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

Figure 11: Paths and places from the story of Aghatula, born in 1944.
Stories about the sea primarily locate Dhërmi/Drimades according to relations of village men
with people and places in Italy, Greece or United States, while stories about the mountains
rely on connections of village women with places “behind” the mountains.
Aspasia has lived in Dhërmi/Drimades for all of her life. She maps the village according to
her mother’s travels in “those times” (tote), when poverty prevailed in the village. Aspasia
especially differentiates the village from the places behind the mountains where she locates
the “bad” people. Her story again constructs the village’s “whereness” according to spatial
hierarchy, which is this time conceptualised more in social than economical terms. People
behind the mountains are, despite wheat and other food, considered in a negative light
because the village women had often been robbed of their produce.
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