Translational Justice: Facing the Past to Take on the Present in Albania.

다국어 초록 (Multilingual Abstract)

The 1990s was a time of significant change for post-socialist nation-states in the former Eastern Bloc. Aspiring towards Western-style democracy, young republics like Albania focused on political, social, and economic reform. Transitional justice mechanisms, such as providing reparations to former state prisoners, became an important means of signaling change, both internally and externally. While Albania began enacting justice reforms in the early 1990s, such initiatives remain a concern three decades later. My research focuses on this issue, namely how international, state, and local actors in Albania imagine and enact transitional justice through projects that “deal with” the socialist past. Drawing on ethnographic fieldwork in 2017-2018 and an analysis of public media, I document and analyze the projects of two local nongovernmental organizations who focus on youth, democracy, and the past: Cultural Heritage without Borders (CHwB) Albania and the Institute for Democracy, Media, and Culture (IDMC). Further I track the livelihoods of Albanians born in the 1990s, who are often the targets of such past-facing initiatives given their lack of experience with the communist period and their perceived role in shaping Albania’s future. While ongoing calls to confront the past would suggest that Albania is stuck in what Mariella Pandolfi (2010) calls a “permanent transition,” the efforts of my interlocutors suggest otherwise. Drawing on their experiences, worldviews, and desires, staff at IDMC and CHwB Albania transformed international transitional justice mechanisms into interactive workshops where youth could consider democracy as not just one of Albania’s futures but its present. As part of this process, sites like Spac Prison became infused with simultaneous potentials: a link to the past, a reflection on human rights in Europe, and/or an economic resource. Young adults further transformed such initiatives in light of their own needs to “go with the flow” or live in the present. Drawing on the work of anthropologists such as Marisol de la Cadena (2015), I argue that an anthropological approach to cultural translation is imperative for understanding how transitional justice works on the ground, what I call translational justice. Such a reframing can help us move past the notion of permanent transition.