Orientalist Ethnonationalism: From Irredentism to Independentism Discourse analysis of the Albanian ethnonationalist narrative about the National Rebirth (1870-1930) and Kosovo Independence (1980-2000) Dukagjin Gorani Cardiff School of Journalism, Media and Cultural Studies Cardiff University This thesis is submitted to Cardiff University in fullfilment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy December 2011 1 Acknowledgments I would like to thank the most important people of all, my family and friends. None of this would have been possible without their support. I remain eternally grateful to their patience and understanding throughout the long years of this study. To Dr Tamara Witschge, my chief supervisor: your academic guidance and impervious belief in me is enshrined within every line of this research. For many months, you have been the voice of optimism that helped me navigate through countless moments of despair and aimlessness. Thank you. Finally, to everyone at Cardiff University and particularly to Dr Terry Threadgold: thank you for your understanding, open heart and open mind that made me feel at home in the beautiful Wales. 2 Abstract Orientalist Ethnonationalism: From Irredentism to Independentism Discourse analysis of the Albanian ethnonationalist narrative about the National Rebirth (1870-1930) and Kosovo Independence (1980-2000) The thesis focuses on the chronological identification and detection of the discursive analogies between the category of ‗the nation‘ and those of ‗the West‘, ‗Europe‘, ‗democracy‘ and ‗independence‘ in the Kosovo Albanian ethnonationalist narrative. The study represents a multi-dimensional exercise analysing the ethnonationalist discourse from a wide array of sample text which was produced during two relevant historical periods: the period between 1870-1930 and the period between 1980-2000. The first interval covers the period which is known in the Albanian history as the ‗National Rebirth‘. The second deals with the recent history of political resistance of Kosovo Albanians and their ‗sudden‘ discursive shift, from the narrative of ‗unification with the Motherland Albania‘ (the unificationist/irredentist discourse) to the narrative of ‗the independent Kosovo‘ (the independentist discourse) The main theoretical pillars of the study focus on the theories about the nation (specifically, its ethnic variation) and its narrative, the nationalism—as well as the representational systems of orientalism and balkanism (Said, 1978; Todorova, 1997). The study demonstrates that the discourse about the nation and national identity among Albanians is produced primarily through the internalisation of the external, orientalist approach in defining and understanding the social reality of the Balkan societies. Such internalisation is analysed through the prism of local adoption of the sociocultural and sociopolitical hegemonizing discourse that constituted the Western orientalist ‗knowledge‘ about the Balkans—and, specifically, Albanians. (The study notes that such discursive strategy of internalisation of orientalist traits within the ethnonationalist narrative is not limited to the Albanian societies (in both Albania and Kosovo) but appears as common feature in most of the societies/nations of the former Yugoslavia. In time, the study highlights, such process of ‗nesting orientalisms‘ (Bakic- 3 Hayden, 1996) was coupled with the phenomenon of the regional, exclusionist and competing ethnonationalist narratives which was aimed at constituing a nation‘s ‗westernness‘ and ‗Europeanness‘ through denying it to the other. 4 Table of contents Chapter 1 Introduction 8 Chapter 2 Literature Review: Nations and Nationalism 17 Introduction 17 What is a nation 18 Primordialism and the ethnic origins of nation 19 Modernism 26 The ‗good‘ and the ‗bad‘ nationalism 31 National identity, an imagined community 34 A state ideology? 39 Chapter 3 Literature review: nationalism, Albanian way 44 Chapter 4 Literature review: Orientalism, Balkanism 64 Introduction 64 Orientalism 66 Balkanism 72 Balkanism: a variation of Orientalism 78 Internalisation of orientalism: making others from brothers? 81 Nesting orientalisms: a means to western legitimacy 87 The Communist detour 92 Chapter 5 Methodology 104 A short history of a discourse? 