university of nova gorica graduate school contested spaces and ...

Himarë/Himara in particular (such as the period of Illyrians and Epirote tribes; the period of
the Byzantine Empire; Skenderbeg’s revolts; Ottoman conquests, etc.) are on the one hand
diametrically opposed while on the other hand paradoxically quite alike in several important
ways. Namely, both local and national scholars portray respectively either the local
community or the nation as natural, homogeneous and bounded entity that possesses unique
and mutually exclusive identity, culture, history and territory. Generally, each group of
scholars, local and national, grounds its arguments on different positions, where the former
defends the local perspective and the latter the national one, which is either pro-Albanian or
pro-Greek. The two positions are not fixed, but shift according to the context, often being
based on economical and political interests of individuals and groups.
My aim is not to challenge the factual basis of various local and national scholars or to judge
the accuracy of their accounts. My intention is more oriented towards illustrating the nature of
their discourse and facing their various, but nevertheless similar positions through which they
reconstruct and represent the past of Himarë/Himara area.
2.2. Mythohistories
2.2.1. Oral Accounts
On a hot July noon Spiros and I sat in an open cafeteria owned by Spiros’ cousin. As it goes
for the majority of the facilities situated on the coast, the cafeteria is open only during the
summer season (from the mid of May till the mid of September). I worked in it as a waitress
for some weeks in July. As it was before the peak tourist season there were not so many
guests present and I had plenty of time to chat with Spiros, who was a regular guest of his
cousin’s cafeteria. Spiros, born in 1939 in Dhërmi/Drimades, is a widower and nowadays
lives in Tirana. In 1957 he moved to the capital to study agranomy. After completion of his
studies he married within the village and later on returned to Tirana together with his wife. In
1990 they migrated to Greece together with two sons and a daughter. In 2001 they returned to
Tirana where they bought a house and Spiros started with business. Two years later Spiro’s
wife died. Every summer – in July and August – Spiros comes to Dhërmi/Drimades where he
owns a house that he inherited from his father. Occasionally he goes to Greece in order to
visit his children. They were all married within the village of Dhërmi/Drimades. When talking
about the first settlement he said:
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