (Schama 1995); the role it has in urban surroundings (Illich 1985; Bergua Amores 2008); water’s spiritual significance (Shaw and Frances 2008); and its role in religion, cosmology, symbolism, and power (Alley 2002; Tuzin 1977).

6  KUÇEDRA’S WATERWAYS: RESTORING AUTHORITY AND BUILDING… 

135

contemporary societies and generate everyday lives (Larkin 2013). Consequently, water is often used and thought of as a material, technological, infrastructural, economic, political, and administrative asset, which can be fetched, bounded, blocked, commodified, traversed, legalized, appropriated, and so on (Petrović-Šteger 2016). Despite the prevailing understanding of water as a resource, however, its vital importance as a source of life is continually remitted or brings back its mythological and symbolic significance. Departing from my long-term ethnographic fieldwork in both rural and urban Albania, I explore how water permeates different realms— mythological, political, economic, material, and social—and how these different realms entangle, seep through, and reshape water, water bodies, and the wider environment. I open the chapter with the hydrological serpent dragon Kuçedra, which in contemporary everyday vernacular, political, and media discourse carries primarily a negative and destructive connotation in relation to floods, water blockages such as HPPs, and the political manipulation of water infrastructures. The destructive and benevolent forces of Kuçedra—materialized in floods, political machinations, wells, and dams—often evoke feelings of fear and insecurity and bring home the meaning of authority. The relationship to authority is one of the important moral values deeply rooted in archetypal structures such as the realms of “nature and culture”. I argue that bringing back and restoring the traditional value of authority and building it into the contemporary lifeworld in Albania could lead to a better and more sustainable4 future.

4  Here I refer to Brightman and Lewis’ (2017) definition of sustainability, which foregrounds the etymological meaning that emerged during the Enlightenment in the forestry sylviculture oeconomica as a guide to the cultivation of native trees (2017, 3). They emphasize that sustainability should be in “principle based on the active cultivation of cultural, economic, political and ecological plurality, in order to be more likely to address unpredictability in future. At its core sustainability demands practices that will foster, prize, support, defend and generate diversity at every level” (2017, 17). Thus “sustainability must foreground local voices, and this may demand a cultural and political analysis in conjunction with a willingness to challenge hegemonic ideology and practices, both locally and globally” (2017, 22). Only by promoting, supporting, and cultivating these elements can sustainable presents and futures be secured.

136 

N. GREGORIČ BON

Kuçedra the Flood In February 2015 five days of heavy rain caused excessive runoff and flooding of rivers throughout the country, leading to extreme water-­ related disasters in numerous places and resulting in the government’s declaring a state of emergency in Albania. The worst affected areas were around the cities of Shkodra and Lezha in the north, and Vlora, Fier, and Berat in central and southwest Albania, all of which are important to the country’s agriculture. Severe floods also affected the small municipality of Novosele in Vlora district, which is located along the Vjosa River. Due to heavy rains, the river rose more than 20 centimeters in one hour, flooding the fields, streets, and several homes. Fields were transformed into swampy puddles, families were evacuated from their houses, and livestock had to be rescued from their barns. After five days, the heavy rain finally stopped and the rainwater gradually dried up, but traces of the flooding remained in the dirt on the streets and filling the houses. Due to a relatively old and unmaintained sewerage system, water channels were clogged and houses were flooded with sewage. Because of the relatively high percentage of erosion5 throughout the country, floods can happen extremely quickly, yet their waters can disappear back into the ground with similar rapidity. Thus, more than on the geophysical environment, the traces of the flood were imprinted vividly on the experiences  of the inhabitants of flooded areas such as Novosele. The day after the heavy rain stopped, thirty-year-old Besnik from the village of Bishan, near Novosele, explained, “It was scary … I have three children and I did not sleep all night … I was scared … To be safe, we moved to the upper floor of our house in the middle of the night.” When asked why he and his family did not leave the house like the other residents of Novosele when they received emergency warnings on their cell phones,6 5  Almost 20% of the Albanian landscape is subject to excessive erosive processes, with an average intensity of more than 50 tons per hectare per year (Lireza and Lireza 2014). Extensive deforestation and urbanization of the bigger cities in Albania are increasing the level of erosion in the country and the water inundation of its coastal parts (Gregorič Bon et al. 2018). 6  In recent years, the Ministry of Tourism and Environment, the Ministry of Defence, and the Agency for the Protection of Civil Society have been sending regular text messages during periods of extreme weather conditions, such as heavy rain, to inform residents of water levels in their area. Many residents do not receive this information due to power outages and resulting empty batteries in their cell phones, while others do not follow these recommendations because they do not want to leave their home/house, which reifies social and cultural

6  KUÇEDRA’S WATERWAYS: RESTORING AUTHORITY AND BUILDING… 

137

Besnik clarified that by leaving he would have risked losing everything: his home/house, which he inherited from his father, and his patriline, which has lived in Novosele for centuries. As I describe elsewhere (Gregorič Bon 2016, 2017), the value of the house supersedes its material and economic value as it is an important part of social relations, which in Albania are still deeply permeated with the kinship system and all the moral and ethical codes associated with it. Thus, the home/house, together with the family, represents one of the core units of Albanian social organization. In the following days, most of the inhabitants of Novosele and the surrounding villages cleaned their houses, taking out household appliances and other items of value that they could not move to safety during the deluge. Journalists populated the area, repeatedly asking questions about the value of the damage caused by the floods and the help so far received from government agencies and public services. In response, people echoed similar stories, lists of things they had lost, and assessments of the damage that had been done. Besnik’s neighbor Mirela, who was around fifty, complained, “We were without electricity, without phone, without any information for three days. We were trapped in our own homes … What could we do (çfarë do të bëjmë)? Nothing (asgjë)!” Although it was a partly sunny day in February, it felt quite cold and chilly due to the rainwater that still covered the streets and surrounding fields. Like most residents, Mirela and her husband stood in front of their house, which was literally trapped in muddy water. They were cleaning up the yard, surveying the damage. Mirela’s husband furiously added, “No one came to help. There was no army, civil defense, fire department, or police. No one! There was no help from the state (shteti)!” Similar sentiments of being forgotten and remote were expressed by the inhabitants of other districts, who were shocked during the first few days after the flood and fearful of a possible repetition of these disastrous events. As many of them indicated, and as was later described in several government reports, similar floods and their devastating consequences became frequent winter companions in the following years. Global as well as local climate changes, together with the current infrastructural interventions of various transnational and national cooperative projects (such capital and the patriline to which they belong. As mentioned earlier, the meaning of home/ house materializes the relationship between them, their descendants, and all their belonging which they believe they can only preserve if they stay and defend their dwelling against the floods on their own.

138 

N. GREGORIČ BON

as the construction of the HPPs), have resulted in severe water-related disasters occurring with increasing frequency and intensity in terms of duration and damage. Together with a relatively inadequate drainage and sewerage system, these weather-related changes have led to severe flooding and related damage in areas throughout Albania. In the first days of excessive flooding, some of the local institutions, such as the State Social Service, local administrations, and civil emergency workers, distributed relief packages with food, clothes, and blankets to households in several villages and towns but due to the lack of human and financial resources, the emergency aid has not reached all the flooded areas, as Mirela and her husband explained. Unlike the people, who expressed fear, anger, and a sense of powerlessness about the floods and their politics, the politicians and other governmental bodies tried to present the image that they had the situation under control and were trying to mitigate the damage. In light of these events, Prime Minister Edi Rama visited the Novosele community on February 2. As reported by the media,7 during his visit he inspected the area, met with the fire brigade, the civil service, and some residents, and pointed out that the severe flooding was solely a result of extreme weather conditions; he then promised to invest in infrastructure that would help alleviate the flooding of the Vjosa. Later, in November 2015, he visited Novosele again, this time accompanied by the Minister of Environment and Tourism and an EU representative.8 Edi Rama publicly announced an EU financial grant of 15.91 million euros to the Flood Recovery Program. A large part of these financial resources, he explained, would be invested in the reconstruction of flood protection infrastructure—drainage systems, dikes, and so on—in Novosele and other places such as Shkodra and Lezha that were most affected by the floods. However, these plans seemed to be only partially implemented as, according to reports and local people’s explanations, flood-related disasters continued in the following years. Building, renewing, and restoring infrastructures that help alleviate flooding and other water-related disasters are thus important state-­ building (as well as supra-state-building) projects in Albania. As material goods, they are mobilized to promote progress and modernization (see Musaraj, this volume) that generate and secure the authority of the state  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E5WQZGLETVI&t=5s  http://arkiva.ata.gov.al/qeveri-be-15-91-mln-euro-programit-te-rimekembjes-ngapermbytjet/ 7 8

6  KUÇEDRA’S WATERWAYS: RESTORING AUTHORITY AND BUILDING… 

139

or the political elite and raise hopes and expectations for a better future. Water and its associated infrastructure are thus a material resource, appropriated and managed by state decision-makers who use their authority and power to alleviate recurring disasters. But infrastructural failure due to poor management and general negligence is accompanied by social insecurity and distrust of the state and its capacity to administer the resource. “Lezha can only be saved from Kuçedra with the state plan” is the title of a newspaper article by Gjok Vuksani, a hydrologist from the University of Tirana. Referring to the recurrent floods in Lezha and Shkodra, caused by heavy rain and the simultaneous overflow of the Rivers Drin and Buna, he points out that political promises of flood protection programs often lack precise, technically sound state planning on flood relief methods and river defense: Whenever it rains in our country, this natural phenomenon is accompanied by severe floods in Lezha and elsewhere. This annual disaster that we experience in Lezha is no longer just an event that fills the media, but is part of the political machinations that have begun to relativize the consequences. Every flood is an extraordinary drama for every resident of Lezha whose house, appliances, utensils, and even children’s clothes are caught in the water at least two or three times a year. Moreover, this is also a disaster for agricultural development at the national level, as the areas of Lezha and the neighboring town of Shkodra are responsible for about 18–20% of the total national agricultural production. This production is important not only for farmers, but also for the national economy, as it contributes about $300 million to the national GDP. Almost as great is the damage caused by floods. Flooding in Lezha and Shkodra is not just a problem of some “villagers born in water” as one of the leftist politicians once said, but a national problem. For this reason, this problem must be addressed with a national plan to reduce the damage caused by floods and the related losses in this area. (Lidhja e Prizrenit 2016)9

In the rest of his article, Vuksani lists various measures, such as the construction and restoration of drainage systems, dikes, reservoirs, and weirs that would prevent rivers from bursting their banks. All this, he continues, should be addressed in detail in the Flood Recovery Program area of Lezha and Shkodra and elsewhere. As Vuksani points out, the 9  https://www.ballikombetar.info/lezha-shpeton-nga-kucedra-e-permbytjes-vetem-menje-plan-kombetar/

140 

N. GREGORIČ BON

government’s flood protection program can only be successful and lead to better, more sustainable river management in the future if these measures, which should always be in accordance with the specific hydrological, geophysical, and infrastructural conditions of the local environment, are addressed and implemented. Similarly, many local residents, as well as non-governmental organizations (NGOs) and other activists, assign responsibility and authority—to improve flood protection through investment and (re)build infrastructure that would prevent river overflow—to the state or the leading political elite. Only infrastructural interventions, as Vuksani notes, would save Lezha from the devastating forces of Kuçedra or floods. Infrastructures pertain to material objects as well as to relations between people and these objects (Larkin 2013). Therefore, it is important to examine how they have been formed and mediated in particular historical, political, economic, and social realms (ibid.). As the ethnographic material explains, water infrastructure, such as sewage systems, irrigation canals, bridges, and dikes, became an indispensable part of material life that gradually submerged into the everyday lives of individuals and society. Water infrastructure, along with other infrastructural assets, became part of the built environment. But, as noted already, this material understanding of water and its wider environment are frequently inalienably accompanied by its vital significance, which appears in different forms: symbolic, imaginary, or mythical. This can be read in Vuksani’s reference to Kuçedra. Despite it seems that he is using Kuçedra as a metaphor or synonym for flood, I concur that this usage evokes the meaning of metaphor in its strict etymological sense. The latter comes from the Greek word—meta forai— for bringing something beyond the actual language into a metalanguage. In Strang’s terms (2015), I regard Kuçedra as a subject that is good to “think with”. Where can Kuçedra as a meta forai take us in terms of its meaning? To what affects and effects does it give rise, and what structural prerequisites emerge? The floods and their recurring, devastating nature have caused fear, uncertainty, grief, and anger not only among the inhabitants of the flooded areas but also among experts like hydrologists. They all resent the state, on the one hand, for not building adequate control measures that would save them from the annual floods, while, on the other hand, they acknowledge its authority and power to save them from recurring weather and other climate-related disasters. The state and its policies generate a “metalanguage” (cf. Petrović-Šteger 2020) within the parameters of which people

6  KUÇEDRA’S WATERWAYS: RESTORING AUTHORITY AND BUILDING… 

141

often verbalize their feelings and fears about the frequent floods. Similarly, as Petrović-Šteger (2020) contends, based on her ethnographic research in Serbia, the social as well as the geophysical is often explained within the realm of the political, which generates a metalanguage that people use to express themselves and to act, as well as to define the times in which they live (2016, 2020). But, as will be explained as this chapter progresses, while evolving weather disasters are often expressed within the political “metalanguage”, people’s practices and the ways in which they deal with water-related devastation often reveal deeper dimensions that pertain to structural domains rooted in the recent (communist) as well as distant (pre-communist) pasts.

Brief History of Water Management The availability of and access to water are not just a matter of the quantity of water in a given area, but are highly dependent on the historical, social, political, and economic qualities that make water available and usable (Ballestero 2019, 409). In this section, I explain how various economic, political, and infrastructural interventions in and management of water distribution systems and rivers have generated availability and access as well as the relationship to water and water bodies in Albania. It describes how the power and authority that used to belong to the mythological water heroine Kuçedra has gradually become intertwined with the importance of the state and its power and authority. The first water distribution system dates back to the period after World War I, when some prosperous families in the capital Tirana and the northern city of Shkodra received water wells (Kera 2008). The first water supply system that provided water directly to households in most Albanian cities was built by Italian companies during the monarchy of King Zog (1928–1939) when Albania became a political and economic protectorate of the Italian government under Mussolini (Zeneli 2017). During this period, some of the economically important cities in the country (e.g. Tirana, Shkodra, Durres, Elbasan, and Berat) received the first water supply network (Capolino 2011), while most rural areas still depended on springs and wells. The first water distribution system to cover the whole country was built in the period of bilateral cooperation between the communist Republic of Albania and the People’s Republic of China (1960–1970). This period was characterized by infrastructural development in transport networks, water supply, construction of HPPs and

142 

N. GREGORIČ BON

ensuing electrification, and urban transformation (see Musaraj, this volume). This state-sponsored “development” was one state-building project that aimed to make the country a “modernising force” (Dalakoglou 2017, 49; see also Bejko, Musaraj this volume), meanwhile contributing to the well-being of all citizens. In this way, the communist system and its project of building and developing infrastructure gradually penetrated the daily lives of Albanian citizens. During the communist regime, the water system’s infrastructure was centralized and managed by the Ministry of Construction, but the fall of the regime in 1990 and the subsequent political, economic, and social crisis led to its gradual deterioration. Although the political and economic transition was accompanied by water reform, the latter was only partially implemented in selected locations such as the capital and some other major cities. In the first decade (1990–2000), water tariffs were levied at a flat rate, which meant that individual households paid 30% of the price of consumption, while the rest was covered by the government. According to national and international reports, only 21% of residents paid water tariffs regularly as many Albanian residents considered water a public good to be secured, managed, and provided by the “state” or the leading political party. Massive migrations within and outside the country, together with the rising phenomenon of remittances and the concomitant urbanization of major cities10 (see Vullnetari and Musaraj, this volume; Dalakoglou 2010; Gregorič Bon 2017), have led to informal individual interventions in the water distribution system resulting in uncontrolled restructuring of the public water supply. This has made the average per capita water consumption unpredictable and led to frequent water cuts, which were especially common in the first decade after the fall of the regime. The inadequate water infrastructure together with the repeated water cuts generated another infrastructural asset that materialized in rooftop water tanks, 10  While the first decade after the regime witnessed massive migrations, the number of migrants stabilized after 2000. At the same time, the number of remittances and other material goods sent home sporadically increased. Remittances were often the main source of income for certain households and economies in Albania (Vullnetari and King 2011) and had an impact on the rapid urbanization of the area. The latter also increased due to the return migrations that followed in 2010, a few years after the economic and financial crisis in Greece and Italy. For example, in many larger cities (e.g. Tirana, Durres, Fier, Shkodra, Vlora, and Saranda) the centers spread to the suburbs and the coastal plains became densely urbanized due to tourism development.

6  KUÇEDRA’S WATERWAYS: RESTORING AUTHORITY AND BUILDING… 

143

which became an inevitable part of Albanian architecture. With the presence of water tanks in this river-rich European country, tap water became undrinkable, especially in urban areas. In the following years, several water companies emerged that bottled spring water and sold it on the Albanian market and partly also on the world market. Water became an important commodity to be purified, bottled, diverted, and used for various economic, infrastructural, as well as political purposes. The water reform implemented between 1990 and 2003 led to a transformation of the water distribution system. Yet, despite investment in improvements—international organizations such as the World Bank, USAID, and the European Union invested in the rehabilitation of the water system in a number of major cities (Tirana, Fier, Vlora, Saranda, etc.)—sanitation and wastewater systems are still lacking in many cities and towns. All this contributes to the frequency of floods in many parts of the country, especially in places located along rivers (such as Novosele, Lezha, and Shkodra). Meanwhile, flat payments for water were abandoned and in most districts water is now paid for according to the consumption of each household, as well as being marked by huge increases in price: while a cubic meter of water cost 11–15 euros per month in 2002, this tripled six years later to 29–36 euros. This sudden increase in the cost of water was accompanied by conflict in the population which was reflected in media reports comparing Prime Minister Edi Rama with Kuçedra. “Kuçedra raises water price” was the headline for an online news article (55 Online, 27.7.2015), which described the “prime minister’s deadly thirst” for increasing the cost of water consumption. As it goes on to say, the increase in water tariff will “hit the pockets of many residents who are already facing a high percentage of unemployment and other problems, which will increase the number of emigrations”. Despite the increase in water charges, water security remains very poor in many smaller towns and villages, some of which still face daily water reductions. These should be scheduled on an hourly basis (4  h–7  h, 12  h–14  h, 16  h–20  h), but in many villages and towns, especially in peripheral regions, these schedules often change, giving rise to a sense of insecurity and unpredictability among local people. The unpredictability, along with power cuts and other infrastructural failures, has gradually penetrated people’s intimate lives and their daily parlance, which often revolves around basic infrastructural commodities. The question “Do you have electricity, do you have water (ka drita, ka uje)?” often accompanies the greeting of a neighbor or relative.

144 

N. GREGORIČ BON

As with floods, inadequate and unreliable water infrastructure leaves people with traces of insecurity, disappointment, and a sense that the “state” has failed them. The discussion so far has explained how the state system, with its management, control, alleviation of floods, and restoration of the water distribution system, has gradually seeped into people’s intimate relationship with water and its associated infrastructure. In their feelings of insecurity and disillusionment and condition of dependency, they claim the “state” as the only entity and authority capable of solving and managing their problems. But what exactly do people mean when they refer to the state? The answer to this should be read in the wider social and historical frame addressed in the following section.

