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  • Musine Kokalari and the Power of Images 30 July 2015

    Rights statement: The final publication is available at Springer via http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/s11196-015-9437-6 Copyright transferred on 29 July 2015 to Springer Science+Business Media Dordrecht.

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Musine Kokalari and the power of images: law, aesthetics and memory regimes in the Albanian experience

Research output: Contribution to Journal/MagazineJournal articlepeer-review

Published
<mark>Journal publication date</mark>1/09/2015
<mark>Journal</mark>International Journal for the Semiotics of Law
Issue number3
Volume28
Number of pages26
Pages (from-to)577-602
Publication StatusPublished
Early online date21/08/15
<mark>Original language</mark>English

Abstract

Tarot cards are one means to unlocking an image. In this article, the image is that of the Albanian writer and political dissident Musine Kokalari at her 1946 trial. Her photograph features in Albanian discourses about its communist past. I argue that the image provides clues as to the manner in which the country has faced up to its own history. For what is certain is that the Albanian account of the Enver Hoxha dictatorship (1944-1991) remains incomplete. Drawing on Walter Benjamin’s notion of ‘here-and-now in a flash’, and Roland Barthes’ and Italo Calvino’s reflections on photography and the power of the visual, we can identify at least two distinct memory regimes in the relevant historical, legal and political narratives.

Bibliographic note

The final publication is available at Springer via http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/s11196-015-9437-6