106 Discourse and its analysis 110 Intertextuality, interdiscursivity 114 5 Ideology, power and hegemony of discourse 116 The ‗naturalising‘ power of the discourse 120 Sampling of text: sources 124 Chapter 6 Discourse analysis of the Albanian orientalist ethnonationalism: the National Rebirth (1880-1930) 135 Introduction 135 1870s: Sami Frasheri—Enlightenment, Albanian way 140 Albania – What It Was, What It Is, What It Will Be 145 Demonizing the ‗Turk‘ 151 Albanians in the foreign eyes: the noble savages 166 Europe loves us, Europe loves us not: the ressentiment 170 ‗Albanianess‘: nation as religion 179 Scanderbeg: the epitome of ancientness, national cohesion and Europeanness 187 Chapter 7 Albanian Orientalist ethnonationalism: Kosovo and the discourse of democracy (1980-2000) 198 Introduction 198 ‗Return‘ to Europe 202 Kosovo: From irredentism to independentism 207 National victimhood, the road to statehood 213 LDK, the philosophy of nonviolence 218 (‗Unrealistic‘) Irredentists Vs. (‗Realistic‘) Independentists 233 Abandonment of the ‗Motherland‘ 240 Construction of ‗the state Kosovo‘ 242 Ibrahim Rugova: the cult of the ‗westernised‘ leader 244 Catholicism, signifier of ancient Europeanness? 248 Academia and the ‗scientification‘ of Europeaness 260 Europe and Albanians: From Frasheri to Qosja 262 FISH: Intellectuals, the self-evident democrats 266 6 From Etruscans to Europeans 269 Conclusions 275 Bibliography 288 7 Orientalist Ethnonationalism: From Irredentism to Independentism Discourse analysis of the Albanian ethnonationalist narrative about the National Rebirth [1870-1930] and Kosovo Independence [1980-2000] Chapter 1. Introduction On February 17th 2008 Kosovo declared its independence. To many, myself included, it represented a miraculous conclusion of a century-old journey of its majority ethnic Albanian population through diverse state formations that were replacing one-another during the turmoiled history of the region—and each of them followed with atrocious experiences of war, ethnic conflict and mass killings. It was the closing chapter of the saga about a former Balkan vilayet (province) in the Ottoman Empire which was annexed to the Kingdom of Serbia through the Balkan Wars (1912-1913), made into an autonomous province during the Socialist Federation of Yugoslavia after the World War II, confronted with ethnic oppression by the end of the 20th century—only to become the arena of the last conflict in the long and gruesome period known as the decade of ‗Yugoslav wars‘ (1991-1999). A bitter-sweet decade to the Balkans, the 1990s coincided with both the demise of the communist regimes across the Eastern Europe and the revival of ethnic nationalist politics in all its destructive force. Simultaneously, both the ‗democratisation‘ and the practice of resorting to ethnonationalist vocabulary—assumed as pre-communist and anti-communist— swept like a storm across the Balkans, leaving its most devastating mark on the societies of the former Yugoslavia. Back then, the newly found freedoms of political organising across its major republics—Serbia, Croatia, Slovenia, Bosnia & Herzegovina, Macedonia and Montenegro—were aimed at bankrupting the ageing one-party rule through obsessive revival of the narratives from the age preceding the totalitarian period. At the heart of those narratives were the idealised notions about ethnic nation, national identity and the nationalism mythology (Gavrilovic et al, 2009; Meier, 1999). 8 Those were the narratives that—Kosovo Albanians firmly believed—were brutally suppressed throughout the 45 long years of life under the Socialist Federative Republic of Yugoslavia. They had the power to construct and reconstruct the idealised portrayal of nations before the coming of communists, when the independent nation-states were, ostensibly, ruling the region. They projected a vision of a golden age of independent, national democracies during the murky periods of intermission between the ever-changing rules of foreign empires; they represented the forgotten and ‗subjugated knowledges‘ about a nation‘s glorious past, when the imperatives of the present day, such as ‗democracy‘ and ‗pluralism‘ were—so we believed—alive and prosperous. Be that the case, those narratives continued, in order to establish a future, post-communist and democratic society one had to go back in the history and learn from its legacies. Namely, from the revival of a selfish vision of ethnic nation-state in all of its cultural uniqueness, historical ancientness and, specifically, its ideological imperviousness towards the nations of others. One had to go back, to the future. Albanians, whether in Kosovo, in the Republic of Albania or in other areas that they inhabit in the region (western Macedonia, southern Serbia and Montenegro) operated with similarly grand projections in those last days of the communist rule in the Balkans. They, too, dreamt about the glorious past that would pave their way into the future of equal nations encircled within the borders of independent nation-states. Unequivocally, similarly to their competing neighbors, they would agree that such nation-states ought to be (re)established and enshrined on the principles of liberal democracy, civic freedoms, free