The Alphabet of Transition

Beschreibung

This book is a selection of considerations about topics and phenomena tormenting a society undergoing radical changes in economy and political and ideological structures, with which come shifting perspectives in cultural narratives and cultural tropes. Without presupposing to give any kind of encompassing historical analysis, the author chooses concepts that, for him, lay bare the crucial problems of a society that is not certain of its directions, still conflicted about its roots, and lost in the contradictory and often merciless present. In this provocative, playful, and challenging series of essays arranged in alphabetical order and choosing for each letter a word that serves as prompt (A for Accusation; B for Botox, etc.), the author considers the relationship between Albania and Europe, the imagined East-West dichotomies, the syntagmatic and paradigmatic transformations at the turn of the 21st century, the discrepancies between the ideas of continuity and change, all seen through a web of references from science, culture, and art.