Difference is a defining term that guides this thesis and frames its radical departure point. It is a major point of reference in the works of many cultural theorists (Rutherford, 1990, 1990b; Bhabha, 1990; Mercer, 1994; Hall, [1987] 1996) and in the philosophical doctrine of poststructuralist philosophers (Derrida, 2000, 1981; Foucault, 1972-1977 [cited in Gordon, 1981]; [1977] 1991). Their work is valued through their studies of "systems of representation" "by which all sorts of objects, people and events are correlated with a set of concepts or mental representations which we carry around in our heads" (Hall, 1997b). These intellectuals have been present at some major junctures of modern and contemporary popular struggles and have examined them through a critical lens elaborating on the discursive value they offer. Hall in particular was on the editorial board of the "New Left Review" and participated in the riots of 1968, against the Vietnam war and the rise of the New Right. The other scholars come from a familiar as well as leftist background that has shaped a great deal of the scholarly discourses from that time onward. Their work is important for research into representation, difference, marginality and subaltern groups.
Jonathan Rutherford for example offers a discursive account of the miners' strike in Britain from 1984 to 1985 and how it revealed numerous divisions within the norm of class divisions, various identities and affiliations that emerge primarily as difference (1990b). For Rutherford, the process of combining elements and difference into a third term (beyond a binary) is akin to what Antonio Gramsci spoke of as "the starting point of critical elaboration" (1971, cited in Rutherford, 1990b).
The representational strategies of directors in the films discussed in this thesis are deeply affected by the essentialisms that have been governing western perceptions of difference. In other words, the films, despite their significant departure from a "fragmentary and image-based history" (Williams & Chrisman, 1993: 8) that has defined the colonised and the peripheries of the west, ultimately reinforce the peripheral perception of, in this case, Albania and Albanians. This highlights the mutual functioning of power and knowledge by which the latter endorses power and power "enables the production of a range of knowledges about other cultures" (Ibid.). Patrick Williams and Laura Chrisman highlight the links of Orientalism with modes of representation and the Enlightenment (reminding us of Anderson's linking of the latter to nationalism and the modern nation):
Such is the power of Orientalist or colonialist knowledge that even those discourses or modes of representation which are not formally or ideologically aligned with it
47
may be pulled in an Orientalist direction, or may simply be appropriated by Orientalism and utilised as if they were another facet of its world view. Orientalism's enormous appetite for forms of knowledge - scientific, historical, geographical, linguistic, literary, artistic, anthropological - derives in part from its location within the period of the Enlightenment. The Enlightenment's universalising will to knowledge (for better or worse) feeds Orientalism's will to power. The latter then stands as an example of the production of knowledge as [...] negative: Stereotyping, Othering, dominatory. Colonial discourse analysis and post- colonial theory are thus critiques of the process of production of knowledge about the Other (1993: 8).
To this, Bhabha adds that "the aim of cultural difference is to re-articulate the sum of knowledge from the perspective of the signifying position of the minority that resists totalization [...]" (1994: 162). Difference thus is understood as "political, positional and essentially fluid" (Eleftheriotis, 2001: 50).
48
2.3 Methodology
This thesis develops through an object based interrogation of the films. This means that the major methodological tools are textual and discourse analysis which require "reading" the films and interrogating their subtext. I therefore highlight the points which suggest an interruption within dominant discourses, the racist binary of the "good" and "bad" Albanian, but also where the films fall short in achieving this. in order to articulate difference and to capture it at the point where it is demarcated, where it unsettles or ultimately dissolves, a critical methodology is also required. A critical methodology is indeed required for artifacts that form a discourse of the margins. This means that we need to be alerted to the fact that nations, nationhood and national identity are imagined. This allows us to acknowledge the way nationalism becomes manifest in the films, as an inflamed manifestation of nationhood. Nationalism on the contrary is not imagined but tangible and following on Gellner and Anderson, it prefigures any claim to imagined ideas. Moreover, this allows us to acknowledge the function of power and knowledge which, relying on nationhood and nationalism, is the bedrock of the "good" and "bad" Albanian as much as the concept of the "bad" Greek. My short references to Eduart and to the figure of Panayotis in correction showcase Albanians without labels, borders and binaries. This reveals that the aforementioned binary does not account for any layered and elusive individual since it is restricting and loaded with essentialisms.
