A thesis on the emancipation of Albanian women

Recently, a doctoral thesis was defended in Paris on the emancipation of Albanian women in Kosovo through a so-called burrnesh (woman-man) status. Personally, I have not worked specifically on "sworn virgins" or "customary law" (known as kanun ), but on other topics in the social morphology and anthropology of Albanians, in particular on critical approaches to the production of anthropological knowledge about Albanians by themselves and by others, as well as more recently on critical approaches to the production of feminist knowledge about gender relations.

The merits of this thesis must be acknowledged for its broad vision of the subject, far from obsessions with sexuality and gender fantasies, centered on the emancipatory side or a gender (in the sense of "type") of emancipation. This is an invitation to a double reading: on the one hand the ethnographic description, on the other hand the desire to express an anthropological approach to the phenomenon known as the "sworn virgin" (burrnesh) and to contribute to the analysis of the feminist movement for the emancipation of women in Kosovo. The term " burrnesh » is central to this reading, since it allows us to comparatively consider a wide range of social categories (sworn virgins, widowed women, women artists, women activists, emancipated women).

The term burrnesh : meaning, translations and controversies

However, aside from a brief mention that it is derived from the masculine word burrë "man," it is surprising that a thesis defended within a Doctoral School of Languages ​​did not sufficiently delve into a linguistic, lexical, and semantic analysis of this term and its implications for social institutions. Indeed, it is a polysemous term in Albanian, designating both a "man" and a "husband," but also a strong, courageous person, comparable to a "hero" (as in the national anthem), whose lexical field includes not only the feminine form burrnesh but also the verb burrno and the adjective burrnuem.

The French translation of the term as "femme-homme" (woman-man) is not very felicitous, not to say downright unfortunate, and this point was raised in one of the reports. It can be translated into German ( Mannfrau ) and English (manly woman, better than the spelling wo/man proposed by traveler Antonia Young). In French, one could use "femme virile" (virile woman), which would be the exact translation (from the Latin virilis , from vir "man"), to describe a strong and courageous woman; otherwise, it would be better to use a circumlocution, such as "women who become socially like men," or even "women who claim the cultural and symbolic resources normally attributed or claimed by men."

In any case, this is an ambiguous stance regarding the term, simultaneously emancipatory and conservative, since some feminist activists fighting for women's rights reject the term " burrnesh ." They argue that it is a compliment derived from a social status accepted and recognized by patriarchal society, and therefore carries a negative, sexist connotation. It is not exactly an insult, but as feminist activists, they oppose it because the term demonstrates that society values ​​masculine attributes. "We often hear that the word 'burrnesh' is used to describe a strong woman , a word that should not necessarily be taken as a compliment and that dates back to the time of the Kanun of Lekë Dukagjin" (p. 329).

Some then propose the term grueresh, derived from the generic term for "woman" in Albanian. This term would designate "a woman more than a woman, a 'super-woman,' because she demands to be equal to men without having to change her gender socially" (p. 299). This sounds good, but at least from the perspective of linguistic awareness in Albanian, it doesn't exist and makes no sense; it must be taken in the context of the interview from which the term is taken as a simple, straightforward play on words.

In contrast, in another feminist text, entitled *The Burrnesh of Modern Times *, the term was reused to denounce violence against women. The idea is that the time has come for Albanian women to be fighters, more precisely, "today we will become the burrnesh who will bring down the patriarchal system that is suffocating us" (pp. 329-330). In this context, the term burrnesh becomes synonymous with "strong woman," "courageous woman," to designate women who have the courage to denounce and fight for their rights and against the inequalities they encounter. Sometimes, if not often, calling oneself a burrnesh ( or trimnesh ) does indeed express a form of silent and creative resistance to the social and cultural pressures that weigh on women (p. 443).

Personally, I believe that this term burrnesh should be part of the global heritage of feminism, as an inheritance of the Albanian cultural tradition of women's emancipation, in the same way as the English term empowerment and like another Albanian term (zotero) which is used in the same sense in the terminology of information science.