Restoring Authority In the period before and during the Ottoman Empire (1503–1912), individual families were organized and governed according to traditional Albanian unwritten customary laws called Kanun(s) (Hasluck 1954; Gregorič Bon 2008, 2018a; Bardhoshi 2012). Although the Ottoman authorities ignored the Kanun system, they did not challenge it, and therefore the core postulates remained in place throughout the period of Ottoman rule and later. This was especially true in remote rural areas and communities that have not adopted Islam. The Kanun laws were formed and managed by particular big men (cifti, i madhi e shtëpise), core authorities, and representatives of important patrilines (fis), who administered a particular locality, either a group of villages or a specific territory. Kanuns defined core principles of patrilines and their social and spatial organization, such as property issues and heritage system (Bardhoshi 2013), as well as other normative and ethical codes that deeply influenced people’s daily lives, practices, and prevailing ways of thinking (mentalitet). Although the general norms of Kanuns were widely known and accepted among the big men of each patriline, their specific content was constantly changing and adapting to contemporary social relations based on the kinship system (sistemi fisnorë), mythological beliefs, and pagan practices such as the Evil Eye (Syri Keq). Ultimately, the decisions and choices of particular big men shaped the daily life and collective mentality of Albanian communities (Gregorič Bon 2008). With the introduction of the communist regime (1945–1991), the period of planned and systematic uprooting of traditional unwritten laws began. The aim of the autocratic leadership was to eradicate traditional

6  KUÇEDRA’S WATERWAYS: RESTORING AUTHORITY AND BUILDING… 

145

Kanun laws from everyday life and collective consciousness. The Kanun laws, together with the authority of the big men and related property issues, were promulgated as backward (Bardhoshi 2012) for they were suddenly recognized as a threat to the unity and uniformity of the communist regime. The power and authority that once belonged to individual big men and their patrilines were appropriated by the autocratic leader, Enver Hoxha. The unwritten laws were replaced by written communist norms, and the authority formerly distributed among the big men was centralized in a single person, the communist leader, thus enabling continuity of authority. Although the ideology of the regime attempted to eradicate the social power of big man authority embedded in the kinship system and related property issues, the relationship survived. This is because the new regime retained the role of the sovereign (personified in the communist leader) and a form of power that was centralized and promulgated in the authoritarian model of government, thereby echoing the old ways of governance. However, many other values and ethical codes, such as honor (nder), keeping a promise (besa), and trust (shpresa), were gradually eroded by the fear and paranoia imposed by the surveillance of the communist intelligence agency, Sigurimi, whose system of bugging gradually embedded itself in every pore of the individual and collective psyche. The Foucauldian (1995) model of control and surveillance implanted profound feelings of distrust toward the Other (non-relatives) and the state. After the fall of the regime and the attendant economic, political, and social crises, which led to massive migrations, the sense of mistrust intensified and permeated the social sphere as well as being directed at the state and political leadership (Gregorič Bon 2018a, b). Along with the process of democratization and the concomitant shift to privatization, the need to restore and strengthen the kinship system and related landownership issues emerged. The latter again became important agents of social organization and key elements in the understanding of authority. As a result of the regime changes—pre-Ottoman, Ottoman, communist—and their associated ruptures, the role of big men gradually diminished whereas their meaning and relation to authority managed to remain. During the post-communist transition and the introduction of the neoliberal market economy, the authority entangled with the kinship system and related property issues became interrelated with the leading political parties, for which people often use the general term “state” (shteti). All this strengthened the patronage system and the informal economy (Kera and Hysa

146 

N. GREGORIČ BON

2020), which facilitated their intertwining with public administration, politics, the kinship system, and friendship. The patronage system and concomitant understandings of authority were addressed by the inhabitants of the flooded areas of Novosele and Lezha. For example, in the first hours of the day after the flood, Besnik described the fear he had experienced the moment the sewer water flooded the first floor of his house. Although he knew from past experience that he and his family might not be safe if they moved to a higher floor, he remained in his house and somehow guarded his property. He knew that if he lost the house/home he had built on the land he had inherited from his patriline, he would lose everything—not only his house, but also his home as a reified relationship with his patriline. But a few days after the heavy rains stopped, as the sewage slowly seeped into the ground, leaving dirt on the street, damp houses, and broken appliances, the people of Novosele resorted to political “metalanguage” (cf. Petrović-Šteger 2020) in which they transposed their fear of the powerful forces of the river and its flooding into anger with state power. As Mirela and her husband pointed out, there was no help from the state, as they expected. The multitude of entanglements between the historical, political, social, geophysical, and mythological meanings that pertain to the river and water, in general, is addressed in the following section.

Kuçedra the Dam “The dam is like Kuçedra,” noted Zamir, a researcher and lecturer in the Department of Biology at the University of Tirana. “It blocks the water and devastates the river and its surroundings.” With this, Zamir was drawing parallels between infrastructure and mythology. In addition to teaching biology, Zamir is an active member of the academic research group at the NGO, EcoAlbania, which aims to preserve natural parks and wild rivers in Albania. In the last ten years, EcoAlbania has been mainly concerned with the Vjosa River, which rises as the Aoös River in the Pindos Mountains in northern Greece, straddles the Greek-Albanian border, and flows into the Adriatic Sea in the south. With the exception of an HPP built in 1984 on its upper catchment in Greece, the Vjosa is considered one of the last “free-flowing rivers”, with one of the widest gravel banks in Europe. Its unique waterworld is also known among researchers who have recognized that the Vjosa has not yet been studied in terms of its biohabitat and other hydrological characteristics (Fig. 6.1).

6  KUÇEDRA’S WATERWAYS: RESTORING AUTHORITY AND BUILDING… 

147

Fig. 6.1  Vjosa River, 2018. Photo by author

In recent years the transnational campaign, Save the Blue Heart of Europe11—linking numerous Albanian and international NGOs, universities, artists, media institutions—has tried to increase research activities on the Vjosa, which has become known as an “open research laboratory”. The Blue Heart of Europe campaign, financed and managed by EuroNatur, organizes so-called science weeks on the Vjosa in cooperation with the local NGO EcoAlbania and the Austrian NGO RiversWatch. During the five years of my anthropological research on and along the Vjosa River, I had the opportunity to participate in some of these “science weeks” as well as in other events12 organized either by the Department of Biology, 11  The Blue Heart of Europe campaign aims to protect the riverine environment throughout the Balkans where various transnational cooperative enterprises along with local political initiatives plan to build around 3000 HPPs on rivers flowing through Slovenia, Croatia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Serbia, Montenegro, Macedonia, Kosovo, Albania, and Greece (Balkan Rivers 2018). 12  For example, various visits of diplomats and activists and artistic activities.

148 

N. GREGORIČ BON

University of Tirana, or by EcoAlbania under the auspices of the Save the Blue Heart of Europe campaign. My conversation with Zamir took place during a “science week” when I accompanied the Biology Department’s research group on one of their pioneering research projects on the Vjosa River. During the five-day trip, the biologists collected water samples at designated water stations and sampled larval and another riparian biota, floodplain vegetation, and other features of the riverine landscape. The seven-member research team meticulously noted down the data for reports evaluating environmental hazards and prognosing potential infrastructural interventions such as HPP construction in the near future. It was precisely in this spirit that Zamir explained to me the impact of the HPPs in Poçem and Kalivaç, two designated locations situated on the Vjosa, where transnational construction companies in collaboration with the government were laying the first foundations at the time. The research findings, Zamir explained, would result in a fact sheet that would serve NGOs and the Blue Heart of Europe campaign in their lawsuit against the government. Pointing out the parallels between Kuçedra and HPPs, Zamir highlighted the effects (and affects) of technology and mythology, both acting as blockades (Fig. 6.2). While Kuçedra blocks water and brings misfortune, hydropower dams prevent sediment transport, an important source of fertilizer for river and marine biota. The blockage created by a hydropower dam will cause significant changes in river morphology in a relatively short period of time (a few years), increase the amount of erosion and, most importantly, flood many villages and agricultural fields. This leads to displacement of local populations which, in Albania, are already facing high levels of migration due to economic and political changes in the country in recent decades. Scientists and environmentalists (Golfieri et  al. 2017) warn that in the long run these changes will leave their mark on the environment and lead to the transformation of the entire ecosystem. The damage—ecological, economic, and social—will be much greater than the benefits resulting from electricity production. Environmental reports by hydrologists, biologists, and other engineers warn that the Vjosa HPP dams will form an artificial lake that will flood numerous agricultural fields and also some villages along the river, whose residents depend mainly on agriculture. These side effects of the HPP construction, as NGO alerts, were shattered by the government’s plan to advertise tourism development through the artificial lakes created by the dam. Unlike the government, national and international NGOs under the

6  KUÇEDRA’S WATERWAYS: RESTORING AUTHORITY AND BUILDING… 

149

Fig. 6.2  Biologist collecting water samples at the Vjosa River, 2016. Photo by author

auspices of the Blue Heart of Europe campaign began to inform communities along the Vjosa River about these negative impacts. Against this background, the inhabitants of some villages along the Vjosa, whose fields and properties will be flooded by the technical lake to be created after the construction of the HPP, are organizing various protests and trying to make civil society aware of the gravity of the situation (Fig. 6.3).

Kuçedra Occupies the Well “E ka zënë Kuçedra (Kuçedra has occupied it),” Rosa remarked, explaining that the expression was often used when, as a little girl, she stood in the long queue of women waiting to fetch water from one of the village wells. Sitting on the sofa bed in the living room, above which hung a painting of a spring flowing peacefully into a river, Rosa, a retired primary school teacher, nostalgically recalled life in the villages along the Vjosa.

150 

N. GREGORIČ BON

Fig. 6.3  Protest of local people against the construction of HPP, organized in Tirana, 2015. Photo by Andrew Burr©EcoAlbania

One of them is Kutë whose agricultural fields will be flooded if the HPP in Poçem is built. Although Rosa was born in the neighboring village, which also lies along the Vjosa River, she has spent more than half of her life in Kutë where she moved after her marriage. Under communism, a village cooperative was established in 1958, at a time when Kutë was one of the most agriculturally productive and prosperous villages along the Vjosa valley. During our conversation, we were joined by Rosa’s sister-in-­ law Majlinda, who lives next door in a semidetached house and proudly described how it has been recently renovated with remittances from her children, who are migrants living in Italy. They spoke about the village neighborhoods that belong to patrilinear descent groups. Like the majority of the villagers they boasted about their houses/homes and family, lamented the absence of their migrant children, and worried about their agricultural land which will be flooded by a technical lake should the HPP be built (Fig. 6.4). Seventy-year-old Fatjon with whom I conversed during many of my visits to the village narrated similar issues. Accompanied by his two friends

6  KUÇEDRA’S WATERWAYS: RESTORING AUTHORITY AND BUILDING… 

151

Fig. 6.4  Kutë village and the land which will be flooded by a technical lake should the HPP be built, 2016. Photo by author

(of similar age), he proudly recounted the history of the village and its surroundings, which he claimed dated back to ancient times. According to Fatjon, due to its position in the river valley, the village prospered in the pre-Ottoman and Ottoman periods when it was important for its agriculture. Fatjon and his friends enumerated the surnames of the village’s important patrilines, who still possess important social and cultural capital despite the current economic precariousness. According to Fatjon, Kutë retained an important agricultural role until the fall of the communist regime, when, due to the collapse of the cooperative system, most of the villagers migrated either to larger cities or abroad. Fatjon nostalgically recalled the time when he worked with the pioneer brigades in the fields, building irrigation canals, cutting back the Mediterranean shrubs along the Vjosa, and transforming the riverine landscape into a productive area. His memories, however, soon turned to the current problems and those that will arise when the HPP is built and the technical lake floods their

152 

N. GREGORIČ BON

fields. Besides remittances from children living abroad, the land is the only wealth they have, Fatjon explained. Although they are supposed to receive compensation of 50 cents per square meter of land if the HPP is built—as part of the privatization process that has been underway since the fall of the communist regime—legally, most villagers still do not possess ownership of a particular plot of land. This implies that they will not receive any compensation and create additional distrust of the “state” and the government authority. During our conversation, I asked Fatjon and his friends about the river. But instead of the river, they talked about the agricultural fields and olive groves located along the irrigation canals where the river and the land meet and connect. They described the fields that provide food for their families and households and the annual floods that inundate the fields. “But as the river takes, so it gives,” they stressed. In the winter period with its heavy rains, the Vjosa takes minerals from the soil, but in the other seasons, it brings water and irrigates the fields and orchards, bringing life and vitality. The Vjosa River has been a vital source of the village’s fertility, agriculture, and economy. In the first years after the regime, when Albania was characterized by massive migrations, the irrigation canals and the road leading to the village gradually deteriorated. The once central and prosperous village turned into a remote periphery. The two-kilometer road leading to the village is now littered with holes and it takes almost an hour to reach it by car from the main road Fier-Gjirokastër. With the passage of time, the village has gradually been transformed into a remote place on the Albanian map. These feelings of remoteness, similar to those of the inhabitants of flooded Novosele, were also shared with me by younger villagers. I sat with Drini, a thirty-year-old teacher at the village’s primary school, and his colleagues on a terrace of the village cafeteria and looked out over the wide gravel banks of the Vjosa River, its azure hues gleaming in the distance (Fig. 6.5). Drini is from the neighboring village of Fratar which, unlike Kutë, will not be affected by the material damage caused by the HPP construction in Poçem. In our conversation, Drini repeatedly pointed out the high rate of migration faced by villages along the Vjosa after the fall of the regime.

6  KUÇEDRA’S WATERWAYS: RESTORING AUTHORITY AND BUILDING… 

153

Fig. 6.5  Vjosa and its wide gravel banks, 2016. Photo by author There is no life in the village. Many are unemployed. Where can we go? What can we do [qfarë do të bëjmë]! The state [shteti] does not help us. Right now from here [Kutë] about forty to fifty young people are living abroad. … Mostly in Great Britain.

When I asked where he sees the future of the Vjosa Valley villages, Drini replied: There is no future here … What future? There are no jobs … The village needs infrastructure, a road, water that runs twenty-four hours a day. Now we only have water for one hour a day, that is not enough to fill the water tanks … As I said before, the only hope is migration. There is no other hope. … To be honest, although the majority here disagree with me [he smiles slightly sheepishly], I hope they will build the HPP. At least the people will get something out of it [land compensation] and they will be able to pay to get their papers in order and emigrate.

154 

N. GREGORIČ BON

As Drini explained his point of view, the majority of the young men seated next to us loudly disagreed with his opinion. One of them, Fatmir, remarked angrily: No, no, no! He [pointing to Drini] is from Fratar, the village above the dam. Therefore he does not care. Here [in Kutë] we have our property and our land where we grow wheat, corn, and other crops. We have our cattle, our home/house (shtëpi), and our wealth. Why should we leave all this to the capitalist needs of some Turks [a Turkish construction company will build the dam] or to the interests of Sali Berisha [the Albanian prime minister between 2005 and 2013] or Edi Rama [prime minister from 2013 until the present]? Why should we give up our homes because of their interests? This is the place where we were born and this is the place where we will die and be buried. Just like our ancestors. This is where our fis [patriline] belongs. Here we have land, home, and wealth. I do not see why we should leave all that for a few kilowatts of electricity. We could be more productive in agriculture than we are now.

“Surely we can do all that,” remarked Drini, in a very calm voice, and continued: But the cost of living is rising, and it’s impossible to support ourselves. So people will move out one by one. These are the problems of most villages in Albania. People have land [agricultural fields and pastures], but they cannot live on it. If we want to develop and improve agriculture, we need investment and help from the state. People have land, but they live in poverty. The only hope is to invest in agriculture. … But first we need to rebuild the village road and clean the irrigation canals. That is a start. But for that we need organization and state investment. There is no hope here, the only hope is migration.

In a somewhat calmer voice, Fatmir replied: Yes indeed, we need infrastructure like roads, and irrigation canals should be cleaned. Only then would we be able to develop and sell our products in the city. But here we have everything: land, river, our houses. Why should we move? The problem is that the state does not help. It should invest in infrastructure and clean the irrigation canals.

I wondered aloud why they are waiting for the “state” to do all this and why they do not do it themselves. Fatmir explained:

6  KUÇEDRA’S WATERWAYS: RESTORING AUTHORITY AND BUILDING… 

155

The mentality of the people here is very superficial [mentaliteti këtu eshtë pak i dobët]. It is part of this place. For example, if I were to ask my neighbor, whose land is next to mine … to clean the irrigation canals, he would ask me why he should do it when no one else cleans them. Why should I be the one? Since he does not plan to stay in the village, he does not care. Therefore, the state should organize it. It should call a meeting and form a small cooperative, manage the tasks and everything would be solved.

I persisted in my question, why do not they organize the meeting themselves, form a small cooperative, and distribute the tasks. Why do they wait for the state? The people here are negligent. Because they do not care about the problems they have to deal with. What you can do, nothing! [Qfare do të bësh, asgjë!] Here it cannot go through [këtu nuk bëhët, here it cannot be done].

Like many people throughout Albania, the villagers of Kutë devoted a lot of attention to the issue of migration, which, according to Drini, is their only hope for a better future. As described in the chapter by Julie Vullnetari (this volume), migrations are not only typical of the post-­ communist period, but part of the structural continuity that has been sporadically present in the area of present-day Albania for centuries (Gregorič Bon 2017). However, besides migrations, the villagers of Kutë, like the inhabitants of flooded areas such as Novosele, Shkodra, and Lezha, emphasize the importance of the state. On the one hand, they assign full responsibility to the state with regard to solving current problems related to floods and flood protection programs, the renovation and cleaning of irrigation canals, and the renewal of water infrastructure; on the other hand, they blame the state for any failures in infrastructure and for the ecologically risky construction of the HPP on the as yet “untamed” Vjosa River. This attitude concedes full authority and power to the “state”, which is seen as the culprit for all the problems people face in their daily lives. It seems that they are somehow caught in the “jaws” of the “state” (cf. Navaro-Yashin 2002), in which the social, geophysical, and material is deeply entangled with the political. The latter generates the dominant “metalanguage” (cf. Petrović-Šteger 2020) in Kutë, Novosele, and elsewhere. But inherent to this political metalanguage is the meaning of authority, which, as Fatmir points out, is ascribed to traditional institutions such as kinship, family, and their home/house which are trying to

156 

N. GREGORIČ BON

preserve and restore. As I explain above, patriline, family, land, and home/ house are important structural residues of the past that still generate the social and moral values of contemporary Albania and permeate the meaning of and relation to authority. Although the inhabitants of the Vjosa River attributed the role of authority to the state at the level of discourse, which often resorted to political metalanguage, at the level of practice, or what is accessible through longue duree of their social organization (kinship), the inhabitants indirectly ascribed this authority to the kinship system and mythology. This can be read in their listing of the important patrilines populating the Kutë village, in their feelings of belonging to their house/ home, and their references to the mythological Kuçedra. In peoples’ discourse, the state is often implicitly described as the unchallengeable authority that should take care of its citizens, whereby the individual is conceptualized as the passive subject of authority—whether that of the state, communist dictator, patriarch, natural disaster, or mythological Kuçedra. Yet the constant complaints about the dysfunctional contemporary state, mainly from the younger generation, such as Fatmir and his friends, indicate a goal of improving the situation and raising the awareness of the older generation that it is up to them to obstruct the building of the hydropower plant in order to contribute to a better future of their families and the village in general. In collaboration with the environmental activists, they have so far organized numerous protests in which they aim to raise awareness of the vulnerability of Vjosa riverine environment and its people, many of whom will be displaced due to the loss of their agricultural fields—their main source of income. By organizing different concerts and art camps, the villagers along with the local NGOs aim to mobilize the passive attitude of the majority of the Vjosa River’s inhabitants, who often fall back on the common belief that “nothing can be done about it” (“What can we do/qfarë do të bëjmë?”). Indeed, as a result of their active collaboration with the Albanian and international environmental activists, they succeeded in legally halting the construction of the HPP in Poçem and Kalivaç and declaring the Vjosa a national park.

Toward Vitality of Water By juxtaposing the myth, history, and present of water, its infrastructure and particular water bodies like the Vjosa River, this chapter shows how specific moral values, such as the relationship to authority, are crucial to

6  KUÇEDRA’S WATERWAYS: RESTORING AUTHORITY AND BUILDING… 

157

understanding the realms of nature, culture, and society. Here, the mythological hero Kuçedra plays a crucial role, as its character—either discursively or metaphorically—engenders archetypal structures that generate the relationship to authority. Although Kuçedra seems to be referred to as a metaphor—designating either the state, nature/culture, or infrastructure—in political, media, and social discourse, its metaphorical meaning should be read in its strict etymological sense of meta forai, which transcends its actual meaning and points out the relationship with the wider environment in Albania. The relationship to authority attributed to Kuçedra constantly seeps into political discourse and people’s talk, but at the same time, it also permeates peoples’ practices and their social organization—to return to Lévi-Strauss’ argument that “myths operate in men’s minds without their being aware of the fact” (Lévi-Strauss 2001[1978], 36–37). The myth of Kuçedra or the meaning of authority that this myth embeds constantly brings back the archetypal structures such as the patriline, the meaning of home/ house, and belonging. But as explained above, this continuity is not so much inherent in peoples’ narratives as it is intrinsic to their practices and their way of social organization (kinship system, land ownership). From the perspective of temporality (see Musaraj, de Rapper, this volume), the past thus spills over into the present and the future, while the present is continuously bounced back to the past. Water is a vital source of life in the wider environment. It is often considered and used as a material, infrastructural, economic, political, and administrative good that can be managed and appropriated, thus bringing water as a resource to the fore (see also Petrović-Šteger 2016). However, the winding routes of Kuçedra and its ambiguous power always manage to spill over and depose the authority of water and its vitality. In this view, water is both a source (of life) and a resource (for management and appropriation). To transgress its material meaning, this chapter takes the reader through and along the multitude of entanglements between mythological, social, political, economic, and infrastructural domains. Starting from the premise that water is a total social fact, it describes how water in its various phenomenal forms, like floods, rivers, wells, and water policy, permeates the domains listed above. In order to get closer to the vital meaning of water, this chapter aimed to disentangle these multiple relationships. “Water is always more than itself,” as Ballestero contends (2019, 405). It is both a “force” and “material presence” which, in the case of Albania,

158 

N. GREGORIČ BON

continuously spill over archetypal structures such as the relationship to authority. The multitude of entanglements between mythological, social, political, economic, and infrastructural realms shows that the meaning of water and rivers should be approached along the paths, materials, and ideas through which it flows, springs, dams, seeps, and floods. Water is a dynamic force and substance that flows through and floods the ambiguities between nature (floods) and culture (flood protection infrastructure), between the source (springs and tributaries) and resource (sewerage system). Its power and ability to, seep into, spillover, and flood accords it authority, which arouses in people a sense of powerlessness to prevent or to protect themselves from recurring floods, other natural disasters, and infrastructural interventions. But after a while, as the chapter describes, the power and authority attributed to water-related phenomena gradually trickle down into political domains such as the state. But what does this state authority mean in the context of future HPP construction in Poçem and Kalivaç? Will the actions and warnings of the environmental activists and NGOs succeed in mobilizing the passive mindset of the majority of the river population and encourage them in the belief that their actions can stop the construction of the HHP? Will the environmental activists and NGO workers succeed in restoring the primal relationship with the water and the river as the vital source of local lifeworlds, agricultural fields, and homes? Will they manage to “disenchant” the destructive forces of Kuçedra and restore its role as the guardian of the river and water cycle? In their personal approach to the local population, expressed in various actions such as “science week” or in their support to local protest they are opening a potential to change things and improve the life in the village and contribute to a sustainable environment. It seems that with these collective environmental actions they are trying to awaken archetypal structures, such as authority which, as the myth of Kuçedra tells us, are attributed to the realm of nature (environment), culture, and society (patriarchs). Only by restoring these structural prerequisites embodied in Kuçedra will river dwellers, together with environmental activists, succeed in building a sustainable future. This chapter has approached water, its infrastructure and the Vjosa River through the mythological meaning of Kuçedra, which is defined as a process and method that transcends its mythical object and restores archetypal structures such as authority. The latter is crucial in reviving the

6  KUÇEDRA’S WATERWAYS: RESTORING AUTHORITY AND BUILDING… 

159

relationship to water and rivers as unconditional authorities and a vital source of life. Acknowledgments  I acknowledge the project “Experiencing Water Environments and Environmental Changes” (J6-1803), financially supported by the Slovenian Research Agency. Some parts of this chapter have already been published in the article that appeared in the Slovenian Ethnographic Bulletin in 2018. This chapter would not have been possible without the stimulating debates and intellectual support of my project team. Immense thanks go to Maja Petrović-Šteger, Urša Kanjir, Nataša Rogelja, Borut Telban, Ana Jelnikar, and Aleš Grlj. My thanks also go to my dear colleague and co-editor Smoki Musaraj. I am indebted to my interlocutors who spent time with me and shared their stories and daily life along the Vjosa. My special thanks go to the residents of Kutë, to Olsi Nika, and Besjana Guri and their respected families and to the NGO EcoAlbania. I am grateful to the Department of Biology, University of Tirana, Prof. Aleko Miho, Prof. Sajmir Beqiraj, Lulezim Shuka, Margarita Hysko, Fundime Miri, and Jani Marka for their help and time. I also thank the Department of Geology and Geography, University of Tirana. I am indebted to my dear friends Juliana Vera and Enea Kumi and their families who take care of me whenever I am in Albania.

