Évènements

Even the gods die… Regional crying and national mourning for the Albanian communist dictator Enver Hoxha, Bledar Kondi (Martin Luther Universität, Halle-Wittenberg)

Séminaire du CREM

Monday 14 January 2019 14:00 - 16:00

Lesc – salle 308F (3e étage)

21, allée de l’Université, Nanterre

Présentation

This presentation focuses on the death, state funeral and national mourning for the Albanian communist dictator Enver Hoxha (1908-1985). Hoxha’s first (natural) death in 1985 and second (political) death in 1991, generate a full circle of events from the immortalisation to the damnation of an absolute monarch, from anti-communist iconoclasm to bittersweet nostalgia for the dictatorship. The one-week long mortuary ceremony, the public work of mourning, commemorative rites and national folk festivals, the Pharaonic immortalisation in a pyramidal museum were all structured so as to articulate the reality of death according to the specific grammar of a totalitarian world view. The female vocalisation of painful shock and grief crisis through public ritual “crying with howls” (e qarë me ulërimë) and “crying with words” (e qarë me ligje) aimed to tell of the unspeakable, to discharge the insufferable, to deny the unimaginable: death of the deathless leader.

How can one “measure” the loss of a deified dictator? Do the limits of crying imply the limits of loss? The affective-political drama upon the dictator’s death will be interpreted to the measure it was experienced and enacted by three groups of the socio-political hierarchy: political bureau, common people and class enemy. Dictatorial regimes have the most self-evident manifestations of music as an attribute of power, social control and cultural repression. Hence the musical drama within the political drama help us to understand how death of a leader breaks the ideologically frozen forms of consciousness and the synchronised rhythm of socialist life, how it sheds light on the “unpredictable past” of the regime and contributes to an essential understanding of dictatorship as experience.

LESC CREM Picto C web The CREM (Centre for Research in Ethnomusicology) seminar takes place on two Mondays per month, from 10:00 to 12:00. Members of the CREM (doctoral students included) and invited researchers present their ongoing work. The presentations last 50 minutes, and are followed by a coffee break and discussion hour.

Occasionally, the seminar takes the form of a workshop which brings together several researchers around a common theme. In these cases, the seminar takes place over an afternoon, or sometimes an entire day.

Participation in the seminar is open to everyone. It is also integrated into the Master’s degree in ethnomusicology at the Universities of Paris Nanterre and Paris Saint-Denis.

Connexion

Évènements

Even the gods die… Regional crying and national mourning for the Albanian communist dictator Enver Hoxha, Bledar Kondi (Martin Luther Universität, Halle-Wittenberg)

Séminaire du CREM

Présentation