Each of these terms comes from an obvious conservative root and may seem ambiguous, but in both cases the conservative side of the power of domination (Ang. women empowerment, as well as Alb. zotero) or claiming masculine attributes (burrnesh) is totally sublimated by the emancipatory side. Despite its origin and even if some feminists oppose both terms, the available data show that the term burrnesh is used in all cases in an emancipatory sense, never conservative. So why this feminist state of mind regarding the term burrnesh Is this simply a confusion between the use of the term and the supposed reality of a status? a reification and essentialization of folk traditions or a feminist ideological bias, or all of these at once?

Social strategies and female figures

Let us start at the beginning, namely the so-called "customary law" and the so-called "sworn virgins", in order to better understand the role of the categories of widowed women, women artists, women activists and finally the feminist movement.

One can first observe an excessive reliance on "customary law" ( Kanun ), which is considered the original source from which things are supposed to unfold in reality. However, this is primarily a collection of uncodified, conventional practices governed by oral tradition. It is surprising to note that a thesis prepared at a research center specializing in orality does not analyze, or at least discuss, "customary law" in terms of oral tradition and the social implications of its conversion to written form.

Conventional practices are recorded in writing in the accounts of travelers, missionaries, and ethnographers. They were codified relatively late to serve as a basis for establishing rules stipulating how things should be, not how they actually are. This does not mean that ordinary people are trapped within this customary framework and that they necessarily act as prescribed by the Kanun . On the contrary, depending on the social situation, any available cultural and symbolic resources are used in social behavior to implement strategies for circumventing customary prescriptions.

Indeed, after the codification of customary practices with the publication of the Kanun by the Franciscans in 1933 and again by the communists in 1989, both serving their respective ideologies, the Kanun became a bedside book for most families, and specific precepts were subsequently used to justify certain social behaviors. In this regard, the communist recodification did not last long after the fall of communism, which gave greater normative force to the old codification. Meanwhile, the proliferation of new codifications of the same precepts in even more elaborate, fixed expressions testifies once again to the instrumental nature of "customary law." In other words, customary law, like any normative system, does not reflect reality but serves as an ideological framework for controlling social behavior and justifying or circumventing social reality.

In this sense, any description of the situation of women in society or in the family according to customary law would lead to an exoticization of the Kanun and the patriarchal subjugation of women, which is not only erroneous but also dishonest, not only on the part of a researcher, traveler, or missionary, but also on the part of a local researcher and even more so on the part of a feminist activist who internalizes this type of exoticism or subjugation. There is already a great deal of work on this subject that was not consulted in the preparation of this thesis, and whose exoticism or shortcomings have also been identified and mentioned in the thesis reports.

As for "sworn virgins," refusals of arranged marriages and premarital or extramarital sexual relations are commonplace at all times and in all places and have always and everywhere posed problems for the family and for society. To overcome these problems, societies have devised original solutions that are often justified by normative devices, and mystified by religious ideologies, Christian or Islamic, to justify and encourage chastity. In France, convents were invented to lock up sinful women, just as in Poland or Ireland, real prisons were established to imprison young unmarried pregnant women.

The difference is that nowhere is there any mention of "sworn virginity." In a patrilineal society, sworn virgins are simply another cultural solution, nothing more and nothing less. While extramarital sexual relations have always been problematic for the Church and society, the concept of virginity is recent, and we know that it was the Church that sponsored and sanctioned this solution, introduced by the Franciscans who, in 1933, drafted and published the code ( kanun ) of customary law based on the ethnographic notes of one of their members. The fact that the phenomenon is found among both Christians and Muslims actually proves that it does not contradict its religious character, since these are religious and ethnic communities that share the same patrilineal structures of their social makeup.

In this sense, resorting to sworn virginity would not necessarily mean that it is a particular masculinity, that a woman changes gender to become a man socially, or that she maintains her chastity, despite isolated cases that travelers and ethnographers have raved about, but which have never been anything more than folkloric and exotic curiosities. In all cases, it has been a circumvention strategy dictated by the circumstances of the social situation, justified by religious ideology and normalized by the codification of "customary law." It is surprising to note that in a thesis that would claim to be anthropological, this phenomenon is not analyzed, or at least not discussed, in these terms.