Bibliography Alley, Kelly D. 2002. On the Banks of the Ganga. When Wastewater Meets a Sacred River. Michigan: University of Michigan Press. Ballestero, Andrea. 2019. The Anthropology of Water. Annual Review of Anthropology 48 (2019): 405–421. Bardhoshi, Nebi. 2012. Albanian Communism and Legal Pluralism. The Question of Kanun Continuity. Ethnologia Balkanica 16 (2012): 107–125. ———. 2013. Property Rights and Legal Dynamics in a Border Area. In Social Practices and Local Configurations in the Balkans, ed. Nebi Bardhoshi, Gilles de Rapper, and Pierre Sintés, 211–232. Tirana: UET Press. Barnes, Jessica. 2014. Cultivating the Nile: The Everyday Politics of Water in Egypt. Durham and London: Duke University Press. Bergua Amores, José Ángel. 2008. Ideology, Magic and Spectres: Towards a Cultural Analysis of Water Use. Current Sociology 56 (5): 779–797. Boas, Franz. 1938[1911]. The Mind of Primitive Man. New York: Macmillan. Brightman, Marc, and Jerome Lewis, eds. 2017. The Anthropology of Sustainability. Beyond Development and Progress. New York: Palgrave Macmillan. Capolino, Patrizia. 2011. Tirana: A Capital City Transformed by the Italians. Planning Perspectives 26 (4): 591–615.

160 

N. GREGORIČ BON

Dalakoglou, Dimitris. 2010. Migrating-Remitting-‘Building’-Dwelling: House-­ making as ‘Proxy’ Presence in Postsocialist Albania. Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute 16: 761–777. ———. 2017. The Road: An Ethnography of (Im)Mobility, Space, and Cross-border Infrastructures in the Balkans. Manchester: Manchester University Press. Emerson, Ellen Russell. 1894. The Book of the Dead and Rain Ceremonials. American Anthropologist A7 (3): 233–259. Firth, Raymond. 1983. Work and Value: Reflections on Ideas of Karl Marx. In Social Anthropology of Work, ed. Sandra Wallman, 177–206. London: Academic Press. Foucault, Michel. 1995. Discipline and Punish: The Birth of the Prison. New York, NY: Vintage Books. Giblett, Rodney. 1996. Postmodern Wetlands: Culture, History, Ecology. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press. Golfieri, Bruno, Emanuele Mason, Andrea Gotara, and Eef Silver. 2017. Benefits of European River Restoration Schemes. An Analysis of 13 Case Studies Aiming to Integrate Improvement of Ecological Conditions and Flood Risk Mitigation. https://europe.wetlands.org/publications/benefits-­e uropean-­r iver-­ restoration-­schemes/. Accessed 17 May 2021. Gregorič Bon, Nataša. 2008. Prostori neskladij: Etnografija prostora in kraja v vasi Dhërmi/Drimades, Južna Albanija. Ljubljana: Založba ZRC. ———. 2016. Rooting Routes: (Non-)Movements in Southern Albania. In Moving Places: Relations, Return, and Belonging (EASA series, 29), ed. Nataša Gregorič Bon and Jaka Repič, 63–84. New York, Oxford: Berghahn Books. ———. 2017. Movement Matters: The Case of Southern Albania. Ethnologie française 47 (2): 301–308. ———. 2018a. Poskusi tlakovanja prihodnosti: Preoblikovanje mišljenjskih matric v praksah družbeno odgovornega podjetništva v Albaniji. Glasnik Slovenskega etnološkega društva 58 (3–4): 25–37. ———. 2018b. Mythologizing Water Futures in Contemporary Albania. Paper Presented at the Association of Social Anthropologists of the UK and Commonwealth, ASA18: Sociality, Matter, and the Imagination: Re-Creating Anthropology. Panel: Water Futures: Making a Living Times of Environmental Uncertainty. Oxford University, 19 September 2018. Gregorič Bon, Nataša, Damir Josipovič, and Urša Kanjir. 2018. Linking Geomorphological and Demographic Movements: The Case of Southern Albania. Applied Geography 100 (2018): 55–67. Hasluck, Margaret. 1954. The Unwritten Law of Albania. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Illich, Ivan. 1985. H2O and the Waters of Forgetfulness: Reflections on the Historicity of “Stuff”. Dallas: The Dallas Institute of Humanities and Culture.

6  KUÇEDRA’S WATERWAYS: RESTORING AUTHORITY AND BUILDING… 

161

Kera, Gentiana. 2008. Aspects of the urban development of Tirana: 1820–1939. European Seventh International Conference on Urban History: City in Comparative Perspective. Athens - Piraeus, Greece: Panteion University. Kera, Gentiana, and Armanda Hysa. 2020. Influencing Votes, Winning Elections: Clientelist Practices and Private Funding of Electoral Campaigns in Albania. Southeast European and Black Sea Studies 20 (1): 123–139. Krause, Franz. 2017. Towards an Amphibious Anthropology of Delta Life. Human Ecology 45 (3): 403–408. Larkin, Brian. 2013. The Politics and Poetics of Infrastructure. Annual Review of Anthropology 42: 327–343. Leach, Edmund R. 1961. Pul Eliya, a Village in Ceylon: A Study of Land Tenure and Kinship. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Lévi-Strauss, Claude. 1994[1981]. The Naked Man. London: Jonathan Cape. ———. 2001[1978]. Myth and Meaning. London: Routledge. Lireza, Qamil, and Linert Lireza. 2014. The Problems of Land Degradation in Albania. European Scientific Journal 10 (11): 1857–7881. Malinowski, Bronislaw. 1948. Magic, Science and Religion and Other Essays. New York: Anchor Books, Doubleday. Mauss, Marcel. 1990[1966]. The Gift: The Form and Reason for Exchange in Archaic Societies. London: Routledge. Mitchell, Willian P. 1976. Irrigation and Community in the Central Peruvian Highlands. American Anthropologist 78 (1): 25–44. Navaro-Yashin, Yael. 2002. Faces of the State: Secularism and Public Life in Turkey. Princeton: Princeton University Press. Orlove, Ben, and Steven C. Caton. 2010. Water Sustainability: Anthropological Approaches and Prospects. The Annual Review of Anthropology 39: 401–415. Petrović-Šteger, Maja. 2016. O živih in spečih vodah: Antropološka analiza rabe in doživljanja vode v sodobni Srbiji. Glasnik Slovenskega etnološkega društva 56 (3–4): 75–88. ———. 2020. Calling the Future into Being: Timescripting in Contemporary Serbia. In Biography  – A Play? Poetological Experiments in a Genre Without Poetics, ed. Günter Blamberger, Rüdiger Görner, and Adrian Robanus, 163–179. Paderborn: Wilhelm Fink. Richardson, Jane S., and L.M. Hanks. 1942. Water Discipline and Water Imagery Among the Blackfoot. American Anthropologist 44 (2): 331–333. Robertson, Peter. 2016. Engineering Photocatalysis for Solar Energy Conversion/ Storage and Environmental Applications. Paper presented at International Symposium on Next Generation Solar Cells and Solar Energy Conversion, Hsinchu, Taiwan, Province of China. Schama, Simon. 1995. Landscape and Memory. London: Harper Collins. Schwandner-Sievers, Stephanie, and Bernd J.  Fischer, eds. 2002. Albanian Identities: Myth and History. London: Hurst & Company.

162 

N. GREGORIČ BON

Shaw, Sylvie, and Andrew Frances. 2008. Deep Blue: Critical Reflections on Nature, Religion and Water. London, New York: Routledge. Strang, Veronica. 2015. Water: Nature and Culture. London: Reaktion Books in University of Chicago Press. Tuzin, Donald F. 1977. Reflections of Being in Arapesh Water Symbolism. Ethos 5 (2): 195–223. Verbeek, Paul. 2006. Materializing Morality: Design Ethics and Technological Mediation. Science, Technology, & Human Values 31 (3): 361–380. Vuksani, Gjok. 2016. Lezha shpëton nga ‘Kuçedra’ e përmbytjes vetëm me një plan kombëtar. Lidhja E Prizrenit, 18 December. https://www.ballikombetar. info/lezha-­s hpeton-­n ga-­k ucedra-­e -­p ermbytjes-­v etem-­m e-­n je-­p lan-­ kombetar/. Accessed 23 August 2020. Vullnetari, Julia, and Rusell King. 2011. Twenty Years of Albanian Migration. Special Issue of Balkan and Near Eastern Studies 13 (3): 269–356. Wagner, John Richard, ed. 2013. The Social Life of Water. Oxford in New York: Berghahn Books. Zeneli, Fjona. 2017. Water Privatization in Developing Countries: Case of Albania. European Scientific Journal August, 1857–7881.

CHAPTER 7

“Can Love Be Transferred”? Tracing Albania’s History of Migration and the Meaning of Remittances Julie Vullnetari

“Albania transforms into a transit country for war refugees”1 and “Albania, gateway for refugees: 11 Syrian and Afghan refugees detained in Korçë”2 are the headlines of two recent articles among many published by Albanian mass media (my emphasis). In one of these articles, the journalist describes how he and colleagues are driving along one of the main motorways that connect Albania to Greece through the axis of Korçë at around 4 am, on  “Reportazh i DW/ Si është kthyer Shqipëria në vend transit, për refugjatët e luftës”, 17 October 2019, Syri.net, available at: https://www.syri.net/sociale/287698/reportazh-idw-si-eshte-kthyer-shqiperia-ne-vend-transit-per-refugjatet-e-luftes/; [last accessed 15 June 2020]. 2  “Shqipëria portë hyrëse për refugjatët, kapen 11 sirianë dhe afganë në Korçë”, 6 February 2020, Gazeta MAPO, available at: https://gazetamapo.al/shqiperia-porte-hyrese-per-refugjatet-kapen-11-siriane-dhe-afgane-ne-korce/ [last accessed 15 June 2020]. 1

J. Vullnetari (*) University of Southampton, Southampton, UK e-mail: [email protected] © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2021 N. Gregorič Bon, S. Musaraj (eds.), Remitting, Restoring and Building Contemporary Albania, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-84091-4_7

163

164 

J. VULLNETARI

the lookout for “interviewees”. They spot three men hiding in the apple plantations that occupy the land alongside a long stretch of this motorway. As the tires of the car driving the journalists screech to a stop, the refugees, exhausted, allow the journalists to approach them, perhaps in the hope that they can get a lift to the nearest town. The story reads like a hunt. The journalists get their material—stories and some photos—and drive on. For those familiar with the context of Albanian migration, the scene sounds as if it is picked out of a Greek newspaper of the 1990s depicting the clandestine migration of Albanians to Greece, who, exhausted like these Syrian and Afghan refugees in Albania, had left their families, homes, and country in chaos and on the brink of war, looking for safety and a better life. Yet, although some similarity is apparent in the superficial description of this story, the parallel ends there. Although Albania was one of the poorest European countries to emerge from behind the Iron Curtain at the beginning of the 1990s, most Albanians, and the country as a whole, by no means experienced the horrors of the brutal wars that have devastated Syria and Afghanistan for the best part of two decades now. Similarly, while most Albanians experienced discrimination and Albanophobia in receiving countries such as Greece and Italy throughout the 1990s and the early 2000s, a different level of racism and discrimination was meted out to non-white, non-European refugees who started arriving in large numbers in these same countries from around the mid-2000s (Hatziprokopiou 2006; Lazaridis and Psimmenos 2000; Mai 2002; Vathi 2011; see also Karamanidou 2016; Kirtsoglou and Tsimouris 2018). In Albania, these Syrian and Afghan (and other) refugees remind many Albanians of themselves when they too were (economic) refugees in Greece (and Italy); when they too were completely exhausted after having walked for days and nights with little sleep, carrying a small bag with some water and bread for the journey, while trying to evade arrest and deportation by the Greek police and immigration and army units along the border.3 3  The term “economic refugee” was coined by Barjaba and King (2005) to highlight the complexity of political and economic factors shaping migration in Albania in these early postcommunist years. This is in contrast to the term “war refugees” used in the newspaper, noted in Footnote 1, which emphasizes that these are “war” refugees (as opposed to “just” refugees), arguably to underline that they come from a war-torn country such as Syria or Afghanistan. It seems this added emphasis on the war is also to distinguish them from the category of refugee (refugjat) as widely used in Albanian society throughout the 1990s to refer to Albanian migrants of those years, although Albania was not at war. This early-1990s Albanian context informs Barjaba and King’s (2005) term above, with the underpinning

7  “CAN LOVE BE TRANSFERRED”? TRACING ALBANIA’S HISTORY… 

165

Stories of Greek police brutality and torture were common among Albanian refugees who walked over the same mountains across the Greek-Albanian border as their Syrian and Afghan counterparts; many lost their lives in the middle of the heavy March snow or were ravaged by hungry wolves as they lay in deep sleep by the burned-out fire (King et al. 1998; Kapllani 2009; Vullnetari 2012). These and other experiences of Albanians’ migration journeys, of everyday racism and discrimination in destination countries such as Greece and Italy, and of struggles for integration and belonging there, have been well documented in a now vast literature—both academic and artistic, including personal memoirs, documentary films, and (lamentation) songs—produced by Albanian and other scholars and artists, as well as migrants themselves (for key collections, see Mai and Schwandner-­ Sievers 2003; King et al. 2005; Vullnetari and King 2011a; for key reviews, see Barjaba et al. 1992; Carletto et al. 2006; King and Vullnetari 2003; Vullnetari 2007; also Kapllani 2009; King and Mai 2008; Pistrick 2015). This story of migration extends further in time and across space, as the Greeks and Italians also made similar journeys of sacrifice and endurance at the turn of the twentieth century when they sailed the Atlantic and the Pacific on ships that took these Southeast European migrants to the Americas and Australia. The Albanians were part of these voyages, settling together with their Greek and Italian fellow travelers in the neighborhoods of Boston or Australia’s Queensland and Victoria (Carne 1979; Kaser and Radice 1985, 86–87). Later on, many Greeks and Italians participated in the post-war intra-European migrations from Southern to Northern Europe, especially to France and Germany, sending remittances back to their country to rebuild homes, businesses, villages, and cities (see e.g. Nikas and King 2005). This time, citizens of Albania were absent as the communist regime that came to power after the war banned international migration. Such comparisons with neighboring Greece and Italy, which became key destinations for Albanian post-communist migrations, were often drawn on by writers in order to disrupt the “othering” of Albanians that formed the basis for much of the discrimination there throughout the argument that in many circumstances there is significant overlap between “economic migrants” and “refugees”. Subsequent migration scholarship develops this overlap further; see Van Hear et  al. (2009) who call for a “mixed migration” approach, or Crawley and Skleparis (2018) in the context of the so-called refugee crisis in Europe in the summer of 2016.

166 

J. VULLNETARI

1990s and 2000s (Campani 2000; Chiodi and Devole 2005; Kokkali 2008; Zinn 1996). Books such as When we were the Albanians (Stella 2003—about the historical migration from Italy) reminded Italian (and Greek) hosts that, like these Albanian migrants, they too were once poor, desperate, and looking for a better life in foreign lands. Back in Albania, and picking up the thread of one of the newspaper articles cited earlier, other connections are present: the very same apple plantations in the rural areas along the Korçë-Greece motorway where the Syrian and Afghan refugees were hiding have been developed over a period of many years by local Albanians, using financial remittances and technological know-how from their work as labor migrants in Greece. Many Albanian migrants provided the backbone of the labor force in Greek-­ owned fruit plantations across rural Southwestern Greece which, together with the nearby fruit processing plants, are part of the supply chain for supermarkets in Northern Europe (Kasimis and Papadopoulos 2005). Some of the plantations and processing plants had in turn been developed with the invested savings of Greek returnees from Germany following the global oil crisis and the end of the “guest worker” scheme there, in the 1970s. The Albanian migration story, then, is both unique (as we shall see later) and similar to others around the world, entangling and disentangling continuities and ruptures over time. Essentially, it is the story that migration is an essential part of the development processes and social transformations that all societies experience, albeit with some unique features taking different shapes and forms over time (Castles 2010; Bastia and Skeldon 2020). It is also a story of how mobility across (global) space shapes (local) places through migrants’ networks and connections, in turn developing a relational sense of place through attachments old and new (Massey 1994). The rest of the chapter follows this Albanian migration story first through the communist years, then to the post-communist decades, while briefly diving in and out of historical (pre-war) migrations. The final section before I present my conclusions weaves together all three time periods within the theme of remittances. Here I go beyond the materiality of remittances, and discuss their meaning as part of intra-family transnational care, embedded within social networks of relations and imbued with cultural and emotional significance. The temporal-spatial nexus features throughout, reflecting the global-local interdependencies outlined in this introduction.

