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

area are located in the region of Northern Epirus; on the other hand, however, from the
perspective of the legal policies and the public opinion in Albania they are located in Southern
Albania. These ambiguous locations lead further to the ambiguities in peoples’ identification,
where the Northern Epirot can mean both the Albanian and/or the Greek; and where the Greek
speaking Christian Orthodox can be identified as the Albanian citizen of Greek nationality
and/or the Albanian citizen and/or the member of the Greek national minority.
According to Sarah Green (2005: 12) the ambiguity “can be as hegemonic and subject to
disciplinary regimes as clarity; confusion, lack of means to pin things down”. She maintains
that amongst the people of Pogoni these ambiguities are generated “as positive assertions and
constructions of truth: ‘This is the Balkans Sarah; what did you expect’” (ibid.). Contrary to
the people of Pogoni the people of Dhërmi/Drimades do not explain the ambiguities, lack of
clarity and confusions with a common place such as the Balkans, but ascribe them to Albania.
Fluidity and indeterminacy of Albanian places are often described with the following words:
“Edo einai Alvania. Monoha pseumata. Simera lene etsi kai avrio anapoda” (“This is
Albania. Only lies. Today they say this and tomorrow the contrary”).
In everyday conversations of local people Albania is defined in opposition to European
Union. The latter is thought of as a cluster of countries of the Western Europe, where people
of Dhërmi/Drimades locate Greece, Italy, Germany and Austria. In contrast to European
Union, which is seen as ordered, fixed and stable, Albania is defined as disordered, mixed and
unstable. The term “Balkans” 10 is used more in a political and media discourse than in the
everyday talk in the village. Compared to the “ordered” Western Europe it carries rather a
pejorative meaning (e.g. “turbulent Balkans” - cf. Todorova 1997: 45)
Today, following their emigration to Greece and regular returns to their natal village during
the summer, the people of Dhërmi/Drimades redefine their place and map it onto a
geopolitical map as the predominant way of organizing the space. They see the village side by
side with Greece and European Union. For them the Albanian border is situated north of
Himarë/Himara area. This kind of mapping continually produces a hierarchy of places, where
power and place dynamically constitute each other, depending on historically contingent and
politically shaped social context. I will question this kind of hierarchy throughout my thesis.
10 More on the notion of the Balkans and its discursive meanings see Norris (1999), Bjelić and Savić (2002),
Todorova (1997, 2004); and for thr Balkans as hegemonic concept see Green (2005).
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