Still on the subject of "sworn virgins," at any time and in any place where social morphology is characterized by a patrilineal structure, the absence of a male heir poses a problem for the family and for society. However, despite the rather folkloric and exotic appearances, it is in no way a question of the disguise of a particular virginity into a particular masculinity. It is unfortunately quite serious to note that the objective facts are sometimes twisted to correspond to the status of "sworn virgin." In one case reported on p. 308, for example, a woman postponed her marriage to exercise the role of "social man" while her family was in a vendetta, but once the vendetta was over, she married and had children. This would thus be a case of "temporary" sworn virginity.

In an excellent article, which is mentioned in the bibliography but is rather misunderstood (p. 91), it is shown that in Albanian patrilineal society there are two different solutions to this problem: in the North the "sworn virgin" and in the South the "son-in-law at home". To these two cultural solutions, I could also add an extreme case of recourse to a kind of polygamy which is, however, completely foreign to Albanian tradition.

As Edmund Leach would say, cultural solutions and symbolic resources to achieve this (in this case the "sworn virgin"), "culture is only the clothing of the social situation." This proves that in all cases these are not transhistorical phenomena or essential to Albanian culture but rather specific strategies to circumvent the ideological prescriptions dictated by particular situations in a context of patrilineal social morphology.

Once it is accepted that in all cases the notion of the sworn virgin is only a symbolic cultural resource used wisely in social circumvention strategies, it would become possible to approach the rest of the thesis differently and to examine similarly widowed women, women artists, women activists, or even the feminist movement in Kosovo, as using the cultural and symbolic resources available in specific strategies according to social situations.

It is worth remembering that, at all times and in all places, widowed women or single mothers are courageous women who face life's challenges alone, unable to share the burden with a partner. Widowed women do not necessarily assume the role of a man or a father, nor do they transgress gender boundaries or hierarchies. They are even less akin to a supposed status of "sworn virgin." They simply assume a role that is normally shared by two people, and it is precisely in this sense that they are also considered more emancipated women than others, even if they are not called burrnesh anywhere else. If they are called by this term in Albanian tradition, it does not mean that they become men in a social sense.

To survive in a society that, after the war, was supposed to be "re-traditionalizing" and "re-patriarchalizing," it is wrong to assume that these women had no other choice but to call themselves burrnesh, which would be the only way to define themselves as female heads of households providing for their children (p. 399). It would indeed be a serious mistake to distort the facts, as in the case reported in this thesis of a woman who supposedly "experienced the status of a widow, akin to that of a sworn virgin," because she became a widow with four children (p. 308). Quite the opposite, in fact! By assuming the role of head of household who provides for their children, these women resort to a strategy of circumventing their situation which allows them to carry out a strategic emancipation which could not be better expressed symbolically than by the term burrnesh , which in Albanian is a term derived from a polysemous word which means both "man" and "strong and courageous person".

In this sense, it would be wrong to resort to folkloric and exotic notions to link widowed women, burrnesh , in the sense of "emancipated," to a status of "sworn virgins" prescribed by "customary law." These women renegotiate their place in society in order to reinterpret their status as widows. They do not appropriate a status but rather a quality of burrnesh . This does not mean that they turn to customary law or a legal status that actually exists (p. 398). Quite the opposite! It is because they have negotiated their place in society that they can use a symbolic resource that could not be better expressed than by a term that refers to an emancipatory role or genre (in the sense of "type") expressed by the term burrnesh , which has nothing to do with gender.

This invites us to consider the notions of masculine and feminine differently. These are not "objective" facts or characteristics of men and women. They are symbolic operators, which show that there is no rigid division, nor Manichean hierarchy. Every social behavior is simultaneously masculine and feminine, or rather every social strategy could be explored in its masculine and feminine aspects. This is what Françoise Héritier established as the "differential valence of gender" and this is what could allow us to analyze more fruitfully the situation of women artists and activists, as well as the feminist movement in Kosovo, by means of the notions of masculine and feminine as symbolic operators and not as objective characteristics of men and women.