7  “CAN LOVE BE TRANSFERRED”? TRACING ALBANIA’S HISTORY… 

167

The Communist Years Internal and international migration throughout these years were shaped by the ebbs and flows of geopolitical relations and power struggles, both local to Albania and globally (Mëhilli 2017). Most scholars and commentators writing in the post-communist years have painted a picture of an Albania somewhat frozen in time by immobility during these communist decades. True, the country had some of the most draconian legislation on migration that the world has known, and the militarization of its borders and the entire population had few global comparisons. Yet, underneath what appears as a monochrome picture of stasis and monotony, a more complex reality can be observed, consisting of various layers across time and space. While Albanians had migrated far and wide throughout history, the coming to power of the communist regime brought dramatic changes to this aspect of life. From a common expression of aspirations, over the years international travel gradually became a luxury accessible only to a few. Most ordinary Albanians did not have a passport enabling travel abroad (although they had an internal passport, more on which shortly). This privilege was allowed only to carefully selected and screened individuals or groups of people such as diplomats, members of the Politburo, sailors, drivers of import-export trucks, students, and specialists who went to study or train abroad, sportsmen (and some women), and a handful of folk and cultural groups. Their common denominator was often their “good biography”; in other words, either they were communists themselves or their families were (for more on “biography”, see de Rapper 2006). In contrast to neighboring socialist Yugoslavia which allowed, indeed encouraged, labor migration abroad, Albania banned such moves (hence their absence in the post-war intra-European migrations mentioned earlier). The ban on international migration had a twin economic and political/ ideological imperative. The ambitious reconstruction plan that the Albanian Party of Labor (APL) put in motion in the 1950s through to the 1970s needed all the labor it could muster. Labor shortages would have been particularly acute in the early post-war years, due to the population loss as a result of the war. This was also the time that most of the large-­ scale infrastructural projects such as building roads, railways, and industrial complexes, and draining marshland were carried out. A huge amount of the labor contributing to such reconstruction projects was mobilized through a combination of forced and unpaid labor (of prisoners and army

168 

J. VULLNETARI

recruits) and voluntary campaigns (especially youth), with only a small fraction of paid labor. This economic imperative of labor retention was combined with a political/ideological narrative constructed by drawing on a mash of folklore, history, and “modern” Marxist-Leninist doctrine which was, in turn, given its own nationalist twist (see contributions to Schwandner-Sievers and Fischer 2005). Labor migration was thus constructed as a “wound” of the past, stemming from the unemployment, inequality, and poverty associated with capitalism. In contrast, the modern, socialist Albania that was being rebuilt on the ruins of the war offered its people a vision of equality, dignity, and happiness, a place where social ills had been eradicated and where one took pride in the love for the motherland. Yes, emigration had existed in the past, the story continued, but this was evoked as a clear example of capitalism’s failings. This historical labor migration was thus taught through the lens of suffering: separation of families, immigrant exploitation in receiving societies, and very few, if any, returns. Instrumental in this manipulation of history was the notion of kurbet, formulated in Albanian collective memory and folklore to describe the act of emigration (mainly during the Ottoman Empire) to distant and foreign lands for long periods of time, principally for work (Tirta 1999). Originating from the Turkish gurbet, the word means “out in the world”, but is powered by notions of suffering, sacrifice, loss, and despair (Papailias 2003). The invocation and reloading of this word with negative connotations by the communist regime were facilitated through the resurrection of old kurbet folksongs, proverbs, narratives, and place names, which helped build the narrative, in turn spreading it widely through popular films and the school curriculum. Any deviation from this ideological line in the shape of a desire for labor mobility was made synonymous with irredentism and therefore suspect and associated with political risk. Those who tried to escape Albania, whether by clandestinely crossing a land or maritime border or by seeking asylum abroad if permitted to travel, were treated as traitors. If not shot on sight while crossing the border, they were imprisoned and their families exiled internally to remote mountainous villages.4 An especially effective deterrent to escape was the punishment of families left behind, who could 4  Article 47, gj). of the Penal Code of the Socialist People’s Republic of Albania, 1977, Law nr. 5591 (Kuvendi Popullor i RPSSH 15.6.1977). This article dealt with matters of high treason against the homeland, and point gj). dealt with defection in particular. This was to

7  “CAN LOVE BE TRANSFERRED”? TRACING ALBANIA’S HISTORY… 

169

be imprisoned, exiled, and further stigmatized and denied access to social goods for generations (Vullnetari 2019; de Rapper 2005). It is not surprising, therefore, that the number of people leaving Albania without authorization was small—some sources estimate around 20,000 between the 1950s and 1989 (de Zwager et al. 2005, 8). Consequently, by the end of the regime’s existence in the early 1990s, entire generations had been born and had grown up in Albania without ever having set foot abroad, which gives the post-1990 migration its unique character. Many had traveled in their imaginations, especially as the clandestine watching of foreign TV and listening to foreign radio stations became more widespread throughout the country over the years (Kapllani 2009; Mai 2002). The scene for the mass migration that followed was set. Similarly, controls over internal labor migration and other movements had a strong economic imperative, particularly as related to centrally planned labor needs for the post-war reconstruction efforts and early industrialization. In addition, they were used as a tool to control the population, therefore ultimate political control. Internally, however, there was a lot more mobility than meets the eye, especially during the early post-­ war decades. Population census data suggest a predominance of rural-­ rural migration in the first five years. This could arguably be an effect of restructuring the economy, key to which would have been the first agrarian reform (1945–1946), combined with labor movements to power the large infrastructural projects—many of which were in rural areas—such as draining the marshes (e.g. in Maliq) or bringing land under irrigation (Sjöberg 1992a, 52). As the country’s economy was gradually oriented toward industrialization, significant rural-urban migration took place in the following decade. According to Hall (1994, 68), around 130,000 rural-urban migrants moved between 1950 and 1960, representing 40 percent of the rural areas’ natural population increase for this period. The vast majority of them would have been labor migrants, finding jobs in urban areas in expanding industries, such as textiles and manufacturing. However, from the 1960s onward, a set of administrative regulations and other social policy instruments contributed to what appeared as a policy of rural retention and minimal urbanization. Sjöberg (1994) calls these administrative restrictions an “anti-migratory system”, consisting of laws, decrees, and rules which simply constituted a “legal prohibition on confirm that which was stipulated by the Constitution of the Socialist People’s Republic of Albania of 1976 (Kuvendi Popullor i RPSSH 26.6.1979). Article 2 of Decree 5912.

170 

J. VULLNETARI

migration” and included the requirement of permission from local authorities to change one’s domicile (to leave one’s domicile), or leje e shpërnguljes; urban residence permits or leje banimi; the system of awarding dwelling permission or pasaportizim; as well as labor force planning such as the availability of a job, hiring approval, and housing and food rationing.5 Key to this population control was the internal passport system, a form of population registration that recorded the domicile of each individual in their rural or urban place of birth, and required such citizens to carry an internal passport for identification purposes (see also Sjöberg 1994). Tirana in particular was strictly regulated. As a major industrial, administrative, educational and cultural center, which most Albanians, especially youth, aspired to as a dream destination, its periphery attracted what Sjöberg (1992b) calls diverted migration. This is when migratory flows heading for a particular destination experience a diversion to somewhere nearby, in this case the rural cooperatives or state farms in Tirana’s vicinity. These diverted in-migrants in turn contributed to the formation of densely populated extra-urban settlements (Sjöberg 1992b, 13). The post-1990 exponential population increase of Tirana and its surroundings was now set in motion. The result of these measures was an almost complete halt to rural-urban migration by the early 1960s. Urban growth for the 30 years that followed was slow and insignificant, despite the creation of urban areas—“new towns”—serving the mining and petrochemical industry. The policy approach up until the late 1980s was one of retaining an artificially high labor force in the countryside serving agriculture, while keeping an artificially low urban growth, mainly through effectively prohibiting most forms of rural-urban migration. Unofficial migration took place, and some evidence suggests that marriage in particular was used as a way to circumvent such restrictions and secure a future away from the conservative atmosphere of rural life, and the backbreaking drudgery that rural areas had to offer (Bërxholi 2000).6 Some labor migration did, however, continue throughout these later decades, albeit strictly planned and controlled, including the movement of young graduate teachers and doctors 5  Pasaportizim derives its name from the use of domestic passport/ identity cards or letërnjoftim as the main pillar in the process of internal movement. 6  A popular rhyme in the Albanian parlance of the south at the time was: “burrin sa një këndes/ shtëpinë sa një qymes/ vetëm në qytet të vdes” (small like a cockerel my husband may be/ small like a hen-house my house may be/ as long as I can live and die in the city).

7  “CAN LOVE BE TRANSFERRED”? TRACING ALBANIA’S HISTORY… 

171

required to serve in remote rural areas, and army personnel posted close to military sites. In contrast to international migration which was seen as a feature of capitalist unemployment and exploitation, the official discourse concerning internal labor migration was one of duty to serve the country wherever needed. This propaganda was diffused through popular art, such as songs and films depicting the challenges of building the “new Albania” through the bravery and determination of emancipated men and women, always under the leadership of the Party.7 In academic parlance, labor migration was considered artificial, reflected in the use of the term “mechanical movement” (lëvizje mekanike), thus legitimizing its planning and control. While such systems of internal population control were implemented across the socialist world with varying degrees of freedom, Albania’s system most resembled the Chinese hukou household registration (Zhang 2014), although such population controls were not specifically communist in nature. For example, Anderson (2011) has shown how some of the earliest forms of population control implemented in feudal England by landlords sought to control mobility—of the poor in particular—through bans during times of labor scarcity that would have required them to raise the wages paid out for work on their land.

Post-communist Migrations Such is the uniqueness of Albania’s context that scholars such as Russell King (2005) have considered the country a laboratory for studying migration and development. This unique position stems primarily from the sudden and large-scale surge in migration in the early 1990s from a base of next to zero for the best part of 50  years of communist rule, as noted earlier. The opening up of this closed society and its accompanying large-­ scale migration presented migration researchers with a unique opportunity to test theories of drivers, motivations, and how movements are perpetuated once in motion, as well as the ways in which they link to 7  The 1974 classic song by Mjaftoni Bejko, originally performed at the 13th RTV Festival but made popular by Liljana Kondakçi, titled “From South to North” (“Nga Jugu ne Veri”), paid tribute to labor migrants (euphemistically called migratory birds—zogj shtegtarë) moving with their families from one construction site (kantjer) to another; available online: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9gZEod4f3wQ and https://www.youtube.com/ watch?v=dtmimWdp9Mo [last accessed 15 December 2020]. My thanks to Dr. Musaraj for drawing the original version of the song to my attention.

172 

J. VULLNETARI

broader processes of development. Migration drivers, or “causes”, are at the heart of much migration literature and theory (e.g. van Hear et  al. 2018). Nevertheless, most research, including that undertaken historically, has taken place in contexts where migration was already a strong feature of society, at least at a country level. Other literature on how migration is perpetuated through social networks has similarly relied on such contexts (de Haas 2010). Yet to argue that Albania provided a clean slate for such research would be to erase the migratory past. Despite its closure during the communist years and the associated ruptures in migratory channels and social networks, there were continuities due both to the memories of historical migrations and the actual networks that survived. Together, they helped shape the specific features of post-communist migration: the speed and concentration over time on the one hand, and to some degree, the geographies of migration, especially for destinations beyond Europe, on the other. Albania has had one of the highest volumes of emigration as a ratio of the total population living in the country, not only in Europe but across the world. It is comparable only to small island economies—most of which have a long history of colonial and post-colonial migration—or places of significant refugee displacements (King et  al. 2011). Within just two decades the country “lost” over half of its resident population of 1989 to international migration (World Bank 2011, 54). The accompanying financial remittances recorded as received by migrant families similarly put Albania in the top 20 remittance-receiving countries globally, as a percentage of their GDP; other countries in this group either have longer histories of migration, and therefore remitting, or are generally economically poorer (King et al. 2011). Migration was concentrated in space as well as in time. Neighboring Greece and Italy together host nearly 90 percent of all Albanian migrants (INSTAT 2014, 35–36). North America and the UK increased in importance in the following decades, while smaller migrant communities have been established across Europe and in Australia. Geographical proximity (to neighboring countries) and cultural affinity clearly play a role in these geographies of migration, but so do family networks and ties. The family ties that survived communism channeled the migration of most ethnic Greek Albanians to Greece, while those established in North America and Australia during historical migrations and communist-time defections there facilitated the arrival of their ethnic Albanian families (Sintès 2003).

7  “CAN LOVE BE TRANSFERRED”? TRACING ALBANIA’S HISTORY… 

173

The communist regime was careful to construct the pre-war labor migrations to the Americas and Australia as benign (to the regime) and offered the migrants of the time either a chance to return in retirement to Albania or permission to continue links with their relatives. Where links were retained, these included sporadic visits to Albania, but mostly comprised remittances in the form of gifts—typically clothes, which were at a premium in the shortage economy of Albania—or small amounts of money. Returnees were also attractive as they brought with them cash in foreign currency, much needed for the country’s depleted coffers. In contrast, opposition figures, political dissidents, and those who escaped the country clandestinely during the communist years were branded as “enemies of the people” and members of their families remaining in Albania were persecuted; any contact between them was regarded as irredentist and potentially aimed at overthrowing the regime and heavily surveilled and suppressed. Nevertheless, these networks survived against all the odds, and became anchors of some post-communist migrations, as noted earlier. Such simultaneous continuities and ruptures existing side by side in the recent past are crucial elements of the process of building and constructing materialities and imaginaries in the present and future. This is illustrated more concretely through the example of remittances in the next section.

Remitting: Sending More than Just Money Referring to remittances globally, Kapur (2004, 18) suggested that their importance to migrants’ countries of origin was “one of the most visible— and beneficial—aspects of how international migration is reshaping [these countries]”. Numerous studies in Albania confirm this global picture of the importance of remittances for individual families, migrant sending areas, and indeed the country more broadly (de Zwager et  al. 2005; Vullnetari and King 2011b). Reports from the Central Bank of Albania indicate that between 1992 and 2009, Albanian migrants remitted from $200 million to more than $1 billion annually (de Zwager et al. 2005, 21; Uruçi 2008, 4, cited in King et  al. 2011). Despite a steep fall after the 2008 financial crisis, the latest data from the World Bank (2020) indicate

174 

J. VULLNETARI

significant sums of over $1.5 billion in 2018.8 In the early 1990s, these flows covered up to around 90 per cent of the trade deficit, and consistently at least a third of it each year over the two post-communist decades. Up to the mid-2000s, remittances also consistently surpassed by several times FDI flows and foreign development aid (King et al. 2011). At a micro level, reflecting other studies across the world, remittances in Albania have been a lifeline for many families, helping reduce the incidence and impact of poverty and broadly providing a safety net so people do not easily fall (back) into poverty (see, among others, de Zwager et al. 2005; Vullnetari and King 2011b). Approaching poverty from a multidimensional perspective means that the significance of financial remittances goes beyond simply having enough money, to encompass being able to afford enough (and nutritious) food, clothes, a good shelter, (high quality) education, good healthcare, or, indeed, access to justice and rights (Cosgrove and Curtis 2018). Despite the seeming novelty of remittances from contemporary migration, and their undisputed importance in rebuilding the Albanian economy from the 1990s onward, here too the more careful observer is able to note connections to historical migrations. Work on historical migrations published in Albania during the communist years considered labor migration a “wound” in Albanian society, as noted earlier in the chapter, emphasizing its negative demographic, but particularly its emotional, impacts on the families and communities left behind. However, recent surveys of other historical materials reveal a more complex picture, emphasizing in particular the importance of financial remittances for the country and individual families. For instance, in his survey of Albanian migration, the renowned Albanian scholar of migration, Mark Tirta (1999, 164), writes that in 1928 an estimated 10 million golden francs in remittances were sent to Albania. Remittances from the USA are relatively better documented than from other destinations. Thus, Tirta (1999, 141) notes that in 1910 Fan Noli, an Albanian political émigré of Kolonjë origin (Southeast Albania) and a Harvard graduate, estimated that around 30,000 Albanians living in the USA were sending home about 3  million dollars a year;

8  Some of this is due to improvements in measuring these financial flows, as well as an increase in such transfers flowing through the formal—and thus recorded—channels, such as banks or Money Transfer Companies (MTCs), versus the informal, nonrecorded ones, such as through friends or cash in hand on return visits.

7  “CAN LOVE BE TRANSFERRED”? TRACING ALBANIA’S HISTORY… 

175

according to Noli, “almost all Toskëria [another name for Southern Albania] lives off remittances sent from the USA”. Financial remittances enabled migrant families to have a level of living above that which could be sustained locally, and they played a considerable role in the national income structure of the country as a whole (Carne 1979, 12; Federal Writers’ Project 1939, 82–84; Myres et al. 1945, 140; Rouçek 1939, 86). Beyond remitting individually, migrants also mobilized resources in Home Town Associations (HTAs) as vehicles for the development of their villages and cities of origin. Contributions varied in range from investing in the education of individual children (often orphans) to building schools, bridges, roads, town halls, communal water taps, and cemeteries, printing and distributing books, and helping the poor (Barjaba et al. 1992; Federal Writers’ Project 1939, 82–84; Ragaru 2002; Rouçek 1945, 238; Tirta 1999). In a more recent study, again in southern Albania (Lunxhëri in Gjirokastër), de Rapper (2005) demonstrates that many inhabitants of this area—especially the Vllah community—remember the pre-war period as a “golden age” of prosperity and opportunities. Financial remittances were only part of this historical picture. Many migrants, whether individually or collectively, also contributed socially, culturally, and politically to their areas of origin. Many brought back skills and knowledge which they applied in Albania, such as methods of cultivation of agricultural produce including vineyards and orchards; the rebuilding and construction of houses; hygiene; the organization of villages, family, and social relations. Much of the country’s modernization during the reign of King Zog is attributed to returning migrants, particularly from the USA (Rouçek 1946, 532). At the turn of the twentieth century, Albanian migrant associations in Bucharest, Sofia, Istanbul, Cairo, and Boston, to name but a few, became important political vehicles in the struggle for independence and territorial unity of Albanian-inhabited territories (Barjaba et al. 1992; Tirta 1999). Fast forward to post-communist migration, an abundant literature has shown how international remittances have modernized the material conditions of many migrant households across the country and contributed hugely toward local transformations of agriculture and the housing stock (Miluka et al. 2007; Vullnetari 2012). A prominent example of this are the large-scale apple plantations that sprawl along the Korçë-Greece motorway, where the Syrian and Afghan refugees—mentioned at the start of this chapter—were hiding. Particularly of note have been investments in housing, especially in urban areas, with Tirana and its surroundings attracting

176 

J. VULLNETARI

the vast majority of such investments (Dalakoglou 2010). In rural areas, old houses were repaired and refurbished and some new ones built; in urban areas, remittances enabled families to purchase apartments or land on which to build new houses. International remittances have thus fueled the massive rural-urban and coastal-oriented internal migration in Albania (Vullnetari 2012). Here parallels can again be drawn with international literature, as investing in houses in migrants’ countries of origin is one of the most common remittance uses from Ghana to Ecuador, Pakistan to Colombia (see e.g. Erdal 2012; Smith and Mazzucato 2009; Zapata 2018). Interestingly, collective remittances have not been such a strong part of the contemporary Albanian migration landscape, which is especially striking when compared both to Albanian migration historically, as noted earlier, and contemporary migrations in other countries (e.g. Mexico). While most of the literature on contemporary Albanian migration and remittances has focused on their instrumental uses (how they are spent), especially as part of migration-development debates, much less has been written about the more subjective experiences of remittance sending and receiving, including their meaning (but see Smith 2008; Dalakoglou 2010; Gregorič Bon 2017; Vullnetari and King 2011b). This is partly due to the dominant financial and material take on remittances—both in their focus on money remitted and its economic impacts—which neglects the sociocultural impact of these monetary flows, as well as non-material (i.e. “social”) remittances (cf. Levitt 1998). Here too, the pattern is very similar to such literature worldwide (Piper 2009; Carling 2020). Subjective experiences of, and meanings that migrants and their families attribute to, remittances are clearly linked to how they refer to such transnational flows. Ethnographic research that has taken an emic approach and engaged in depth with these meanings shows that Albanian migrants and their families invariably refer to remittances as “wages” (when sent regularly) or “pensions” (when sent regularly to elderly parents), as a “gift” (when transgressing patrilineal lines, i.e., women sending to their own parents and siblings), as “for a coffee” (na dërgon nga një kafe—a euphemism for small amounts), or generally as “help” (King et al. 2013; Vullnetari and King 2011b; see also Smith 2008). A common feature underpinning this range of typologies are the ways in which social and cultural meanings wrap around the materiality of these transfers, thus going beyond their economic value. Few, if any, research participants in the above studies used the term “remittances” (remitanca in anglicized

7  “CAN LOVE BE TRANSFERRED”? TRACING ALBANIA’S HISTORY… 

177

Albanian), and arguably many would not know what it meant (see also Musaraj 2020).9 In contrast, remitanca is the “official” term used across the top-level discourse landscape from academic research (in Albanian) to policy documents, speeches of politicians, and mass media more broadly. Unlike the range of terms in the local vocabulary, remitanca is a purely financial term, sanitized for economic purposes by being stripped of any social, cultural, and certainly emotional meaning. Yet it is precisely these social ties, cultural meanings, and emotional layers that give rise to financial remittances in the first place, and ensure their continuation, even when so-called economic rational behavior would have us believe that it would be irrational to remit—such as in times of personal and country-wide economic crisis. Whether motivated by altruism or self-interest, the sending of remittances reflects intimate relationships between individuals and within families: a husband sending money to his wife and children, a son or daughter to his/her parents, and so on. As such, Carling (2014, S219) calls for a more concerted effort to put remittances within a wider social context, recognizing them as a “compound transaction”. This means seeing their (instrumental) material aspect as nested within emotional and relational dimensions. They need to be understood as deeply embedded in the social relations and social networks that give rise to them in the first place, but also as symbols of emotions such as love and pride, in turn expressed as acts of (transnational) caregiving. The biggest global MTC, Western Union, captured this effectively back in the early 2000s in a series of posters advertising its services with captions such as “Can love be transferred?” (featuring a young daughter/sister) and “Can I make her proud?” (featuring an elderly mother). These relations and feelings are often what motivates many migrants to remit, often sacrificing their own comfort, health, further education and training, and, yes, pride, as they often work in low-­ paid, dangerous, and demanding jobs so that their family members can access better healthcare and education, live comfortable lives, and feel happiness and pride in their achievements.

9  Gregorič Bon (2017) uses the term “material flows” instead of remittances, in the context of her research in Dhërmi/Drymades. Besides the money, these flows also include food, care, and emotions. Additional features are their nonlinearity—they flow in both directions—cyclical character, and reciprocity (i.e. often following the principle of gift exchange). Thank you to the author for drawing this work, and these points, to my attention.

178 

J. VULLNETARI

These sacrifices are all too alive in the minds of parents left behind, who describe their migrant children’s remittances as “money of blood” (Papailias 2003). Resurrecting painful notions of historical kurbet to describe their adult children’s migration, these parents and other family members emotionally relay how this “help” is not simply “money”. It is drenched in the sweat and blood of their loved ones, as the latter take perilous journeys over the mountains to reach Greece and cross the Adriatic Sea in unsafe dinghies to work in harsh and exploitative conditions upon arrival, suffering injuries and even death in the course of low-­ paid work, while both sides of the family experience painful separation. The quote below from my interview with a couple in their 70s in rural Southeast Albania, whose son had been living and working in Greece for ten years at the time of the interview, illustrates this meaning of remittances very well. As Lume, the migrant’s mother, recounts10: He [her son] says, “Don’t worry mum, you have the pensions and we will help you, so please don’t do manual work there” (my emphasis). But we feel sorry to get that money from him because he gets that money by shedding blood.