This thesis is divided according to two distinct approaches. I firstly address the cultural and creative context of Hostage, Eduart and correction. I address the various interruptions that figure on the levels of production, cast and crew and the background of the filmmakers. The films are interrogated in relation to a wider context that is implicitly linked to their reception and circulation and to European and national policy. Examining these issues in relation to the films allows us to assess their role and value as cultural vehicles, sites of debate on the nation and their discursive value in film studies. Stringent policy and the expectations of certain interest groups reflect immigration and citizenship policies that the Greek state and Europe have been promoting and a wider perception of difference as a popular disdain towards Albanian immigrants in Greece. In simple terms, the films mirror the greater struggles in society and political spheres implicit in the exclusion of Albanian immigrants and the growth of nationalism in Greece during the era of migration. By examining what happens behind the text we can see how films are mediums of the nation and how they question its legitimacy, inciting change and resistance.
49
The section on representation is divided into four distinct categories which allow us to follow the trajectory of immigration from flight to assimilation. The first category is entitled "the migrant imagination". Here, I analyse specific scenes in From the Snow, Hostage and Eduart that showcase the Eldorado model designated for the west overall. It is important that we maintain national specificity since the way this model refers to Greece, and how it fuels the imagination and hopes of Albanian migrants, differs from other cases of migration. I argue that at this stage of the journey, the filmmakers negate Albanian criminality since they reveal that migration is fuelled by superior powers that force the migrants to depart to Greece.
I proceed then to examine the actual journey of hope from the moment of flight to its sombre ending in From the Snow, Hostage and Eternity and a Day. this is where we can see good intentions falling short and that stereotypes are deeply ingrained so much as to suggest that the filmmakers cannot do more than showcase Albanians as merely "good" in order to negate criminality. In other words negating criminality by reinforcing victimhood. In this respect, Naficy provides the backdrop for an understanding of "border subjects" (2001: 201), of migrants who live literally between borders or in the margins of the host nation, deteritorialized and "othered". The transformation into border subject is a direct result of the migrants' interaction with a hostile host. In the words of Naficy, the border transforms them into border subjects (Naficy 2001, 220). Adding to this, Gazmend Kapllani argues that the border denotes the point between "eternal flight and eternal return" and "always going somewhere" (Kapllani 2010, 127). Kapllani is a former border subject whose journey and bordered life is eloquently retold in his Short Border Handbook where he coins from the offset the term "border syndrome" which highlights the same impression as Naficy's "border effect" (2001: 221). While Naficy offers a more appropriate term to theorise the implications of border crossing and a bordered life, Kapllani highlights the magnitude and permanence of the actual effect that border crossing may have on a migrant through an emotive evocation of his own journey.
Naficy relies heavily on embodied protest which figures in films where the migrant, according to Naficy, willingly becomes marginalised as a way of embodying protest towards the intolerant host nation. In these chapters I challenge this view point which is another essentialism that figures strongly in the films discussed. Accepting embodied protest as a form of interruption is arguably misguided since if prefigures the victimhood of migrants. At the same time, both Naficy and Kapllani rely on a medical index in order to describe the effect of border crossing. This leads to a strict classification either with the
50
term "syndrome" or "effect" which ultimately deteritorializes the migrants and cannot account for a varied spectrum of representation since it is loaded with essentialisms that are deteritorializing and restricting.