Without delving into an examination of the artworks presented, their subversive and emancipatory nature, as described in the thesis, can be considered valid. In the context of women artists, the term "burrnesh" designates a pioneer in a man's world, but also a woman who fought to gain a place in the field of artistic creation and to be recognized for her true worth as a woman artist. We find here the notion of a strong and courageous woman, a woman who must fight harder to achieve her goals because she is constantly limited, since women's art still seems to be considered different from, and in any case inferior to, men's art.

Again, despite appearances, the recognition of women artists in the artistic sphere does not erase differences in sexual identity, much less equate them with the sexuality or other folkloric and exotic characteristics of "sworn virgins." If some women artists are referred to as burrnesh in Kosovo, this does not mean that they have acquired or claim a particular, masculinized status that grants them legitimacy without challenging tradition. Nor does it signify a re-traditionalization of Kosovo's ancient customs. It would be erroneous and clumsy to assume that women artists and musicians in Kosovo reinforce any kind of patriarchal mentality, even one preserved by their emancipatory artifice, simply because they have internalized masculine norms or because they identify with and are identified as masculine through a supposed burrnesh status.

Unfortunately, this thesis offers numerous observations suggesting that their emancipation is thus hindered and should perpetuate the custom, without questioning tradition and reproducing patriarchal patterns (p. 441). Their status as burrnesh is constantly linked to the folkloric and exotic characteristics of "sworn virgins" and is consistently presented as modified and reinterpreted to allow certain women to integrate into traditionally very masculine domains without challenging any custom of the tradition, such as negotiating their place among traditional music instrumentalists by adopting masculine behavior without questioning the gender hierarchy (p. 397).

On the other hand, these women do not act as "sworn virgins" and do not necessarily use customary law to legitimize their place in the traditional musical or artistic sphere. In all cases, it is, on the contrary, a matter of will, a quality, or an additional value of emancipation, and these women artists do indeed consider themselves free and emancipated. For women artists, the term "burrnesh" does not mean that they do not conform to the dominant model of femininity. Their commitment constitutes a founding act of women's artistic work, whose very presence is simultaneously subversive and emancipatory, even carrying within it an existential struggle. The representation of women's bodies thus becomes a political issue, often linked to a degree of violence expressed in its symbolic sense, whereby the term "burrnesh" becomes subversive as a weapon of feminist struggle, to denounce a reality or express a difference, undeniably emancipatory (p. 400).

Through their actions, these women artists contribute to an active citizenship that challenges the status quo of institutions and male-dominated power structures. However, it would be wrong to assume that they are the only ones capable of doing so, against men and at the expense of men who have no interest in questioning tradition and entrenched patriarchal ideology. The logical conclusion, both expressed and obscured in this thesis, would be that it is by creating their own empowerment, symbolically expressed by the term " burrnesh ," that these women emancipate themselves individually and collectively. Thus, women become key players in their own emancipation; using their creativity, resilience, and agency, they assert themselves and contribute to overturning established patriarchal norms (p. 442).

Just because women artists and musicians are no longer considered entirely women doesn't mean they can travel freely, stay with men, and adopt an ambivalent appearance similar to the folkloric and exotic characteristics of "sworn virgins." Quite the opposite! It's because they allow themselves to freely choose their figurative representations, their musical repertoire, or even the ambivalence of their own appearance, that they are no longer considered entirely traditional women but emancipated women, which could not be better expressed than by their designation as burrnesh.

Artistic creative and interpretive choices are always strategic choices that are often expressed by going beyond the boundaries and symbolic operators of masculine and feminine. It is in this sense that some women artists and musicians in Kosovo choose their performances, their repertoires and even their own image by operating a symbolic strategy of masculinization. Similarly, in an excellent work mentioned in the bibliography (p. 273), the American ethnomusicologist Jane Sugarman, brilliantly shows how, among the Albanians of Macedonia, men choose their song repertoire in order to perform in the most feminized way possible. It is obviously not a question for these men of "becoming artistically women" but of showing appropriate artistic mastery and thus demonstrating, neither more nor less than, their virility. This proves once again that the notions of feminine and masculine as symbolic operators have no relation to the objective characteristics of men and women and even less to a re-traditionalization of old customary practices and mentalities.

