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Remaking Albania: Public Memory of Communist Past

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REMAKING ALBANIA: PUBLIC MEMORY OF COMMUNIST PAST Nina Nazmije Gjoci A Dissertation Submitted to the Graduate College of Bowling Green State University in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY August 2018 Committee: Alberto Gonzalez, Advisor Francisco J. Cabanillas Graduate Faculty Representative Joshua Atkinson Lara Martin-Lengel © 2018 Nina Gjoci All Rights Reserved iii ABSTRACT Alberto Gonzalez, Advisor Public memory research has become increasingly significant in communication research, especially pertaining to national traumatic pasts. Drawing from scholarship on memory-rhetoric interdependence, this study examines the rhetorical construction of the communist past in contemporary Albania. The analysis of national traditional media, places of memory, and official documents and archives reveals the ways that the communist past is contained, controlled, and diffused in response to present national and international interests and agendas. The shared identities narrated through public debates reveal that contestations about the past are first and foremost about cultural and political legitimacy. Throughout the analysis, it is obvious how the discussions about Albania’s communist past shifted to blaming the system, to denying collaboration, and to rationalizing the totalitarian structure. This study highlights the consequences that transnational influences have on redirecting and appropriating public memory and avoiding a genuine confrontation with the past. The past is reconfigured continuously, as the reconciliation reforms, the cold war connections and conflicts, and the totalizing European Union integration discourse influence what is remembered, by whom, where, and when. This study examines the discourses of remaking Albania as a rhetorical tension over meanings of past and future, where the communist past is diffused into collective guilt that haunts the bright EU imagined futures. iv Për Lisin, Dean, e Anitën. v ACKNOWLEDGMENTS I am in debt to many people for anything that I have ever accomplished: my parents for making me believe that nothing is impossible, my daughters for being the absolute motivation, my husband for always making sure I follow my dreams, my siblings for their unconditional support and inspiration throughout my life, and my friends, old and new, who make my life meaningful. My deepest gratitude to my committee: Dr. Alberto Gonzalez, thank you for being my advisor, and thank you for your constant guidance and support. I will never be able to thank you enough for all you have done for me from the start of my Ph.D. years to the final stages of the dissertation process. Dr. Lara Lengel and Dr. Joshua Atkinson, thank you for your advice and honesty. I appreciate how the three of you were always ready to listen to my research ideas and answer my unending questions. You have always welcomed my unannounced visits to your offices and you never turned me down for anything. Dr. Francisco Cabanillas, thank you for being so supportive and encouraging from my preliminary exam to the dissertation defense. I was so lucky to have you all in my committee. My deepest gratitude to Dr. Thomas Mascaro, Dr. Sung-Yeon Park, Dr. Catherine Cassara, and Dr. Srinivas Melkote: Thank you for your selfless support throughout my Ph.D. program. You are a great asset to my academic progress. Thank you for always believing in me and appreciating my scholarship. I am forever grateful to Dr. Thomas Endres and Dr. Linda Allen of the University of Northern Colorado. I have learned so much from you academically and professionally. I will never forget your support and mentorship during my master studies. I am here now because of you. Thank you! vi TABLE OF CONTENTS Page INTRODUCTION……………………………………………………………………….... 1 CHAPTER I. PUBLIC MEMORY SCHOLARSHIP ………... ..................……………… 2 Research question and rationale… ............………... ………………………………. 9 Theoretical Framework: Public memory is essentially rhetorical ............................. 11 Selected Literature Review ...............................................................................…… 13 Previous research on confronting the communist past ................................. 13 Previous research on public memory, memory place, and identity ............... 16 Research on place .......................................................................................... 19 The visual and memory turn in rhetorical criticism ...................................... 22 Method ……………………….…………………………… ..................................... 24 Texts ............................................................................................................ 