Any subsequent investment of such remittances in the home in Albania is in turn guarded religiously by “left-behind” parents who continue to live in the older buildings in the compounds, so as not to “ruin” their son’s things in the main house through “over-use” (Vullnetari 2016). For these older parents, all this materiality simultaneously means both a lot and nothing. It means a lot as an expression of the love and care on the part of the son for his parents, in whose achievements they take great pride. The transnational practice of remitting, or hands-on care where possible, are also symbolic acts of caregiving that contribute to enhanced social prestige in the local community (see also Silverstein et al. 2006 for a similar context in China). For the avoidance of doubt, these are strongly gendered social relations. As such, prestige is gained through care from the son, whose symbolic duty it is to look after his parents in older age. Culturally, then, sons’ remittances are a key pillar of a duty of care, while daughters’ (where these are sent) are labeled a “gift”. Further prestige and 10  These interviews were conducted as part of my doctoral research at the University of Sussex (see Vullnetari 2012). I use pseudonyms here to protect the identity of my research participants.

7  “CAN LOVE BE TRANSFERRED”? TRACING ALBANIA’S HISTORY… 

179

subsequent pride flow from interpretations of such transnational care practices as being the result of successful parenting, as well as demonstrating the success of migrants abroad. An interview excerpt speaks clearly to this last point. After describing the material success of his son who lives in the USA, and how he has cared for his parents in Albania, Avni, a father in his early 70s, speaks with pride about successful parenting: This is what makes us free and we feel that we have done a good job. Because this was what was up to us to do. … Our children have been well behaved, they have understood what we have taught them.

On the other hand, this materiality of remittances means nothing so long as the children and grandchildren are not around, as the dwelling feels empty and loneliness abounds (see also Vullnetari 2016). In a final interview quote that brings these feelings to light, Dafina, the 58-year-old mother of a migrant son working in Greece lamented: Our eyes are full of tears and our hearts ache every day and night … If your children are not here, there is no point to any of this [the house]. Nothing matters anymore [asgjë s’të hyn në sy]. For example, here is my house large and beautiful up there and here [the main house and a separate one-room building that is meant to serve as a summer kitchen/living room]. What do I want them for? Look, I live here [in the old building]. Who lives there [in the big house refurbished with remittances]? As long as the children are not here, nothing matters really.

The prospects of bringing the family together, whether in the host country or in Albania, remain bleak, as return is not an option for most migrants unless forced. The young generation growing up abroad feels especially out of place in Albania, not least as many of them may not even speak the language (Vathi 2011). Meanwhile, the migration of older parents to join their offspring abroad appears remote, as they too feel out of place there for similar reasons (Vullnetari and King 2008). Constructing a relational sense of place through physical presence, material and emotional flows, memories of the past, and dreams for the future is thus an ongoing, unfinished project for all generations concerned.

180 

J. VULLNETARI

Conclusions This chapter has demonstrated the longue durée of migration and remittances in Albanian society by bringing together continuities and ruptures over three historical periods broadly grouped as pre-war, communist, and post-communist. Despite the different forms and shapes that Albanian migration took during these times, it was, and continues to be, a very important part of the transformation of Albanian society. The chapter has highlighted the role of financial and social remittances from international migration in these transformations, particularly in the last three post-­ communist decades, but which had a precedence during the reign of King Zog too. Despite the rupture through the ban on international migration during the communist years, some social networks survived and became key nodes for welcoming post-1990s migrants to geographically distant places such as Boston (USA) and Shepparton, Victoria (Australia). In addition, the rupture becomes less prominent when considering internal migration, as the centrally planned economy relied heavily on internal labor relocation, making it a strong pillar of post-war socialist reconstruction and industrialization. It is the combination of these factors that shape post-communist Albanian migration’s unique features: namely, a sudden, large-scale movement of people concentrated in time (a few years during the early 1990s) and space (with nearly 90 percent of all migrants moving to Greece and Italy) (INSTAT 2014, 35–36), the vast majority of whom had never previously set foot abroad, growing up in a society where international migration was banned and unauthorized migration punished as an act of treason. This large-scale migration was also for the most part clandestine, and in this context, at the very least an act of disobedience if not resistance, as much as an act of economic and political desperation. Three key conclusions emerge as a result. The first is that, notwithstanding these unique features, Albanian migration is in many ways also similar (and connected) to contemporary migrations in other low-income countries around the world and, indeed, historically, to countries that experienced large-scale outmigration in the past. The second, and connected to the first, is that this migration and its accompanying remittances, therefore, should be understood in this broader historical, social, geopolitical, and cultural context. Finally, it should be remembered that remittances are imbued with symbolic and cultural meaning, which is crucial for understanding why they happen in the first place, and what impact they

7  “CAN LOVE BE TRANSFERRED”? TRACING ALBANIA’S HISTORY… 

181

have on society. Financial remittances, in particular, are not simply bundles of “cash”, that “ease budget constraints for households”, or which can be “channeled into investment” and “harnessed to bring about development”, as a myriad of policy reports and economically focused publications often proclaim. They are situated within (often pre-existing) social relations which, in turn, give rise to and enable the transfer of material and non-material flows—such as meanings, feelings, and care—in both directions, albeit in asymmetrical ways. Remittances, when sent, are often expressions of care, pride, love, power, social status, symbolic presence (and lacking in these when they are missing or even sporadic). They thus connect and shape, in asymmetrical ways, transnational families and communities, as well as local and global economies and polities, and give rise to, and sustain, unbounded dreams and imaginaries. Acknowledgments  A note of gratitude to the research participants quoted in this chapter for sharing their life stories with me. Many thanks also to this book’s editors for their constructive comments and feedback.

Bibliography Anderson, Bridget. 2011. Migration: Controlling the Unsettled Poor. Open Democracy Blog Post. https://www.opendemocracy.net/en/5050/ migration-­controlling-­unsettled-­poor/. Accessed June 15, 2020. Barjaba, King, and Russell King. 2005. Introducing and Theorising Albanian Migration. In The New Albanian Migration, ed. Russell King, Nicola Mai, and Stephanie Schwandner-Sievers, 1–28. Brighton: Sussex Academic Press. Barjaba, Kosta, Zyhdi Dervishi, and Luigi Perrone. 1992. L’emigrazione albanese: spazi, tempi e cause. Studi Emigrazione 29 (107): 513–538. Bastia, Tanja, and Ronald Skeldon. 2020. Introduction. In Routledge Handbook of Migration and Development, ed. Tanja Bastia and Ronald Skeldon, 1st ed., 1–13. London: Routledge. Bërxholi, Arqile. 2000. Regjistrimet e Përgjithshme të Popullsisë në Shqipëri: Vështrim Historik (Censuses in Albania. A Historical Perspective). Tirana: Akademia e Shkencave, Qendra e Studimeve Gjeografike. Campani, Giovanna. 2000. Immigrant Women in Southern Europe: Social Exclusion, Domestic Work and Prostitution in Italy. In Eldorado or Fortress? Migration in Southern Europe, ed. Russell King, Gabriella Lazaridis, and Charalambos Tsardanidis, 145–169. London: Macmillan.

182 

J. VULLNETARI

Carletto, Gero, Benjamin Davis, Marco Stampini, and Alberto Zezza. 2006. ‘A Country on the Move’: International Migration in Post-communist Albania. International Migration Review 40 (4): 767–785. Carling, Jørgen. 2014. Scripting Remittances: Making Sense of Money Transfers in Transnational Relationships. International Migration Review 48 (S1): S218–S262. ———. 2020. Remittances: Eight Analytical Perspectives. In Routledge Handbook of Migration and Development, ed. Tanja Bastia and Ronald Skeldon, 1st ed., 114–124. London: Routledge. Carne, John. 1979. A History of Albanians in North Queensland. B.A. Honours diss., James Cook University of North Queensland. Castles, Stephen. 2010. Understanding Global Migration: A Social Transformation Perspective. Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies 36 (10): 1565–1586. Chiodi, Luisa, and Rando Devole. 2005. Albanian Migrants in Italy and the Struggle for Recognition in the Transnational Public Sphere. In The Borders of the Polity: Migration and Security Across the EU and the Balkans, ed. Luisa Chiodi, 169–208. Ravenna: Longo Editore. Cosgrove, Serena, and Curtis, Benjamin. 2018. Understanding Global Poverty. London: Routledge. Crawley, Heaven, and Dimitris Skleparis. 2018. Refugees, Migrants, Neither, Both: Categorical Fetishism and the Politics of Bounding in Europe’s ‘Migration Crisis’. Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies 44 (1): 48–64. Dalakoglou, Dimitris. 2010. Migrating-remitting-‘Building’-Dwelling: House-­ making as ‘Proxy’ Presence in Postsocialist Albania. Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute 16 (4): 761–777. de Haas, Hein. 2010. The Internal Dynamics of Migration Processes: A Theoretical Inquiry. Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies 36 (10): 1587–1617. de Rapper, Gilles. 2005. Better than Muslims, not as Good as Greeks: Emigration as Experienced and Imagined by the Albanian Christians of Lunxhëri. In The New Albanian Migration, ed. Russell King, Nicola Mai, and Stephanie Schwandner-Sievers, 173–194. Brighton: Sussex Academic Press. ———. 2006. La ‘biographie’: Parenté incontrôlable et souillure politique dans l’Albanie communiste et post-communiste. European Journal of Turkish Studies 4, an online journal. http://ejts.revues.org/565. Accessed June 2018. de Zwager, Nicolaas, Ilir Gëdeshi, Etleva Gërmenji, and Christos Nikas. 2005. Competing for Remittances. Tirana: IOM Tirana. Erdal, Marta Bivand. 2012. ‘A Place to Stay in Pakistan’: Why Migrants Build Houses in Their Country of Origin. Population, Space and Place 18 (5): 629–641. Federal Writers’ Project. 1939. The Albanian Struggle in the Old World and New. New York: AMS Press.

7  “CAN LOVE BE TRANSFERRED”? TRACING ALBANIA’S HISTORY… 

183

Gregorič Bon, Nataša. 2017. Silenced Border Crossings and Gendered Material Flows in Southern Albania. In Migrating Borders and Moving Times: Temporality and the Crossing of Borders in Europe, (Rethinking Borders), ed. Hastings Donnan, Madeleine Hurd, and Carolin Leutloff-Grandits, 140–156. Manchester: Manchester University Press. Hall, Derek. 1994. Albania and the Albanians. London: Pinter. Hatziprokopiou, Panos. 2006. Globalisation, Migration and Socio-Economic Change in Contemporary Greece: Processes of Social Incorporation of Balkan Immigrants in Thessaloniki. Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press. INSTAT. 2014. Migration in Albania May 2014. Tirana: Instituti i Statistikave (INSTAT). Kapllani, Gazmend. 2009. A Short Border Handbook. London: Portobello. Kapur, Devesh. 2004. Remittances: The New Development Mantra? Geneva: United Nations Conference on Trade and Development and the Intergovernmental Group of Twenty-Four on International Monetary Affairs. G-24 Discussion Paper Series, 29. Karamanidou, Lena. 2016. Violence Against Migrants in Greece: Beyond the Golden Dawn. Ethnic and Racial Studies 39 (11): 2002–2021. Kaser, Michael Charles, and Edward Albert Radice, eds. 1985. The Economic History of Eastern Europe, 1919-1975. Vol. Volume 1. Oxford: Clarendon Press. Kasimis, Charalambos, and Apostolos G. Papadopoulos. 2005. The Multifunctional Role of Migrants in the Greek Countryside: Implications for the Rural Economy and Society. Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies 31 (1): 99–127. King, Russell. 2005. Albania as a Laboratory for the Study of Migration and Development. Journal of Southern Europe and the Balkans 7 (2): 133–156. King, Russell, and Nicola Mai. 2008. Out of Albania: From Crisis Migration to Social Inclusion in Italy. Oxford: Berghahn. King, Russell, and Julie Vullnetari. 2003. Migration and Development in Albania. Brighton, University of Sussex, Development Research Centre on Migration, Globalisation and Poverty, Working Paper C5. King, Russell, Theodoros Iosifides, and Lenio Myrivili. 1998. A Migrant’s Story: From Albania to Athens. Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies 24 (1): 159–175. King, Russell, Nicola Mai, and Stephanie Schwandner-Sievers, eds. 2005. The New Albanian Migration. Brighton: Sussex Academic Press. King, Russell, Esmeralda Uruçi, and Julie Vullnetari. 2011. Albanian Migration and Its Effects in Comparative Perspective. Balkan and Near Eastern Studies 13 (3): 269–286. King, Russell, Diana Mata-Codesal, and Julie Vullnetari. 2013. Migration, Development, Gender and the ‘Black Box’ of Remittances: Comparative Findings from Albania and Ecuador. Comparative Migration Studies 1 (1): 69–96.

184 

J. VULLNETARI

Kirtsoglou, Elisabeth, and Giorgos Tsimouris. 2018. Migration, Crisis, Liberalism: The Cultural and Racial Politics of Islamophobia and ‘Radical Alterity’ in Modern Greece. Ethnic and Racial Studies 41 (10): 1874–1892. Kokkali, Ifigeneia. 2008. Migrations Albanaises en Grèce: Stratégies migratoires et modes d’adaptation. Le cas de Thessalonique. PhD thesis. Thèse de doctorat en études urbaines, aménagement et urbanisme. Paris: Université Paris 8. Lazaridis, Gabriella, and Iordannis Psimmenos. 2000. Migrant Flows from Albania to Greece: Economic, Social and Spatial Exclusion. In Eldorado or Fortress? Migration in Southern Europe, ed. Russell King, Gabriella Lazaridis, and Charalambos Tsardanidis, 170–185. London: Macmillan. Levitt, Pegyy. 1998. Social Remittances: Migration Driven Local-level Forms of Cultural Diffusion. International Migration Review 32 (4): 926–948. Mai, Nicola. 2002. Between Losing and Finding Oneself. The Role of Italian Television in the Albanian Immigration to Italy. PhD diss. Brighton: University of Sussex. Mai, Nicola, and Stephanie Schwandner-Sievers, eds. 2003. Albanian Migration and New Transnationalisms. Special Issue of Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies 29 (6): 239–1096. Massey, Doreen. 1994. A Global Sense of Place. In Space, Place, and Gender, ed. NED – New Edition, 146–156. Cambridge: Polity. Mëhilli, Elidor. 2017. From Stalin to Mao: Albania and the Socialist World. New York: Cornell University Press. Miluka, Juna, Gero Carletto, Benjamin Davis, and Alberto Zezza. 2007. The Vanishing Farms? The Impact of International Migration on Albanian Farms, 4367. Washington, DC: World Bank Policy Research Working Paper. Musaraj, Smoki. 2020. Tales from Albarado: Ponzi Logics of Accumulation in Postsocialist Albania. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press. Myres, John, Harold St. John Loyd Winterbotham, and Francis Longland. 1945. Albania. Oxford: University Press, for the UK Naval Intelligence Division. Nikas, Christos, and Russell King. 2005. Economic Growth Through Remittances: Lessons from the Greek Experience of the 1960s Applicable to the Albanian Case. Journal of Southern Europe and the Balkans 7 (2): 235–258. Papailias, Penelope. 2003. Money of Kurbet Is Money of Blood: The Making of a ‘Hero’ of Migration at the Greek-Albanian Border. Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies 29 (6): 1059–1078. Piper, Nicola. 2009. The Complex Interconnections of the Migration-Development Nexus: A Social Perspective. Population, Space and Place 15 (2): 93–101. Pistrick, Eckehard. 2015. Performing Nostalgia: Migration, Culture and Creativity in South Albania. London: Routledge. Ragaru, Nadege. 2002. The Albanian-American community in the United States: the story of a Diaspora. Paper Presented to the Conference on ‘Albanian

7  “CAN LOVE BE TRANSFERRED”? TRACING ALBANIA’S HISTORY… 

185

Migration and New Transnationalisms’. University of Sussex, Brighton, UK, September 2002. Rouçek, Joseph. 1939. The Politics of the Balkans. New York: McGraw-Hill. ———. 1945. ‘New’ Immigration: South European States. Albanian Americans. In One America: The History, Contributions, and Present Problems of Our Racial and National Minorities, ed. Francis J. Brown and Joseph Rouçek, 233–242. New York: Prentice-Hall. ———. 1946. Central-Eastern Europe, Crucible of World Wars. New  York: Prentice-Hall. Schwandner-Sievers, Stephanie, and Bernd Fischer, eds. 2005. Albanian Identities. London: Hurst & Co. Silverstein, Merril, Zhen Cong, and Shuzhou Li. 2006. Intergenerational Transfers and Living Arrangements of Older People in Rural China: Consequences for Psychological Well-being. Journal of Gerontology 61B (5): S256–S266. Sintès, Pierre. 2003. Les Albanais en Grèce. Le rôle des réseaux préexistants. Balkanologie 7 (1): 111–133. Sjöberg, Örjan. 1992a. Rural Change and Development in Albania. Oxford: Westview Press. ———. 1992b. Underurbanisation and the Zero Urban Growth Hypothesis: Diverted Migration in Albania. Geografiska Annaler 74 (1): 3–19. ———. 1994. Rural Retention in Albania: Administrative Restrictions on Urban-­ Bound Migration. East European Quarterly 28 (2): 205–233. Smith, Erin. 2008. ‘Gap-fillers’ or ‘Clan-destroyers’? Transnational Female Solidarity towards Kin in the Region of Fier. Paper Presented to the Conference on ‘Migration and Development in Albania and the Western Balkans: Remittances, Return and Diaspora.’ Durrës, Albania, September 26–27 2008. Smith, Lothar, and Valentina Mazzucato. 2009. Constructing Homes, Building Relationships: Migrant Investments in Houses. Tijdschrift voor Economische en Sociale Geografie 100 (5): 662–673. Stella, Gian Antonio. 2003. L’Orda: Quando gli Albanesi Eravamo Noi. [Hordhia: Kur Shqiptaret ishim Ne] [The Horde. When we were the Albanians]. Saggi: La Biblioteca Universale Rizzoli. Tirta, Mark. 1999. Migrime të shqiptarëve, të brendshme dhe jashtë atdheut: Vitet ‘40 të shek.XIX-vitet ‘40 të shek.XX. [Internal and International Migration of Albanians: 1840s-1940s]. Etnografia shqiptare 18. van Hear, Nicholas, Rebecca Brubaker, and Thai Bessa. 2009. Managing Mobility for Human Development: The Growing Salience of Mixed Migration. Human Development Research Paper (HDRP) Series 20 (2009). van Hear, Nicholas, Oliver Bakewell, and Katy Long. 2018. Push-pull Plus: Reconsidering the Drivers of Migration. Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies 44 (6): 927–944.

186 

J. VULLNETARI

Vathi, Zana. 2011. The Children of Albanian Migrants in Europe: Ethnic Identity, Transnational Ties and Pathways of Integration. PhD diss. Brighton: University of Sussex. Vullnetari, Julie. 2007. Albanian Migration and Development: State of the Art Review. Amsterdam: IMISCOE Working Paper 18. http://dare.uva.nl/ document/53744. ———. 2012. Albania on the Move: Links Between Internal and International Migration. Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press. ———. 2016. ‘Home to go’: Albanian Older Parents in Transnational Social Fields. In Transnational Migration and Home in Older Age, ed. Katie Walsh and Lena Näre, 38–50. London: Routledge. ———. 2019. ‘Dancing in the Mouth of the Wolf’: Constructing the Border through Everyday Life in Socialist Albania. Journal of Historical Geography 63 (2019): 82–93. Vullnetari, Julie, and Russell King. 2008. ‘Does Your Granny Eat Grass?’ On Mass Migration, Care Drain and the Fate of Older People in Rural Albania. Global Networks 8 (2): 139–171. ———, eds. 2011a. Twenty Years of Albanian Migration. Special Issue of Balkan and Near Eastern Studies 13 (3): 269–356. ———. 2011b. Remittances, Gender and Development: Albania’s Society and Economy in Transition. London: I.B. Tauris. World Bank. 2011. Migration and Remittances Factbook 2011. 2nd ed. Washington, DC: World Bank. ———. 2020. Remittances Inflows: April 2020. https://www.knomad.org/data/ remittances. Last Updated 26 June 2020. Accessed June 29, 2020. Zapata, Gisela. 2018. Transnational Migration, Remittances and the Financialization of Housing in Colombia. Housing Studies 33 (3): 343–360. Zhang, Nana. 2014. Performing Identities: Women in Rural–Urban Migration in Contemporary China. Geoforum 54 (2014): 17–27. Zinn, Dorothy. 1996. Adriatic Brethren or Black Sheep? Migration in Italy and the Albanian Crisis, 1991. European Urban and Regional Studies 3 (3): 241–249.

