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Association for Slavic, East European, and Eurasian Studies "25 Years After the Fall of the Berlin Wall: Historical Legacies and New Beginnings"

Activity: Participating in or organising an event typesParticipation in conference -Mixed Audience

22/11/2014

Neglected Themes in Transitional Justice: Musine Kokalari and the Albanian Experience This paper considers a neglected theme in transitional justice, namely, the role of the biography and its contribution to our understanding of historical, legal and political narratives that underpin contemporary efforts made by Albanian authorities to address the crimes of the Enver Hoxha dictatorship (1945-1991). The investigation considers how the aesthetic dimension of law is engaged by an image and shows how a trial can be viewed as a legacy in terms of temporality and space. The image of the Albanian dissident Musine Kokalari from her 1946 trial provides clues to the country’s transitional justice process: attesting to the meaning of political dissidence and the past(s) that do not feature in the dominant discourse. While it could be argued that the serious human rights transgressions of the former regime have been trivialised, and that the main discourse about the past is dictated by key political actors, the paper argues that the country’s transitional justice process remains unfinished. Referring to Walter Benjamin’s notion of ‘here-and-now in a flash’, we can identify what is remembered, forgiven, punished, or commemorated in the historical, legal and political narratives in an emerging story-, or truth-telling account, in the Albanian transitional justice discourse.

Event (Conference)

TitleAssociation for Slavic, East European, and Eurasian Studies "25 Years After the Fall of the Berlin Wall: Historical Legacies and New Beginnings"
Date20/11/1423/11/14
LocationSan Antonio Marriott Rivercenter
CitySan Antonio, TX
Country/TerritoryUnited States
Degree of recognitionInternational event