Slow memory of deindustrialization in post-communist Albanian literature

Abstract

This article discusses various ways in which post-communist Albanian literature has addressed individual and social consequences of the violent deindustrialization of Albania that started immediately after the fall of communism. Deindustrialization quickly brought an already economically inefficient Albania to the edge of devastation as many factories suddenly went bankrupt, social and political institutions collapsed, unemployment skyrocketed, and many Albanians fell deep into poverty. Despite all this, deindustrialization did not become a dominant, or even major, topic in Albanian literature, having been overshadowed by the proliferation of literary works documenting the terror of Enver Hoxha’s Stalinist-type communism and expressing the traumas of that past. Thus, this article unveils this hitherto underrepresented and under-researched topic by analyzing selected Albanian poetry and prose from 2004 to 2021, highlighting two essential and recurring literary themes: shattered identity, and displacement and emigration. By discussing them we show how the slow memory of deindustrialization, a process important to almost all former communist countries in Central-Eastern and South-Eastern Europe, works in Albania.