Vetja si tjetri/ Tjetri si vetja - Semio-etika e letërsisë shqipe
The self as the other/ The other as the self - Semio-ethics of Albanian literature

Summary/Abstract: The category of the Other is fundamental and it is a necessary condition for any communicative and semiotic process/system. The other/Otherness is inevitable, it is even a structural category for life itself due to the fact that signs, bodies, and voices are equipped with the potential to respond to each-other dialogically (Petrilli, 2014). Thus, the logic of otherness is closely related to human semiosis, to polylogysm and polyphonism, which are typical for literature and its infinite semiosis. In this context, literature itself can be considered as The Other/Otherness. The Other is not only part of the inner spaces of the self as an alter ego i.e. as all that which I am not (Levinas, 1979), but the relationship between the reader and the author in the process of literary communication is also a relation between the self and the other, where each is both the self and the other (Hart, 2015). The Other/Otherness are obligatory conditions of the modelling of the meaning/significance in literary texts; in fact, literature with its modelling of possible fictive worlds is a priviledged 'space'. The poetics of Otherness in Albanian literature is present in various forms and dimensions. The study focuses on some of those which are most meaningful: 1. The transcendental/metaphysical/religious Other (Bogdani), 2. The political/cultural Other (Romanticism), 3. The ideological/stratous Other (Xoxa), 4. The Other as The Self/The Self as The Other (Petro Marko) and The Self as a Radical Otherness (Trebeshina), 5. The Other as marking of gender/sex: the female body as The Other (Dones) and the male body as The Other and as the object of desire (Myftiu). The category of the other and otherness will be dealt with within the frames of a luminal/ethical reading which will aim at the delineation of a semio-ethics of Albanian literature.

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