The feminist movement in Kosovo and its limits

The final part of the thesis is a detailed description of the feminist movement in Kosovo, fairly conventional but unrelated to everything that precedes it. During the post-war reconstruction period of the 1990s, the first challenge for women activists was the International Mission, where experts confronted them, arriving with the preconceived notion that "it's an Islamic country" and that they would have to "start from scratch" (p. 338). The international staff came "with prejudices that Kosovo was a traditional, patriarchal society where there were no capable and active women." These stereotypes were reinforced by their biases, referring to the Kanun , without taking into account the new legal framework (p. 384). The greatest obstacle, however, was the "perpetuation of the belief that women in Kosovo are not 'culturally suited' to become partners in public policy," perpetuating the perception of women as victims and mere recipients of aid rather than active partners in the reconstruction process. Women's lives remained socially precarious, "holding them hostage to their family, traditions, nation and state" (p. 374).

These prejudices have played a major role in reaffirming new divisions and exclusions, particularly by perpetuating traditional gender hierarchies. Gender is manipulated to ensure discipline and obedience, for the purposes of education and the development of democracy. The West is thus criticized for having installed symbolic and structural domination and for imposing a patriarchal model through the intertwined metanarratives of post-war international development and the aspirations of Kosovar Albanians to become a modern state (pp. 379-380).

In contrast, the defense of Albanian identity and nationalist discourse already suggested the emergence of a new political era for women, as well as a space for another form of cultural agency (p. 358). Most activists aimed to “show that women were not backward villagers locked in their homes by authoritarian men,” but that they were modern, active citizens deserving of rights (p. 370). Later, the feminist movement aimed to end the stereotypes in Yugoslav and international media propaganda that presented Albanian women as Muslim women, childbearing machines subservient to their families, and uneducated slaves. Its main goal was to show the world that Albanian women had agency, countering the negative stereotypes produced by the Yugoslav media (pp. 355–356).

Under these conditions, it is perfectly legitimate and even commendable that researchers can join to actively contribute to the feminist movement, but they should rather contribute through work that activists cannot do: historical, ethnographic, anthropological and sociological analyses to help and guide the feminist movement. Much work is available in this direction that has not been taken into account in this thesis and these gaps are regrettable.

While a nationalist discourse emerged in the 1990s that seemed to "retraditionalize" society, particularly regarding gender roles, a contemporary reference to tradition is never simply a repetition of old codes. A genuine historicization of contemporary references to tradition would have been preferable. A historicized socio-political contextualization would have allowed for a better understanding not only of how women have appropriated, reinvented, and critiqued the category of burrnesh , but above all, of the different paths to women's emancipation. What is presented in this thesis essentializes fixed concepts, offering an immutable vision of so-called customary law and tradition, thus preventing the development of perspectives on the idea of ​​burrnesh as a strong, courageous, and emancipated woman.

Far beyond a simple opposition between tradition and modernity or a confusion between nation and nationalism, this thesis, influenced by the writings of travelers seeking exoticism, maintains that the phenomenon of sworn virgins has not disappeared with the modernization of society. While the phenomenon is strategically repurposed and transformed according to specific social needs and situations, this thesis persists in distinguishing and reifying two overlapping traditional aspects of burrnesh : a fixed status of sworn virgins or widows performing activities usually reserved for men, and an emancipated status of women as activists, artists, and instrumentalists.

In any case, it is not the emancipatory "gender" that matters, as a kind of instrument in a strategy of circumvention, but rather the liberation from the sexed gender, shifting to the feminine gender and associating it with the masculine. A status of "sworn virgin" is always found as the sine qua non for accessing rights from which women are supposedly denied or for gaining access to traditionally masculine and closed circles. Thus, women's struggle for their rights and their prospects for emancipation is completely erased, ultimately proving futile, since everything rests on the transhistorical and essential immutability of the so-called customary law and the supposed status of sworn virgin. In short, if the stated purpose of this thesis is to account for the feminist movement in Kosovo, its foundation is unjustifiable and irrelevant: much ado about nothing!