In order to understand how border syndrome/effect are "caught" one needs to assess what happens at the border and how the migrants are positioned. In this respect, claustrophobia and detainment in transitory and periphractic spaces are on display in many instants of the films. Mise en scène is decisive in affectively portraying border syndrome. The feeling of claustrophobia is a dominant theme that pervades narrative, mise en scène and camera movement and is conveyed in a manner that Naficy exemplifies:
Claustrophobia and violent environments presented through labyrinthine deployments of shadowy spaces, usually in places where people lack freedom such as jails, mental institutions and army barracks; abrupt camera movements and editing patterns; temporal circularity; tragically bounded narrative structures (2001: 190) [...] Paranoid structures take the form of closed mise-en-scène and filming style and a receding structure of feelings. Small, dingy, and overcrowded immigrant apartments, prison cells, hotel rooms, buses, tunnels, and confining symbolic spaces such as the suitcase are favored. The claustrophobia of these settings is intensified by a dark lighting scheme that limits sight, by barriers in the shot that impede vision, and by tight shot composition, immobile framing, and a stationary camera. The characters' physical disability or immobility deepens recessive feeling structures (ibid.:191).
In order to understand how (cinematic) migrants adopt a submissive embodied protest, Naficy addresses psychological interpretations of the behavior of women suffering from hysteria and eating disorders: "Women […] may willingly whittle down the space that they occupy in order to fit the normalizing gaze of society […] - a way of "behaving themselves" (ibid.: 189) through overcompensation. In the same way, exilic subjects seek to occupy less space and not stir tension amongst indigenous populations. This may develop into a pathological condition, a disorder, as the subject becomes obsessed with this practically for the sake of it believing that hence he/she will be accepted. This phenomenon, according to Naficy, is displayed in the films of exilic filmmakers who utilise this notion as a form of protest against the repressive ideology that binds the subject. This is something however that I challenge and question in the given chapters as biased and androcentric, even though embodied protest is a significant theme in the films, particularly in Hostage.
51
In this case, I rely more on Loshitzky's analysis of ideology and the logic of Fortress Europe in her Screening Strangers where she claims that "through practices of assimilation, absorption, and integration, which are in accordance with the models of citizenship adopted by each European nation state [...] it is hoped that the good migrants will be digested by the national and European body" (2010, 2). This highlights the deeper implications of embodied protest and that it is the result of a deeply rooted approach to migrants as "good" or "bad".
Interestingly, Naficy and Loshitzky diverge from any reference to transnational or national cinema as well as from minority discourse. Naficy's Accented Cinema however serves as a blanket term that cannot account for numerous transnational but also national dimensions. Loshitzky moreover is not preoccupied with form or with proposing a category, but with "reading" films which deal with "journeys of hope", "cities of hope" and the assimilation of migrants in Fortress Europe in terms of theme and representation. Like Loshitzky, I follow the trajectory of migration to Fortress Europe and attempt to highlight the ideological implications of representation, regardless of any proposed category that relies on specific features. In this respect, methodologically, although I do examine the films through categories that highlight the trajectory of migration, I ultimately rely on representation per se.
Dealing with journeys means necessarily that one deals with mobility, movement and stasis, the first referring to the ability to move. Migration is mobility and therefore plays a significant role in assessing representations of Albanian migrants as border subjects, governed by mobility or stasis, departing, on the move or caught in the interstices of nations and in essence at borders that assert stasis as a way of life and living. Mobility is an inherent feature of cinema and the medium and is thus an ideal point from where we can begin to theorise representations of mobility as self reflexive. In this respect, Eleftheriotis' Cinematic Journeys (2010) is a valuable tool since it offers a broad theoretical and historical account of movement, from the figure of the flâneur to representations of migration and border crossing, to "cross-border films", a term that Naficy and Eleftheriotis use to refer to films that travel and are exhibited across national borders.
My last chapter deals with the topic of hospitality where I address See You and Plato's Academy in detail. These, alongside From the Snow and correction include diverse and challenging representations of hospitality. The chapter is entitled "the Albanian in the room" highlighting the existence of Albanians in the host nation, living besides indigenous populations and asserting an uncomfortable reality that, as the "elephant in the room",
52
often goes unnoticed. In this section I rely heavily on Jacques Derrida's seminal speech On Hospitality (2000). the author here stays true to his teachings which are famous for the philosopher's radical approach to Marxism and to any inclusive ideology, as he debunked class relations and revealed inherent antagonisms in most accepted works of critical thought. This was achieved, according to Rutherford, "by recognising their [cultural identities] nature [which] opens up the space for individual historical agency" (1990b: 21).
53
Chapter 3