CHAPTER 8

Heterotopias of Displacement: The Production of Space in Postsocialist Albania Enkelejda Sula-Raxhimi

“We live somewhere: in a country, in a town in that country, in a neighbourhood in that town, in a street in that neighbourhood, in a building in that street, in an apartment in that building.” (Perec 1999, 71) “One never governs a state, one never governs a territory, one never governs a political structure. Those who are governed are … people, they are individuals or communities.” (Foucault 2004, 126)1

1  Nearly all the quotes from Foucault have been translated from French into English by the author of this chapter.

E. Sula-Raxhimi (*) Saint Paul University, Ottawa, ON, Canada e-mail: [email protected] © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2021 N. Gregorič Bon, S. Musaraj (eds.), Remitting, Restoring and Building Contemporary Albania, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-84091-4_8

187

188 

E. SULA-RAXHIMI

Introduction The shacks by the lake start popping up as we approach the upper area of the Roma camp settlement. Sabi,2 a 30-year-old Roma woman, mother of three—a 10-year-old daughter, a son of 8, and a younger daughter, 6— meets us in front of her shack and greets us first in Albanian and then speaks to Arif, my Roma interlocutor, in Romani. “I’m sorry, I cannot invite you inside”, she hurries to add. My husband is sleeping. He worked in town all night, collecting bottles and other cardboard paraphernalia to sell. He prefers working at night so as not to be disturbed by the police. The following day, the children and I go through and sort what he picked up the previous night. Everyone in this campsite works in the collection of recyclable materials—plastics, paper, or cardboard—të fitojmë bukën e gojës [to earn a living]. We are from Elbasan, but there is no work there; we came to Tirana after democracy. The kids don’t go to school, it is a bit far from here. Hungry and poorly dressed as they are, it’s better they stay at home. They help me with the house chores; they collect, reduce, sort and store the plastic bottles. Besides, nuk jant’regjistru [they are undocumented]. The kids were born in Greece, we couldn’t register them, we were pa letra [without papers]. There are about twenty-odd shacks here; we arrived in this campsite a few months ago. All the families here—Roma and Egyptians—have been forced to move from one place to another since the arson incident destroyed our shack settlement near the train station in 2011. We had to shift locations four times after that. In the second camp arranged by qeveria [the government], the villagers threatened us with pitchforks to make us leave the place. We left and set up our shack on the other side of the lake for a few months. But then the government decided to build a playground for the children and families living in the new apartment blocks; you can see them on the other side of the lake. The police chased us from there too. And now we are on this side of the dam. At least there are no owners here. We want to stay near the city, to be able to work during the day and come back here at night. (Author’s fieldnotes)

Sabi and her family have been on the move since the fall of communism, a period commonly termed the “democracy” in the vernacular. First, they came to Tirana, then they migrated to Greece—as she indicates, 2

 The names of my interlocutors have been anonymized.

8  HETEROTOPIAS OF DISPLACEMENT: THE PRODUCTION OF SPACE… 

189

“without papers”—where her children were born. As they were there irregularly, they could not register their newborn children. They then returned to resettle in Tirana. The absence of birth certificates suggests that there are no records for the children in the Albanian registry office, therefore, they do not legally exist. Getting the children registered costs money, and involves a lengthy administrative and legal haul. Some parents are unaware that such procedures even exist. Hence, they are quite literally outcasts, outside the protection of the law. Moving from one place to another has become a means of survival for people like Sabi, mainly Roma, who came to settle in the capital to earn a decent leaving. Such movement, migration, and displacement create their own distinct spaces, ranging from makeshift camps to semi-permanent, semi-formal, or informal ones. These spaces tend to be volatile and swiftly transforming, with their life-span depending on government policies, territorial rights, social circumstances, economic opportunities, and political dynamics. The temporality of the makeshift camp where Sabi used to live perfectly illustrates such dynamics. I kept track of the lakeside shack settlement every time I went back to the field. In the course of two years, its population had doubled, going from about 20 huts in 2013 to 44 in 2015. By October 2015, Sabi and her family had moved again. The municipality of Tirana had decided to extend the green space around the lake, an initiative that erased the entire camp area. In an operation widely publicized in the media, the police violently evacuated the Roma from the premises, without prior notice or eviction orders. The local government offered shack dwellers two options: to settle in an emergency center, a former military barrack, where the living conditions were exacerbated by prior evictions; or return home to their city or village of origin. Thus, about 200 Roma were forced to move again without having a place to go. The evictions were condemned by Amnesty International on 13 October 2015 for the use of violence and the absence of viable solutions for resettlement. Similar makeshift settlements and precarious spaces have emerged around the city’s outskirts in the past three decades; others have disappeared to relocate and popup somewhere else. Whereas this process of space creation and transformation takes place at a rather fast pace, once displaced, the people living in these volatile and fluid spaces at the edges of the city struggle to find other survival strategies, as durable solutions are almost nonexistent. Displaced and dispossessed, many Roma have found refuge in new neighborhoods and makeshift camps, the new urban spaces that are formed and transformed into heterotopias, “these real places

190 

E. SULA-RAXHIMI

that are outside of all places” (Foucault 2001, 1574), at the margins of the city, institutions, and policies. Drawing on Michel Foucault’s notion of heterotopia, this chapter examines such heterotopias of displacement and precariousness, and the ways in which the displaced Roma families inhabiting these spaces cope with uncertainty, marginalization, violence, and precarity. Furthermore, it places the emergence and shaping of such heterotopias in their specific context and temporality by analyzing specific developments and modernization efforts during communism, as well as neoliberal and capitalist logic in post-communist Albania. A multi-sited (Hannerz 2003; Marcus 1995) ethnographic investigation among the Roma communities in the neighborhoods and camps around the outskirts of Tirana, conducted between 2012 and 2015, enabled the collection of empirical data from various sources, including state policies and practices, and interviews with Roma individuals and their families (some of them life histories). Archival research at the Central State Archives (AQSH) in 2013 and 2014 complements the data and informs questions of displacement attributed to the urbanization, industrialization, and sedentarization during communism. The data gathered allow for a better understanding of space transformations in contemporary Albania, particularly of those spaces that I define as heterotopias of displacement and precariousness.

Displacement and Heterotopias Displacement triggered by development, conflicts, and insecurities affects millions of people worldwide (UNHCR 2020), making internal and forced displacement one of the biggest challenges today. While literature on displacement and more generally on migration is exponentially growing and represents an interesting framework through which to observe and analyze populations’ displacements and migration patterns (Balibar et al. 2012; Bradley 2019; Bradley and Cohen 2013; Crépeau et al. 2006), the data on factors attributed to displacement are lacking, both at local and global levels. The literature suggests taking a more interdisciplinary (Brettell 2015), global (Eriksen 2018) and holistic approach to studying displacement—and migration more broadly—considering, instead, the complex interplay between social, political, economic, cultural, and environmental factors that determine the vulnerability of individuals, families, or communities, and their capacity to uproot or stay put (Bradley 2019; Fiddian-Qasmiyeh et al. 2014). Equally important is understanding how

8  HETEROTOPIAS OF DISPLACEMENT: THE PRODUCTION OF SPACE… 

191

displaced individuals’ appropriate space, produce “other spaces”, and create new forms of life. Here we examine the “other spaces” that Foucault defined as heterotopias (2001) and critically analyze their formation in post-communist Albania, looking particularly at those places created by the most vulnerable social groups, such as Roma minority communities, to understand the process of their emergence and transformation and make sense of the production of social space (Harvey 1973, 2000; Lefebvre 1991). In Foucault’s understanding, heterotopias are: real places that are found in any culture, effective places, places that are drawn at the heart of the institution of society itself, and that are a sort of contre-emplacements, a sort of “realized utopias” in which all the other places are at the same time represented, contested and inverted, places that are outside of all places. (Foucault 2001, 1574)

For Foucault and many of his followers, heterotopias are particular, often peculiar spaces, “counter-spaces”; they are “situated utopias, these real places outside of all places” (Foucault 2009, 25). Formulated this way, heterotopias are contentious and contested places that escape the social norms and the dominant order; places that “valorize differentness and diversity” (Goode 2018, 227); places—real or imaginary—in which it is possible to “locate” an alterity (Agier 2013). Typical examples of heterotopias include cemeteries, hospitals, prisons, ships (Foucault 2001), but also places of alterity and otherness, such as (informal) urban camps, shantytowns, and border-spaces (Agier 2013, 2019). Heterotopias work according to six principles: (a) They can be found in any culture and society, take different forms, and are thus far from being universal or homogenous; (b) have a precise and determined functioning within a given society; (c) have the power to juxtapose in the same real place several incompatible spaces; (d) they are interconnected to a certain temporality—discontinuous, chronic, futile, temporary and precarious; (e) they presuppose a system of opening and closing which both isolates and makes them penetrable, requiring a certain permission to enter; (f) they have a specific function in relation to other spaces, for instance as spaces of illusion or compensation.3 (Foucault 2001, 1575–1580) 3

 My translation from French into English.

192 

E. SULA-RAXHIMI

Since Foucault’s first conceptualization of heterotopias in his lecture, “Des espaces autres”, in March 1967 at the Cercle d’études architecturales in Paris, there has been a proliferation of connected ideas and uses of the term across disciplines when studying and thinking about space, ranging from urban studies and architecture to geography, sociology, and anthropology. Some have criticized the consistency, nature, and applicability of the concept (Harvey 2000; Johnson 2013; Soja 2017[1996]) while embracing it swiftly (Faubion 2008) and radically (Dehaene and de Cauter 2008; Harvey 2000; Soja 2017[1996]). Johnson refers to the “sketchy, open-ended and ambiguous accounts of heterotopia” (Johnson 2013, 790) that are best understood in Foucault’s conceptualization of difference and of being different. Early on, Soja describes the notion of heterotopias in his Third space as frustratingly incomplete, inconsistent, incoherent. They seem narrowly focused on peculiar micro geographies, nearsighted and near-sited, deviant and deviously apolitical. Yet, they are also marvelous incunabula of another fruitful journey into Third space, into the spaces that difference makes, into the geographies of otherness. (Soja 2017[1996], 162)

Despite his criticism, Soja borrows from Foucault’s notion of heterotopia and Lefebvre’s (1991) trialectics and thirding ideas (Soja 2017[1996], 163) to conceptualize the third space, defined as “a purposefully tentative and flexible term that attempts to capture what is actually constantly shifting and changing milieu of ideas, appearances and meanings” (Soja 2017[1996], 2). Without wanting to enter the debate over the notion, I agree with Faubion (2008) that heterotopia, like other Foucauldian concepts, is part of, and entrenched in, Foucault’s broader thought and conceptual work wherein notions are interconnected, not fully developed, allowing for new research and theoretical ideas to spring forth, be further elaborated, or take a new direction in a particular discipline. In Faubion’s words: Heterotopias … have no single logical or affective register or effect, but appear instead to oscillate between, or to combine, countervailing imagistic and rhetorical currents. Always contesting and reversing the mundane monotony of the unmarked emplacements of everyday life, they are darker or brighter, more complex or perhaps more striking in their literal and figurative play of darkness and light. (Faubion 2008, 32)

8  HETEROTOPIAS OF DISPLACEMENT: THE PRODUCTION OF SPACE… 

193

The anthropologist Michel Agier (2013, 2019) draws on Foucault’s definition of heterotopia and develops it further by critically examining specific forms of spaces in particular contexts, created by people on the move, by migration and displacement. These spaces range from refugee camps to favelas to makeshift refuges and urban camps, shantytowns, and townships, spaces that Perec described as “unhabitable spaces” (Perec 1999, 89); spaces where the policies of the city and the state do not apply (Agier 2013). According to Agier, heterotopias are these real places of alterity and of difference at the edges of the city, and of the ban, which, at the same time, allow for an epistemological decentering (Agier 2013, 12). In other terms, heterotopias may concurrently be as much physical places of refuge and otherness as spaces of knowledge production at the margins of society and the state. Similarly, Das and Poole discuss the importance of studying the margins in their collective Anthropology in the Margins of the State (Das and Poole 2004), without engaging with the concept of heterotopia but, rather, considering the margins as a place of ban, in the sense that Agamben (1998) intends it—a space where inclusion within public life occurs only through exclusion. People inhabiting the space of the ban can be accepted only through their exclusion, only in their position outside the law and society (Agamben 1998). In his discussion of heterotopias that I would refer to as heterotopias of displacement, Agier lucidly illustrates how the urban camps, as a refuge for people in need—refugees, Roma, internally displaced people, among others—even in their most outlawed forms, could be considered the beginning of a new form of urban life; it is the beginning of a new neighborhood or a city, for which “the horizon is the ghetto” (Agier 2013, 13).4 This kind of heterotopia is always close to the city, but not part of the city (Agier 2013). What interest us in the multitude of heterotopias as urban camps are those which are self-established and represent the most precarious, unstable, and swiftly transforming forms of urban space. Such heterotopias of displacement and precariousness, by virtue of being self-­appropriated and self-established, resist regulatory territorial policies and are, more often than not, situated in opposition to the city’s urban policies. Heterotopias in Agier’s understanding are not just the marginal places in Parisian banlieues and other big cities. He considers the forms of informal urban camps part of a larger process of creating a global 4  Agier borrows the term from the historian Jules Michelet, “La ville commence par un asile” (Agier 2013, 13).

194 

E. SULA-RAXHIMI

landscape of precarious spaces (Agier 2013, 2019) at the margins of the city, which Agier defines as “extraterritorialities”, spaces of inhospitality, of ban, exception, and exclusion (Agier 2013). It is precisely this kind of heterotopia that one encounters in the Roma peri-urban camps in Albania that are the focus of my analysis.

Patterns of Displacement in Albania, Past and Present Displacement and migration more generally, internal or external, are all too familiar to many Albanians. Yet, despite its magnitude after the fall of communism, displacement was not a new phenomenon but, rather, a recurring theme during communism, linked particularly to reforms in the areas of industrialization, education, urbanization, and the sedentarization of nomads and semi-nomads—respectively the Roma and Vlach minority communities—to mention but a few. These reforms ensured the communist regime its planned development of the country while establishing and maintaining tight control over the territory, population, and particularly over the workforce. Let us have a closer look at some of these processes. Urbanization through the 1950s and the 1960s triggered massive displacements. In the mid-1950s, the majority of the Albanian population lived in the countryside, and urbanites accounted for only 22% (or 245,908 inhabitants).5 In the first decade of the regime (1945–1955), new policies allowed a certain rural exodus, which brought the urban population to 27.5% (or 391,438 inhabitants); this nearly doubled by 1960 (about 503,163 inhabitants).6 The urban population’s increase was considerably higher than the country’s population growth during the same period and the main factors for such rapid urbanization were attributed to the country’s socialist industrialization [industrializimit socialist të vëndit].7 The latter encompassed the development of new industries in the existing cities [qytetet e vjetra] and the creation of new industrial and mining towns. Other factors contributing to such rapid urbanization were associated with the development of trade, communications, construction, education  Albanian National Archives (AQSH). F. 490, V. 1963, D. 5, fl. 1.  Archival data show that the Albanian population reached 1,288,660 inhabitants by the end of 1952, compared to 1118, 280  in 1945 (AQSH, F. 489, V. 1953, D. 130, fl. 7; AQSH, F. 490, V. 1945, D. 333, fl. 57; AQSH, F. 490, V. 1963, D. 5, fl. 8). 7  AQSH, F. 490, V. 1963, D. 5, fl. 1. 5 6

8  HETEROTOPIAS OF DISPLACEMENT: THE PRODUCTION OF SPACE… 

195

and health, marriages, and family reunions. In some cities, such as Tirana, Durrës, Elbasan, Fier, Vlorë, Lushnje, and Saranda, the population doubled or tripled compared to 1945.8 Industrialization, therefore, was by far the most important factor in the growth of the urban population. The creation of the new industrial and mining towns absorbed, essentially, a younger rural population who desired to leave the countryside, as qualified employment opportunities were scarce, whereas the urban areas projected better and more attractive life prospects. This demographic constituted the bulk of industrial workers, representing a process that Lelaj calls “the proletarianization of peasantry” (Lelaj 2012, 21), whereby “the proletarian was carved out of the peasant … in the absence of a market economy or capitalism” (Lelaj 2012, 23). Lelaj’s ethnographic research in Bulqizë, one of the mining townships established in the 1950s, shows how it came to life, how it was built, populated, and grew into its current contours, mostly through the work of rural youth and forced labor of political prisoners (Lelaj 2012, 31). Besides industrialization, the development of the construction and housing sector also brought, in the words of the documents consulted, shumë fshatarë9 [many peasants] to the urban and new industrial centers, as the urbanites would not work as construction laborers or even as specialists in construction or carpentry. During the first decade, people moved freely to urban and industrial centers, and it was only in 1955 that such movements began to be strictly controlled and regulated by the Party of Labour10 of Albania and government authorities.11 Mobility was tightly controlled with rules governing state-imposed transferimi/emërimi [relocation/ appointment], which aimed to maintain a balance on workforce provision between industry and the needs of the agricultural sector (Lelaj 2012, 32). Such industrialization and urbanization reforms did not spare the nomadic and semi-nomadic groups, which also had to join the workforce; above all, their free movement and lack of fixed dwellings represented a “threat to public order and security”.12 One of these groups, the Vlachs, were semi-nomadic shepherds that practiced transhumance, moving livestock through seasonal cycles from the mountains toward the Adriatic and  AQSH, F. 490, V. 1963, D. 5, fl. 1.  AQSH, F. 490, V. 1963, D. 5, fl. 3. Today, the term has a negative connotation and is considered derogatory. 10  The name of the ruling party in the single-party system of the time. 11  AQSH, F. 490, V. 1963, D. 5, fl. 2. 12  AQSH, F. 498, V. 1947. D. 47, fl. 6. 8 9

196 

E. SULA-RAXHIMI

Ionian coasts in winter and from the coastal areas to summer meadows in the hinterland mountains between Albania, Macedonia, and Greece. The Vlachs had practiced transhumance for centuries (Green 2005), up until the new borders of the nation-states, drawn following the fall of the Ottoman Empire, prevented the free movement of people and, consequently, transhumance. The Vlach pastoralists were well assimilated throughout the Balkans in established societies, including Albania, where they sedentarized around the same period, in the 1950s. They settled and were mostly employed in agricultural cooperatives (de Rapper and Sintès 2006, 252), and were well integrated into Albanian society; many embraced the ideology of the Party of Labour, and several became communist leaders (Schwandner-Sievers 2002). The second nomadic group affected by these reforms were the Roma minorities.13 A series of policies and administrative measures initiated in 1947 specifically targeted the Roma, considered at that time “deviant”, “vagabonds”, “immoral”, and a danger to public order.14 For a regime that was paranoid and obsessed with controlling its subjects and territory, this was not tolerable. The new measures were designed to settle the Roma in specific parts of cities and villages by force, in order to sedentarize and control those who were still leading a nomadic lifestyle15; to discipline them by correcting their deviations, their physical, social, and moral gestures (Sula-Raxhimi 2019), as often stated in the official documents16; and to mobilize the resulting workforce in the modernization processes of the country (Lelaj 2012) and in building the utopian socialist project that was socialism at that time. Such processes were well represented in socialist literature. For instance, Aristotel Mici’s short story “Ndryshimet e Pelarëve” [The changes of the Pelarë] (Mici 1975)17 recounts, in loaded ideological grammar, how the Pelarët, a group of Roma nomads whose main occupation was taming horses, were employed in Azotik, a chemical fertilizers factory in the industrial town of Fier, and how one even went so far as to become a specialist at the plant. Gradually, the Pelarët settled in apartment buildings, abandoning their nomadic lifestyle (Mici 1975), 13  In official documents (and in the vernacular) several names are used for the Roma, most considered derogatory (Gypsy, Arixhinj, Gabel, Kurbat, Magjyp, Gatal, etc.) (Courtiade 1991). 14  AQSH, F. 498, V. 1947. D. 47, fl. 6. 15  Not all the Roma in Albania were nomads at the beginning of the twentieth century in Albania (Hasluck 1938; Mann 1933; Shkoza 1935). 16  AQSH, F. 498, V. 1947. D. 47, fl. 6–7. 17  From the collection of short stories Elektriçistja e betonierës [The Concrete Mixer Electrician] (Mici 1975).

8  HETEROTOPIAS OF DISPLACEMENT: THE PRODUCTION OF SPACE… 

197

thus suggesting a certain “normalization” through work. Similarly, Véronique Klauber (2006) shows how working in a metallurgy complex in the industrial Hungarian town of Ózd ensured the Roma workers a certain sense of belonging, blending in, integration, and therefore invisibility within the working class. They were seen first as fellow workers rather than members of a stigmatized ethnic identity group (Klauber 2006). Around the same period, entire new Roma neighborhoods were created on the outskirts of some cities and villages. The two Roma neighborhoods where I have worked date back to the 1950s (the Kinostudio area) and the 1960s (the Selite area), and both are situated on the periphery of the capital, Tirana. One of my main Roma interlocutors, Arif, remembers that his family—father, mother, grandfather, uncle, extended family— came to Tirana in the 1950s, and recalls the creation of his neighborhood, Kinostudio, in the following way: People from the Democratic Front [read local communist party structures] rounded us up and moved us from our village near Lushnja to Tirana. Initially, we were placed in the basements of pallateve ruse [Russian buildings], the moskat buildings. Then the police forcibly removed us from there, transporting us in trucks and placing us on a plain somewhere on the outskirts of the city. There was nothing there, except for some Roma tents of the Karbuxhi tribe.18 We were sheltered in tents and, later, the state issued us permissions to build our own homes in the style of Elbasan town houses, as part of the urban development plan. In this newly-built area of the city, there were also some “white hands.”19 Later, the Ministry of the Interior built other blocks of flats for the Roma. With the arrival of more Roma, the “white hands” began to leave, and our neighborhood gradually became a predominantly Roma area and remained so. (Author’s fieldnotes)

Isabel Fonseca, an American journalist and writer who lived in the Kinostudio neighborhood four decades later, in the early 2000s, describes it as “an urban area that looks more like a slum” (Fonseca 2003, 39), with “unpaved and muddy streets in winter” (Fonseca 2003, 34). “In Kinostudio”, she writes, “… nothing is heard but the Romani language” (Fonseca 2003, 30), echoing what Agier (2013, 2019) describes as a pattern of urban heterotopias: their tendency to transform slowly into ghettos (Agier 2013, 26), often with strong ethnic and racial identity signifiers. Other Roma neighborhoods appeared elsewhere in Albania; for instance,  One of the Roma clans in Albania (Courtiade 1991).  Term used by the Roma to designate white, non-Roma Albanians.