26 Procedures ...................................................................................................... 27 Dissertation chapter content outline ........................................................................... 28 References……………………….…………………………… ................................. 30 CHAPTER II. PUBLIC DISCUSSIONS ABOUT THE COMMUNIST PAST IN TRADITIONAL MEDIA……………………………………………………………………. 35 Introduction ............................................................................................................ 35 1991-1996: Lustration, restitution, and denial……………………………………… 38 1997-2004: The past ignored …………………………………………………… .... 40 2005-2014: The past resurfacing …………………………………………………… 41 2014-present: The public debates…………………………………………………… 42 The Past on Public Trial…………………………………………………… ........... 46 vii Dealing with the past institutionally vs. public deliberation. .… ................... 46 Tufa-Culi debate ................................................................................ 47 Kadare-Lubonja debate ...................................................................... 49 Communist productions as propaganda vs. cultural heritage …………… ... 51 Conclusions: Contained Memory ……………………………… ................. 57 References……………….……………………………………………… ..... 61 CHAPTER III. PLACES OF MEMORY… ……..…………. ………………. ............ 63 The counter-memory………………………………………………………………. 63 Site of Witness and Memory Museum: The site of witness ......................... 64 The Spac Prison: The site of persecution………… .……………………….. 73 Controlled public memory ………………………………………………. ............... 78 The House of Leaves: The site of perpetrators ………………… ................. 79 Diffusing the blame for communist crime ………………………… 80 The Bunk’Art Center: The touristic site …………………………………... 88 Selling the past …………………………………………... ............... 90 Conclusions …………………………………………... ............................................ 93 References …………………………………………... .............................................. 95 CHAPTER IV. ALBANIA and EU: A PLACE PERSPECTIVE …………………………. 97 Albania-EU context…………………………………………………………………... 97 The texts ….…………………………………………………………………………. 101 EU integration from place perspective……………………………………………... 102 Western Balkans—not South East Europe…………………………………. 103 Place for Re-conciliation and Re-construction……………………………… 109 viii Hot spot for de/stability ………...…………………………… .........……. 114 Conclusion: The power of imagined futures ……………………………………….. 119 References ……………………………………………………………… ................. 126 CHAPTER V. CONCLUSIONS: REMAKING ALBANIA ……………………………… 132 Chapter review……………………………………………………………… ........... 133 Theoretical implications: Public memory of national traumatic pasts .....…………. 138 References……………………………………………………………… .................. 145 1 INTRODUCTION ". for no one has been able to establish with certainty whether what happens is the future, or just the past moving backward, like a crab." Kadare, The Pyramid Kadare’s quote precisely describes the relationship between memory and rhetoric. Lying between literature and politics, rhetoric often relies on memory to shape our identities when telling us who we are or must be, what group we belong to or must belong to, whether we should fight for our group’s interest with all we have, or whether an endeavor is not worth pursuing any longer. From ancient times to the present day, humanity has drawn from its pasts, whether real or imagined, to make sense of the present and to proclaim possible futures. Kadare suggests that the past, present, and future are not easily established and as such, they are not easily distinguishable and surely not easily named. For the past to be “past” it needs to be established. The establishment process is public and rhetorical. Often, in the name of the future, we use our common “knowledge”, our values, and our beliefs to try to silence what we are not sure of and we try to array the future towards a place where we are more certain. There is no other place (situation) where the need for establishing (naming) what “past(s),” “present(s),” and “future(s)” are more immediate and critical than in a time of change, especially collective change. I embrace the argument that memory and rhetoric need each other to exist. This project is going to rely on the memory-rhetoric interdependence to investigate how memory, specifically public memory, is used to achieve particular ends by defining particular places and identities. 1. Kadare is a contemporary globally celebrated Albanian writer and several time Nobel Nominee 2 CHAPTER I. PUBLIC MEMORY SCHOLARSHIP Memory, as one of the classical canons of rhetoric (memoria), has been used in the Western rhetorical tradition as a tool for the specific purpose of recollection and recitation. The rhetor was supposed to link the specific parts of a speech to a certain image
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