The Demolition of the National Theater: Place, Transition, and Reform
Sashenka Lleshaj, independent scholar
Overview
Abstract
In this paper, I tell the story of the demolition of the National Theater of Albania (17th May 2020) as a story of the disavowal of the central art institution as it was inherited from the state socialist system and partially “shielded” during the early transition (1992–1997/8). I use the concept of place (Mitchell 2003; Rose-Redwood et al. 2022) to capture demolition as an action directed towards both a building and the central art institution. Demolition confronted the communist dictatorship, the early transition, and the late transition in different ways, periods I further conceptualize and operationalize in my paper. Through a “genealogy of place” tracing space, building, restructuring, cultural sector reforms, laws, Council of Europe inputs, regulations, and discursive traces that accompanied soft and tectonic changes, I discover that demolition and the “reforming of the arts and culture” go hand in hand, with disavowal of the centrality of art production through the central art institution, as well as of the institution-artist link that the communist regime had engendered, a connection that had initially been shielded during the early transition, especially within the national theater(s).
Instead, Edi Rama embraced a more independent art scene along with redeploying the logic of restructuring from the early transition which had not been taken to its logical conclusion in the central art institutions, in the national theater(s) in particular. In addition, Rama embraced and re-deployed his own turn towards neoliberal cultural sector reforms as Minister of Culture and then Mayor in the late 1990s and early 2000, coupled with an intent to demolish the building ever since. I also bring to scrutiny the involvement of the Council of Europe and their prescriptive “suggestions” about the relationship of the post-communist state to the cultural sector, inquiring further on the “arms length” principle and its intended consequences and bringing a critique of this principle in the Eastern European arts and culture space. Finally, I return to the demolition of the National Theater and its layers through a lens of displacement, replacement and culmination.
Introduction to the speaker
Sashenka Lleshaj completed her PhD in Political Science at McGill University (Montreal, QC), where she received the Vanier Canada Graduate Scholarship (2019-22) from the Federal Government of Canada (SSHRC). Her dissertation, titled The Politics of Contested Heritage: Memory, Place, and Power in Post-Communist Albania, was shortlisted by the Canadian Political Science Association for the Vincent Lemieux Prize for the best dissertation in political science submitted at a Canadian institution. Sasha’s research traces heritage politics as memory politics, post-communist elite competition and authoritative heritage, and memory discourses, while exploring and advancing principles of plurality and agonistic memory contestation. Her article, coming out of her dissertation, “Torture to Their Ears, Music to Ours: Memory Regimes and the Ordering of Political Space,” was published by Perspectives on Politics. Prior to McGill, Sasha completed a Master of Science in Russian & East European Studies (REES) at the University of Oxford. She is currently working on Climate Diplomacy as the International Just Transition Coordinator at Climate Action Network Canada. Email: sashenka.lleshaj@mail.mcgill.ca.