18 19

198 

E. SULA-RAXHIMI

Rrapishta on the outskirts of Elbasan was created around the same period (Dalipaj 2012, 135). Similar industrialization, urbanization, and sedentarization processes were also taking place in other Eastern European countries (Crowe and Kolsti 1991; Janko Spreizer 2016; Klauber 2006; Sardelić 2015; Stewart 1997). While most Roma settled in neighborhoods in peri-­ urban areas, others—mostly Egyptians—inhabited the ground floors of the state-built concrete apartment blocks; other Roma settled in rural areas, such as in Hamil (Fier), Drizë (Fier), Orizaj (Berat), Morava (Berat), Levan (Fier), Baltëz (Fier), Akërni (in Novoselë). These villages still hold important Roma communities today. Sedentarization measures continued throughout the 1960s and 1970s. Yet, unlike the other nomadic groups, after three decades of such reforms, in 1981 about 10% of the Roma were still living in shacks or some sort of improvised dwellings,20 about 30% were still unemployed, and 27% of their children were out of school.21 Archival documents22 show that some hundred Roma families did not get the promised benefits, however meager, mainly due to the discriminatory attitudes of local party administrators implementing the central government’s orders (Sula-Raxhimi 2019). Verdery made similar observations in the Romanian context, emphasizing that “policies may be made at the center, but they are implemented in local settings, where those entrusted with them may ignore, corrupt, over execute, or otherwise adulterate them” (Verdery 1991, 427). The state apparatus closely organized and controlled people’s lives during communism, yet some managed to get around the rules or fall out of such measures, not by choice but due to “red tape” (Gupta 1995, 2012) and “street level bureaucracy” (Lipsky 1980). Toward the latter part of the communist period, many Roma were still living in makeshift dwellings and were thus prone to displacement and precariousness. However, displacements or mobility linked to urbanization, industrialization, or even sedentarization was not necessarily perceived and lived negatively. Many benefitted from social policies that encouraged them to leave the countryside for a better and easier life in urban areas. Even minority groups like the Roma, who were undoubtedly not the winners of such reforms, often did not express discontent. Several Roma I met during my fieldwork reiterated that they were “happy to have had a secure job  AQSH, F. 490, V. 1981, D. 302, fl. 7.  AQSH, F. 490, V. 1981, D. 302, fl. 1 22  AQSH F. 490. V. 1981. D. 302, fl. 24–27. 20 21

8  HETEROTOPIAS OF DISPLACEMENT: THE PRODUCTION OF SPACE… 

199

and a roof over their heads”, regardless of the fact that the jobs performed were, in most cases, difficult, unskilled, and among the lowest paid (De Soto et al. 2005; Vullnetari 2012). With the collapse of communism, other forms of displacement occurred. About a third of the Albanian population left the country (Vullnetari 2012), while a large number of people, mostly from rural, remote, and mountainous areas, moved to the capital, other urban centers, or to the countryside along the coast (Pojani 2010). The population of Tirana almost tripled, reaching about 906,166 inhabitants in 2020 (INSTAT 2020), following the tendency of other megacities around the globe. Currently, Tirana and Durres alone have 1,196,863 inhabitants, almost half the Albanian population (INSTAT 2020). Such massive and voluntary displacement brought new housing and settlement issues. Pojani and Baar point out that “the major cities’ informal housing settlements encompass up to a quarter of the population and 40% of the built-up area” (Pojani and Baar 2020, 135). The internal displacement and rapid urbanization had dire consequences for agriculture—including the abandonment or noncultivation of arable land (Fuga 2007, 379)—housing, and urban planning (Pojani 2010), and more broadly, they had a huge impact on the country’s economy, social capital, and social fabric. For the Roma, the housing, poverty, and economic problems faced during communism were further exacerbated by the neoliberal policies adopted by the left- and right-wing governments that followed. Moving closer to economic urban centers created better economic opportunities, but also brought about other issues of displacement, settling, squatting, and housing. Such issues are often interpreted by local government policies as “extraterritorialities”, usurpation, squatting, or appropriation of public spaces leading to the multiplication of irregular or informal urban camps in the cities’ banlieues, spaces that Agier defines as “heterotopias and refuge” (Agier 2013, 11). I call such new informal urban configurations heterotopias of displacement and precariousness.

Heterotopias of Displacement and Precariousness in the Present Time Different factors have influenced the emergence and mushrooming of heterotopias of displacement and precariousness in post-communist Albania. Some of the current and most frequent forms of sprawling observed across

200 

E. SULA-RAXHIMI

the outskirts of Tirana are attributed to: (a) the further impoverishment following the change in political systems; (b) loss of homes and other material goods in the pyramid schemes; and (c) development-induced displacement (DID). The ethnography of one of such heterotopias situated in the peri-urban area of Shkoza amply illustrates this. On an early spring morning, my Roma interlocutor and I headed east of Tirana toward a peri-urban area to join the Roma families living in the ruins of uzina e autotraktorëve [auto-repair factory] which fell out of use after the collapse of communism. As we were driving on the winding path between the recently built homes, a new urban landscape took shape, developed over the past two decades in a more or less chaotic fashion, unrelated to any urban planning. At the shack-dwelling site, we first met Bukuria, a 32-year-old Roma woman, mother of four children between 4 and 12 years of age. She is unemployed; her husband collects recycled materials and scrap metal, an informal but relatively gainful business that flourished after the fall of communism, an industry that provided work for many previously unemployed Roma. Bukuria’s shack is no different from those surrounding it. A patchwork of wood and plastic panels salvaged from recycling forms an intimate space consisting of one room of about 12 m2 for her family of six. Above, several bricks hold down a makeshift roof, preventing it from being blown away by blustery winds or stormy rains. No bathroom, no sewage, and no potable water. Bukuria and her husband settled in this campsite nearly 20 years earlier, when the local government demolished the “illegal” settlements and kiosks along the Lana River, as part of the “Clean and Green” program (2002–2003) (Pojani 2010). The shack area, a patch of land bordering the upper left bank of the Lana River, is situated in the middle of a relatively well-­ maintained inhabited area, separated by an unpaved narrow street from another recently established community on one side, and by the colorful but empty buildings of a social housing project financed by the European Union on the other. I could count at least 20 shacks, hosting more than 25 Roma families, each telling a story that bears witness to the factors that pushed them to move and the temporalities of their arrival at this campsite. They made this place their home through self-establishment in a self-­ appropriated space that is public property, a former mechanical repair factory, abandoned and in a state of collapse. Some of the inhabitants, like Bukuria, came here after the municipality cleaned up the Lana River banks in early 2000.

8  HETEROTOPIAS OF DISPLACEMENT: THE PRODUCTION OF SPACE… 

201

In the past three decades, such heterotopias linked to development-­ induced displacement are not a rarity in Tirana. Under specific policy provisions to make way for more apartment buildings (i.e., the areas of Artistikja and train station), ring roads (the areas of Selita and Astiri23), and green spaces (Selita, Lana River banks, lake area), the municipality forcibly removed several hundred people from their homes and makeshift settlements to make space for such developments, pushing them toward homelessness and precariousness, without offering sustainable solutions. The city-planning and land management programs have often forced the eviction of, notably, families who did not own their property or could not afford to rent an apartment. The literature suggests that development-­ induced displacements “may and often do cause physical and economic displacement that results in impoverishment and disempowerment of affected populations” (Satiroglu and Choi 2015, 1). “[T]he populations affected by this kind of development activity are generally poor, marginal, traditional or indigenous communities. Resettlement is infrequently an option, and compensation or restitution are rarely adequate” (Chatty 2015, xv). The major impoverishment risks, which scholars associate with development-induced displacements, include “landlessness, joblessness, homelessness, marginalization, food insecurity, increased morbidity, loss of common property resources, and community disarticulation” (Cernea and McDowell 2000), as well as loss of access to basic services and education (Satiroglu and Choi 2015, 4). Our ethnographic accounts at both Roma campsites show that such risks are not a mere probability of exposure that may or may not occur, but are very present, and strongly affect the displaced Roma families; they live with these risks as part of their harsh everyday reality, sometimes facing multiple risks simultaneously, each adding another layer of uncertainty to their precarious lives. Other Roma families ended up in this campsite after having lost their houses to pyramid or Ponzi schemes that flourished between 1992 and 1997. Like many Albanians, they too sold homes and other property to “invest” the money into the pyramid schemes hoping for a quick return of cash (Musaraj 2011). The dreams of fast cash left them homeless, in addition to the deep poverty levels from which many were already suffering. 23  Between 2015 and 2016, about 70 other Roma and Egyptian families were forcibly displaced to make space for the construction of the ring road (unaza e madhe) in the Selita area in Tirana, as reported in this article: https://www.reporter.al/debimet-ekomunitetit-rom-skandali-i-heshtur-i-autoriteteve-shqiptare/

202 

E. SULA-RAXHIMI

Analyzing Albanian financial pyramid schemes, which attracted large numbers of people, anthropologist Smoki Musaraj (2011) associates them with the rapid transformations toward liberalism in the absence of appropriate financial institutions; they are a direct consequence of a vast neoliberal push aimed at a rapid and deregulated privatization (Musaraj 2011). Other Roma joined this campsite due to loss of employment when several industries across the country closed down following the change of political system. The ruins of the former industrial site where this Roma camp is located are one such example. In that sense, this makeshift Roma quarter was created as an outcome of the economic downturn of the country after the fall of communism, and due to neoliberal economic policies pursued by right- and left-wing governments. In another context, Povinelli (2011) reminds us that neoliberal modes of governance strongly affect the indigenous and most vulnerable populations through their policies and practices, causing abandonment and dispossession. This campsite at the margin of the city, inhabited mostly by Roma, marks the beginning of a new urban space with specific identity traits, described by Agier as the beginning of a new ghetto-like urban space (Agier 2013, 13), where the racial divide, the poverty gap, segregation, and exclusion (West Ohueri 2021) prevail. This strongly resonates with Loïc Wacquant’s (2007, 2008) analysis of the conditions of North American ghettos. Wacquant shows that state structures and policies play a decisive role in the articulation of inequalities linked to social class and ethnic origin, which Wacquant describes as ethnoracial or ethnonational (Wacquant 2007, 8). In that sense, we should consider the creation and transformation of such spaces of displacement and precariousness as an active process of political abandonment, isolation, and segregation that deepens the stigma for its inhabitants, these urban outcasts (Wacquant 2007, 231). Slowly but steadily, this campsite turned into a heterotopia par excellence, perfectly capturing—visually, metaphorically, and symbolically—the production of those peculiar but real places, locatable and connected to a certain temporality (Foucault 2001, 1578). The temporality of the formation and expansion of such heterotopias mirrors various city and state policies, which allow some to be excluded from the city and its policies while accepting, or rather tolerating, their inhabiting these other places at the margins of the city. Inhabiting the margins also echoes David Harvey’s thoughts on spaces of hope and justice in the city, namely, that the space designated for or attributed to an individual or a social group evokes the

8  HETEROTOPIAS OF DISPLACEMENT: THE PRODUCTION OF SPACE… 

203

aspirations and desires of society in relation to this group (Harvey 1973, 2000). Located in the ruins of a former industrial site, this heterotopia is a juxtaposition of spaces that, on the one hand, represent the failures of both political systems, signified in the materiality of the abandoned industrial vestiges, and, on the other, quite literally represent the space of the consequences that such system failures have produced, specific spaces of otherness, which allow a certain permission to enter, a certain openness and circulation (Foucault 2001, 1579), which the most vulnerable social groups keep reaching at the margins of the city and of the system. It is both a potential place of shelter (Agier 2013, 2019) and a place of acceptance in its radical exclusion (Agamben 1998). Yet, simultaneously, this heterotopia of displacement is also a space where state policies are ignored, contested, or subverted by the Roma inhabitants through self-appropriation of the space. The space making here refers not merely to claiming the right to dwelling, but rather to appropriating the public space through self-establishment and affirmation of their presence. It is a space where, despite everything, the inhabitants tend to start anew, create a sense of community through solidarity, and craft new life prospects for themselves and their families while operating almost entirely in informality, outside of the city’s institutions and policies. Therefore, we should not consider such heterotopias solely as places resulting from the state’s failures and abandonment, but also as places where new forms of life emerge, which resist such policies, power imbalances, and asymmetries. Early on, Gupta and Ferguson in their collective work Culture, Power, Place: Explorations in Critical Anthropology (1997) question whether place making should be attributed exclusively to the (nation-)state and its imposing power. Foucault points out that “[W]here there is power, there is resistance; […] points of resistance are inscribed in power as its irreducible opposite” (Foucault 1978, 95–96). According to Foucault, power relations are part of human relations, they “are rooted in the whole network of the social” (Faubion 2000, 345; Foucault 2001, 1059); hence, resistance is as much diffused as power is, emphasizing, “Just as the network of power relations ends by forming a dense web that passes apparatuses and institutions, without being exactly localized in them, so too the swarm of points of resistance traverses social stratifications and individual unities” (Foucault 1978, 96). Subscribing to such a vision of resistance, Gupta and Ferguson suggest that social and political processes of place making are rather “embodied practices that shape identities and enable

204 

E. SULA-RAXHIMI

resistances” (Gupta and Ferguson 1997, 6). Borrowing from de Certeau (1984), Gupta and Ferguson further emphasize that individuals, as social agents, never merely enact culture, discourses, policies, and practices, but rather “reinterpret and reappropriate them in their own ways” (Gupta and Ferguson 1997, 5). In that sense, this particular campsite, as a heterotopia of displacement and precariousness, is concurrently a place of resistance to the city’s policies and of resilience and resourcefulness of these individuals and communities in coping with displacement, loss of material possessions, and marginalization.

Conclusion The other spaces—as heterotopias of displacement and precariousness— which flourish in the landscape of Tirana’s banlieues, whether in their emergent forms, as in the case of the lake campsite, or transformed and expanding into semi-permanent urban camps at the margins of the city, as in the case of the Shkoza campsite, come to life through the suspension or inaction of social, political, and legal regulations. They are a reflection of governing and decision-making processes materializing in the procedures, norms, practices, and discourses connected with investing in or sanitizing certain urban areas to provide cleaner, greener, and nicer public spaces for some citizens while producing distress, marginalization, uncertainty, indifference, abandonment (Povinelli 2011), and isolation for others. While during communist times displacement was used for social upscaling through urbanization, industrialization, forced settlement, and sedentarization, contemporary forms of displacement rather reflect the inability of the city and the state to deal with its own people. They reflect a state of disconnection and neglect that creates the perfect conditions for the emergence and proliferation of heterotopias of displacement and precariousness at the edges of cities. They are an outcome of policies that intentionally or involuntarily violate the rights of some citizens and contribute to their abandonment and further isolation in places of ban and exclusion, places produced by social and political abandonment. At the same time, such heterotopias of displacement and precariousness are also places where individuals and communities inhabiting such spaces resist the spatial policies, practices, and discourses that create them, by contesting, subverting, and reinterpreting them to make such places their own.

8  HETEROTOPIAS OF DISPLACEMENT: THE PRODUCTION OF SPACE… 

205

Acknowledgments  I am grateful for the support of the Canadian Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council (SSHRC), which funded my doctoral research through the Vanier Graduate Scholarship.

Bibliography Agamben, Giorgio. 1998. Homo Sacer: Sovereign Power and Bare Life. Trans. D. Heller-Roazen. Stanford: Stanford University Press. Agier, Michel. 2013. Le Campement Urbain Comme Hétérotopie et Comme Refuge: Vers Un Paysage Mondial Des Espaces Précaires. Brésil(s): Sciences Humaines et Sociales 3 (3): 11–28. https://doi.org/10.4000/bresils.385. ———. 2019. Camps, Encampments, and Occupations: From the Heterotopia to the Urban Subject. Ethnos 84 (1): 14–26. https://doi.org/10.1080/0014184 4.2018.1549578. Amnesty International. 2015. Albanie: 44 familles roms ont besoin d’un logement décent, pas d’une expulsion forcée. October 13, 2015. https://www.amnesty. org/en/documents/eur11/2644/2015/en/. Balibar, Étienne, Sandro Mezzadra, and Raṇabı ̄ra Samāddāra. 2012. The Borders of Justice. Philadelphia: Temple University Press. Bradley, Megan. 2019. The Return of Internally Displaced Persons: Patterns, Possibilities and Gaps in Knowledge. In McGill ISID Global Governance Lab Policy Brief. Montreal: McGill University Institute for the Study of International Development. Bradley, Megan, and Roberta Cohen. 2013. Disasters, Displacement and Protection: Challenges, Shortcomings and Ways Forward. In Disentangling Migration and Climate Change: Methodologies, Political Discourses and Human Rights, ed. Thomas Faist and Jeanette Schade, 207–228. Dordrecht: Springer Netherlands. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-­94-­007-­6208-­4. Brettell, Caroline. 2015. Theorizing migration in Anthropology: The cultural, Sociological and Phenomenological Dimensions of Movement. In Migration Theory. Talking Across Disciplines, ed. Caroline Brettell and James Frank Hollifield, 3rd ed., 148–195. New  York: Rutledge. https://doi. org/10.4324/9781315814933. Cernea, Michael, and Christopher McDowell, eds. 2000. Risks and Reconstruction: Experiences of Resettlers and Refugees. Washington, DC: The World Bank. Chatty, Dawn. 2015. Forward. In In Development-Induced Displacement and Resettlement: New Perspectives on Persisting Problems, ed. Irge Satiroglu and Narae Choi, xv–xvii. London: Rutledge. https://doi. org/10.4324/9781315760520. Courtiade, Marcel. 1991. I Rom in Albania, un profile storico sociale. Est e ovest a confronto sulle politiche regionali e locali verso i Rom, Convegno internazionale di studi, Roma, September 20–28.

206 

E. SULA-RAXHIMI

Crépeau, François, Delphine Nakache, Michael Collyer, et al., eds. 2006. Forced Migration and Global Processes: A View from Forced Migration Studies. Lanham: Lexington Books. Crowe, David, and John Kolsti, eds. 1991. The Gypsies in Eastern Europe. New York: Sharpe. Dalipaj, Gerda. 2012. Roma Communities in Elbasan. In Albania: Family, Society and Culture in the 20th Century, ed. Andreas Hemming, Gentiana Kera, and Enriketa Pandelejmoni, 131–146. Zurich: LIT Verlag. Das, Veena, and Deborah Poole, eds. 2004. Anthropology in the Margins of the State. Santa Fee: School of American Research Press. de Certeau, Michel. 1984. The Practice of Everyday Life. Trans. S.  Rendall. Berkeley: University of California Press. de Rapper, Gilles, and Pierre Sintès. 2006. Composer avec le risque : la frontière sud de l’Albanie entre politique des États et solidarités locales. Revue d’études comparatives est-ouest 37 (4): 243–271. https://doi.org/10.3406/ receo.2006.1795. de Soto, Hermine, Gedeshi Ilir, and Sabine Beddies. 2005. Roma and Egyptians in Albania: From social exclusion to social inclusion. The World Bank: Washington, DC. Dehaene, Michiel, and Lieven de Cauter, eds. 2008. Heterotopia and the City: Public Space in a Postcivil Society. London: Routledge. Eriksen, Thomas H. 2018. Globalization. In Handbook of Political Anthropology, ed. Harald Wydra and Bjørn Thomassen, 462–476. Cheltenham: Eduard Elgar Publishing. Faubion, James. 2000. Power: The Essential Works of Foucault, 1954-1984. New York: The New Press. ———. 2008. Heterotopia: An Ecology. In Heterotopia and the City: Public Space in a Postcivil Society, ed. Michiel Dehaene and Lieven de Cauter, 31–39. London: Routledge. Fiddian-Qasmiyeh, Elena, Gil Loescher, Katy Long, et al., eds. 2014. The Oxford Handbook of Refugee and Forced Migration Studies. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Fonseca, Isabel. 2003. Enterrez-moi Debout: L’Odyssée des Tziganes. Paris: Lattitudes/Albin Michel. Foucault, Michel. 1978. History of Sexuality: An Introduction, V.I. Trans. R. Harley. New York: Pantheon Books. ———. 2001. Dits et écrits, T.II, 1976–1988. Paris: Quarto/Gallimard. ———. 2004. Sécurité, Territoire, Population. Cours au Collège de France.1977–1978. Paris: Gallimard-Seuil. ———. 2009. Le corps utopique, les hétérotopies. Paris: Nouvelles Éditions Lignes.

8  HETEROTOPIAS OF DISPLACEMENT: THE PRODUCTION OF SPACE… 

207

Fuga, Artan. 2007. Les groupes ruraux sociaux transitionnels: L’exemple des albanais dans le contexte des Balkans. In Nouvelle urbanités, nouvelles ruralités, ed. Yves Lughinbühl, 375–381. Bruxelles: P.I.E Peter Lang. Goode, Erich. 2018. The Heterotopia. In The Taming of New York’s Washington Square: A Wild Civility, 227–249. New York: NYU Press. Accessed February 15, 2021. https://doi.org/10.2307/j.ctvwrm57m.11. Green, Sarah F. 2005. Notes from the Balkans: Locating Marginality and Ambiguity on the Greek-Albanian Border. New Jersey: Princeton University Press. Gupta, Akhil. 1995. Blurred Boundaries: The Discourse of Corruption, the Culture of Politics, and the Imagined State. American Ethnologist 22 (2): 375–402. https://doi.org/10.1525/ae.1995.22.2.02a00090. ———. 2012. Red Tape: Bureaucracy, Structural Violence and Poverty in India. Durham: Duke University Press. Gupta, Akhil, and James Ferguson. 1997. Culture, Power, Place Explorations in Critical Anthropology. Durham, NC: Duke University Press. Hannerz, Ulf. 2003. Several Sites in One. In Globalisation. Studies in Anthropology, ed. Thomas Hylland Eriksen, 18–38. London: Pluto Press. Harvey, David. 1973. Social Justice and the City. Athens: The University of Georgia Press. ———. 2000. Spaces of hope. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press. Hasluck, Margaret. 1938. The Gypsies of Albania. Journal of the Gypsy Lore Society. Third Series 17(1–2): 18–30. INSTAT-Albanian Institute of Statistics. 2020. http://www.instat.gov.al/en/figures/key-­figures/. Janko Spreizer, Alenka. 2016. From a Tent to a House, from Nomads to Settlers: Constructions of Space and Place through Romani Narratives. In Moving Places: Relations, Return and Belonging, ed. Nataša Gregorič Bon and Jaka Repič, 172–193. New York: Berghahn Books. Johnson, Peter. 2013. The Geographies of Heterotopia. Geography Compass 7 (11): 790–803. https://doi.org/10.1111/gec3.12079. Klauber, Véronique. 2006. La visibilité à éclipses dans les représentations mémorielles des Roms. Conserveries mémorielles [En ligne], 1 (2006). http://journals. openedition.org/cm/295. Accessed 15 April 2021. Lefebvre, Henri. 1991. The Production of Space. Trans. D.  Nicholson-Smith. Malden: Blackwell Publishing. Lelaj, Olsi. 2012. The Proletarianisation of the Peasantry: A Narrative of Socialist Modernity in Albania. Ethnologia Balkanica 16 (2012): 21–39. Lipsky, Michael. 1980. Street-level Bureaucracy: Dilemmas of the Individual in Public Services. New York: Russell Sage Foundation. Mann, Stuart. 1933. The Albanian Romani. Journal of the Gypsy Lore Society. Third series 12 (1): 1–32.

208 

E. SULA-RAXHIMI

Marcus, George E. 1995. Ethnography in/of the World System: The Emergence of Multi-Sited Ethnography. Annual Review of Anthropology 24 (1): 95–117. https://doi.org/10.1146/annurev.an.24.100195.000523. Mici, Aristotel. 1975. Elektricistja e betonierës. Tirana: Naim Frashëri. Musaraj, Smoki. 2011. Tales from Albarado: The Materiality of Pyramid Schemes in Postsocialist Albania. Cultural Anthropology 26 (1): 84–110. https://doi. org/10.1111/j.1548-­1360.2010.01081.x. Perec, Georges. 1999. Species of Spaces and Other Pieces. Trans. J.  Sturrock. London: Penguin Books. Pojani, Dorina. 2010. Tirana. Cities 27 (6): 483–495. https://doi.org/10.1016/j. cities.2010.02.002. Pojani, Dorina, and Kenneth Baar. 2020. The Legitimacy of Informal Settlements in Balkan States. Journal of Contemporary Central and Eastern Europe 28 (2-3): 135–153. https://doi.org/10.1080/25739638.2020.1833563. Povinelli, Elizabeth. 2011. Economies of Abandonment. Social Belonging and Endurance in Late Liberalism. London: Duke University Press. Sardelić, Julija. 2015. Romani Minorities and Uneven Citizenship Access in the Post-Yugoslav Space. Ethnopolitics 14 (2): 159–179. https://doi.org/10.108 0/17449057.2014.991154. Satiroglu, Irge, and Narae Choi. 2015. Introduction: Reflections on Development-­ Induced Displacement and Resettlement Research and Practice for Renewed Engagement. In Development-induced Displacement and Resettlement: New Perspectives on Persisting Problems, ed. Irge Satiroglu and Narae Choi, 1–16. London: Rutledge. https://doi.org/10.4324/9781315760520. Schwandner-Sievers, Stephanie. 2002. Dawn for a ‘Sleeping Beauty Nation’: Aromanian Identity Politics and Conflicts in Post-Communist Albania. In Albania – A Country in Transition. Aspects of Changing Identities in a South-­ East European Country, ed. Frank Kressing and Karl Kaser, 147–162. Baden-­ Baden: Nomos Verlagsgesellschaft. Shkoza, Haxhi. 1935. Financat e Shqipnisë (1839–1934). Tiranë: Shtypshkronja Nikaj. Soja, Edward W. 2017 [1996]. Thirdspace. Oxford: Blackwell. Stewart, Michael. 1997. The Time of the Gypsies. Boulder, CO: Westview Press. Sula-Raxhimi, Enkelejda. 2019. Dizpozitivi normalizues: Politikat mbi Romët në Shqipërinë socialiste. Antropologji 2 (2): 7–31. UNHCR-United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees. 2020. Global Trends in Forced Displacement in 2019. https://www.unhcr.org/globaltrends2019/. Verdery, Katherine. 1991. Theorizing Socialism: A Prologue to the ‘Transition’. American Ethnologist 18 (3): 419–439. Vullnetari, Julie. 2012. Beyond ‘Choice or Force’: Roma Mobility in Albania and Mixed Migration Paradigm. Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies 38 (8): 1305–1321.

8  HETEROTOPIAS OF DISPLACEMENT: THE PRODUCTION OF SPACE… 

209

Wacquant, Loïc. 2007. Parias urbains: Ghetto, banlieues, État. Une sociologie comparée de la marginalité sociale. La Découverte: Paris. ———. 2008. Urban Outcasts: A Comparative Sociology of Advanced Marginality. Cambridge: Polity Press. West Ohueri, Chelsi. 2021. On Living and Moving with Zor: Exploring Racism, Embodiment, and Health in Albania. Medical Anthropology 40 (3): 241–253. https://doi.org/10.1080/01459740.2020.1807539.

CHAPTER 9

“Mystical and Mythical Thinking”: Myth-­Making as a Compensatory Mechanism Cecilie Endresen

Everything Is Albanian In Albanian books, social media, and gossip, one sometimes comes across a particular stock of ideas revolving around the notion that a proto-­Albanian master race once ruled over enormous geographical areas and created fantastic civilizations. Modern Albanians are the heirs to this legacy which, it is claimed, can still be detected in a range of foreign cultures and traditions through mystical connections with the invisible world.1 A tenet of this eclectic discourse is that Albanian is the basis of the other languages.2 1  This, evidently, runs contrary to conventional scholarship, including that of the prominent Albanian linguist Eqrem Çabej. For a quick scholarly overview of the Albanian language, see, for example, “The Albanian language” by Robert Elsie on http://www. albanianlanguage.net/. A more detailed account of current research on Albanian language history is found in Matzinger 2009. 2  All translations from Albanian are my own.

C. Endresen (*) University of Oslo, Oslo, Norway e-mail: [email protected] © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2021 N. Gregorič Bon, S. Musaraj (eds.), Remitting, Restoring and Building Contemporary Albania, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-84091-4_9

211

212 

C. ENDRESEN

My first encounter with such stories occurred in Shkodër in 2003. My conversation partner, a middle-aged, local intellectual from the area, had just learned that I was Norwegian and excitedly proclaimed, “Then we are siblings!” To clarify, he asked me what the English word “dry” is in Norwegian. “Tørr”, I replied. He nodded with a knowing look. “Tørr” is the same word as “terra in the Latin translation of the Bible”, he explained, adding that the same is true of the Albanian word for dry: thatë or tharë. His argument continued as follows: “Terra” means dry land and refers to Atlantis, which happens to be located just off the Albanian coast and is where the ancestors of the Albanians once lived. This was the same glorious people who built the pyramids in Egypt. Other descendants include the (Celtic) Druids, who performed their rituals in forests. That this is the case is evident because “Druid” stems from dru, the Albanian word for wood. Also to be counted among the descendants of the Atlanteans, he continued, are the Vikings. At this point in our exchange, he asked me, “Kent is a popular Swedish name, isn’t it?” I nodded in response. Excited that the Nordic part of his argument had been certified by a real live Norwegian, he enthusiastically concluded, “You see, the Swedish name ‘Kent’ is the same as the name of the Illyrian King Ghent!” The gentleman’s point is that Scandinavians and Albanians have something in common. His telling of the story had, of course, a social function: it served to establish a connection between two strangers by using a family metaphor. However, its internal logic rests on the assumption that different groups of people in Europe, and beyond, all have a shared Albanian or proto-Albanian ancestry through ancient, mysterious connections which are partly preserved in different languages and, what is more, that only a few individuals have knowledge of this hidden “reality”. This knowledge is a source of hope and healing for Albanians, as well as the key to a better future. Given the hardships many Albanians have experienced, I chose, for the purposes of this study, to analyze this form of myth-making as a compensatory mechanism. At the same time, it symbolically integrates Albanians into new or foreign sociocultural settings. In this chapter, I demonstrate how different myth-makers in the genre combine bits and pieces from a variety of traditions and places in innovative ways that serve to endow any time and place with a new level of meaning. As a form of “mythological macro-history” (Trompf 2012, 63), it casts Albanians as a chosen

9  “MYSTICAL AND MYTHICAL THINKING”: MYTH-MAKING… 

213

people—as heroes, victims, and saviors—a move that creates a sense of continuity between past, present, and future.3 Later the same day that I met the gentleman introduced above, a group of elderly men in a cafe initiated me into their circle of custodianship of secret knowledge about the mysteries of time and space. They told me that Shkodër in actuality was the Garden of Eden mentioned in the Old Testament, a fact obvious to those who know how to triangulate the locations of dried river beds in the area and how to be creative with Albanian etymology. Since then, countless other Albanians have told me similar stories. I have heard, for instance, that the Olympic gods spoke Albanian, and that the Pope and the English language have Albanian roots. I have also heard that Albanians built the Acropolis and the Mayan pyramids and that they must be credited for the creation of such diverse institutions as the Roman Empire, NATO, and the European Union. Professor Skënder Rizaj, for example, defines the people (“Pelasgians-­ Illyrians-­Albanians”) and their language (“Pelasgic-Illyrian-Albanian”) as “divine” (Rizaj 2013). In some renditions, Albanians even receive extraterrestrial origins (Zaimi 2011). Over the years, I have heard and read countless versions of the story of the glorious ancestors who shaped cultures and civilizations near and far, from the dawn of Antiquity to the present. In different ways, they have sought to explain Albanian history by, for example, referring to the fabled continent of Atlantis or asserting that ancient Greek gods spoke Albanian. What all these stories have in common is that they express a profound wish to be respected and to be in control.

New Pasts in the Transnational Space The forms of amateur linguistic theories and ancestral myths that circulate in popular culture comprise a complex and flexible phenomenon that can be studied through different research lenses. It can, for instance, be analyzed as a new kind of folklore influenced by globalization and social media, as an emerging pan-Albanian mythology, and a conspiracy theory fueled by exclusion and a wish to belong (Endresen 2018, 356). One could also look at it as a form of re-traditionalization and an identity 3  For a seminal study of Albanian myths and identities, see Schwandner-Sievers and Fischer (2002). Other valuable contributions are found, for example, in Clayer (2007) and Gregorič Bon (2019).

214 

C. ENDRESEN

narrative of sorts, or as a form of racist theory, or perhaps even as a type of nativist or neo-Pagan discourse. At the same time, it can be defined as a nationalist product of pop culture and a new Albanian literary genre (Endresen 2016), a relatively recent subgroup of the modern esoteric tradition, or an Albanian form of New Age spirituality (Endresen 2019a). None of these analytical approaches are mutually exclusive, and here I define the phenomenon more loosely as a particular nationalist identity narrative. My focus in this chapter is on the function and meaning of the invoked imagery related to time and space. A noteworthy feature of religious development in the Balkans is the influence of nationalism: its political, ideological, and institutional aspects as well as its everyday, banal forms, which are discretely diffused through the culture (Billing 1995, 6). A defining feature of nationalist discourse is its assumptions regarding the existence of what are imagined communities (Anderson 1991). National myths of origins or a Golden Age establish a group’s chronological or civilizational precedence and are fused with notions of ethnic continuity and superiority. Such myths often permeate political rhetoric, religious and national self-images, and folklore on many levels; this is also true of the other Balkan countries (Perica 2002). Golden Age myths are used, for example, to define “who we are” and “where we came from” (Smith 1997, 49) and to create an “underlying unity” (Smith 2003, 170). The stories with which we are concerned here are thus stories about who the Albanians are and whence they come, yet they also describe who and where they want to be. The myth complex at hand is relatively unknown outside of the Albanian-speaking sphere and has received very little academic attention. The most important exception is Gilles de Rapper’s illuminating anthropological study, “Pelasgic Encounters in the Greek-Albanian Borderland” from 2009, which analyzes the “border dynamics and reversion to [the] ancient past in Southern Albania”. In it, de Rapper discusses how the notion of glorious “Pelasgic” ancestors presents them as a form of “transnational ancestors” in a “transnational space” (de Rapper 2009, 66), which Albanians, usually cast as inferior in Greek-Albanian relations, use to transform their marginality “into centrality and superiority” (de Rapper 2009, 66). The present study explores the notion of mythic “transnational ancestors” and “transnational space” in some more recent elaborations of the myth. De Rapper’s analysis also makes sense when it comes to myths remote from the Greek-Albanian context that are more influenced by the

9  “MYSTICAL AND MYTHICAL THINKING”: MYTH-MAKING… 

215

transnational processes that are key features of globalization. Moreover, I also show that the myths analyzed here deal with issues like exclusion and marginalization, and function as a compensatory mechanism by symbolically placing Albanians at the top of the hierarchy. My material consists of texts considered “sources of knowledge” in the discourse of interest for this study: primarily books but also TV programs, social media, blogs, and other material found online, such as texts posted on pan-Albanian Internet forums and diaspora community groups. My understanding of the phenomenon also relies upon extensive fieldwork on religion and nationalism carried out among Albanians since the early 2000s, including interviews and informal chats with a number of individuals intent on proving that any given hero, alphabet, toponym, group, object, or religion is “Albanian” in one way or another. Entertaining the notion that a nation has divine origins and speaks a language that can decipher cosmic secrets is a clear indication that the mythology at hand is underpinned by certain religious and magical beliefs that to some extent set it apart from conventional, secular national myths.

Myth, Magic, and Miracle in Contemporary Culture4 Albanian cultural heritage—developing in the historical intersection of Greek, Roman, and Slavic mythology, between Christian and Islamic traditions, and, over the course of the last few decades, between new globalized forms of religion and inspiration from all corners of the world—is both idiosyncratic and unusually multifaceted. The new way of myth-­ making is part of a larger process of religious refiguration unfolding in the Balkans and beyond. While Western neo-religiosity, New Age spirituality, and esoteric thinking are relative newcomers to the Balkans, ethnic Albanians5 have historically been accustomed to religious complexity. The privatization of religion and the Internet have made Albania’s intricate religious landscape even more pluralistic, and Albanians in the Balkans and in the diaspora have to a large extent become part of the lively global religious marketplace. 4  The rubric alludes to the book Myte, magi og mirakel i møte med det moderne (Alver et al. 1999), a study of myths, magic, and miracles in a modern Nordic context. 5  For the sake of simplicity, for the rest of the chapter I refer to all ethnic Albanians, native speakers of Albanian, and people who identify as Albanians as “Albanians”.

216 

C. ENDRESEN

Building upon insights from studies of contemporary religious developments in secular and post-secular societies, my analysis focuses on the influence the myths reveal of what, for the sake of simplicity, we may call here “New Age spirituality”, an eclectic mix of beliefs and practices, often associated with activities and artifacts like yoga, tarot cards, and crystal healing, or belief in reincarnation, gurus, aliens, and astrology. The Albanian myths, however, reflect some of the vaguer New Age notions, such as the belief that objects (including words, alphabets, or languages) have a spiritual energy which enables mystical connections and communication across time and space. Other important notions are that human beings (in this case, the individual Albanian or the national, collective Self) have an inner spiritual power and can ascend to a higher level of consciousness, and that humanity, through healing and transformation, is on the threshold of a new and better era. Since the end of the communist era, belief in esoteric explanations and paranormal phenomena has gained increased legitimacy, at least compared to when dialectical materialism was officially the only acceptable explanatory model. Today, Albanian popular culture abounds with paranormal elements. Media channels also occasionally publish news items of the five-­ sure-­ signs-that-ghosts-have-visited-your-home variety or report that UFOs have landed on Albanian territory (Veizi 2013). An ever-increasing number of publications that feature New Age spirituality, paranormal and occult themes, advice on healing and self-help, conspiracy theories, and elements of science fiction are available to the Albanian public, both online and offline (Endresen 2019b, 2020). The new myths are just one of many examples of how such neo-religious ideas are seeping into Albanian culture, belatedly compared to the USA and Western Europe where the New Age movement spread from the 1970s and popularized new, eclectic, and individualized forms of religiosity. The new mythology is diverse and intertextual. Many Albanian “offspring” that one finds on the market imitate or refer to, for example, American bestsellers in the genre. However, the original Albanian texts usually have one thing in common which sets them apart: they are conspicuously ethnocentric in character and, in the Albanian adaptations, the different themes mentioned above tend to integrate certain Albanian identity narratives and nationalist myths about the nation’s magnificent past and outstanding qualities. I have previously approached the myth complex under scrutiny in this article as a form of conspiracy theory (Endresen 2018) and as an example

9  “MYSTICAL AND MYTHICAL THINKING”: MYTH-MAKING… 

217

of influence from Western esotericism, Theosophy, and New Age spirituality (Endresen 2016, 2019a). In the following, however, I explore the supernatural speculations about time and space as a special twist to better-­ known nationalist myths.

The Custodians of Ancient Wisdom A noteworthy aspect, one to which I return shortly, is that the Albanian language is often presented as the gateway to lost traditions of wisdom and higher knowledge. While this Albanianist discourse is multiform, what emerges is a version of the nation as a protector of truth and civilization throughout the course of human history. A new element in this basic identity narrative is the positioning of the Albanian language and culture nexus as a secret, eternal “super philosophy” (Zheji 2015, 4). A recurrent theme is the intense focus put on fantastical, non-empirical ideas about its origins and legacy. Much of the disorganized, mediated neo-religiosity among Albanians is shaped and developed in tandem with pseudo-scientific theories of language, which can be defined as forms of “rejected knowledge” and “alternative linguistics” that rely greatly upon nineteenth-century philological theories positioning Pelasgic as a proto-Albanian language. The method employed attempts to discern Pelasgic vestiges in modern and ancient languages through alternative etymologies and random comparison between superficially similar names. The idea that underpins these attempted linguistic analyses is, thus, that it is possible to “discover” proto-Albanian vestiges in contemporary and ancient cultures and languages. A recurrent feature of the storytelling is the way in which the narrators divulge the Albanian character of a number of other languages, be it Sanskrit and Sumerian or Chinese, Celtic, and Coptic (d’Angely 1998; Kola 2003 [1989]; Pilika 2005; Aref 2007, 2008; Kocaqi 2008, 2009; Peza 2016). Some early bestsellers in the genre are Tot spoke Albanian (Catapano 2007 [1984]) and The Language of the Gods (Kola 2003 [1989]), in which the authors demonstrate that Egyptian hieroglyphs, the Greek pantheon, and the Logos, for example, are in fact Albanian.6 An emblematic “etymological” argument is Catapano’s claim

6  For a more detailed account of these “classics” of the genre, see Endresen (2018, 351–354).

218 

C. ENDRESEN

that the ancient Egyptian god Tot spoke Albanian because his name— Thot in Albanian—is pronounced like the Albanian word thotë (he says). In the study of the history of religions, this discourse about an Albanian Ursprache can be defined as a subgroup of the modern esoteric tradition, Olav Hammer’s umbrella term for various occult positions ranging from Theosophy to New Age (Hammer 2001a, 7–9). Terms like Theosophy, esotericism, occultism, and New Age spirituality are not commonly encountered in Albanian studies, most notably because these Western religious impulses have been marginal in Albanian-speaking regions. However, they are indispensable in the study of recent religious developments in the West, and it is evident that these new identity narratives include a range of supernatural aspects. These usually revolve around the belief that the Albanian language is a language for “Mystical and Mythical Thinking” (Zheji 2015, 2; 4; 7) and the “key” to solving the great mysteries (Catapano 2007 [1984], 166; Zaimi 2011), such as the “enigma of time” (Melyshi 2019). Xhevahir Dedej, for example, states that it is “the gods” that have given him the “key” to unlock the “secrets of the world” (Dedej 2014, 246). This idea forms the basis for a range of alternative visions of the past and creates mystical connections between peoples, periods, and places. More specifically, these new myths integrate modern Albanians, regardless of their context, into the cultural heritage from which they wish to stem. By making language the primary ethnonational marker and attributing to it universal values and mystical qualities, the mother tongue itself transforms Albanians into cultural heroes and guardians of spiritual treasures. Gaining deeper insights into the nature of the Albanian language is seen as crucial to regaining a sense of order in the world.

A Messianic Language and the Language of Gods A widespread idea in Albanian popular culture and alternative linguistics is that Albanian is the root of other languages and endows them with deeper meaning. One strategy is to dismiss the fact that similarities can be due to loans, or mere happenstance. A typical example is when the “author, psychologist and parapsychologist” Leonard Prifti from Kosovo “Albanianizes” the Greek God Poseidon: One of the pagan gods was Poseidon, the brother of Zeus. The word Poseidon stems from Poseidon