There has never been any serious talk about the ‘rot’ of intellectuals in Kosovo

There has never been any serious talk about the ‘rot’ of intellectuals in Kosovo.

When one thinker describes the schizophrenia of the post-communist transition, he puts it succinctly: politicians would have given their lives to write a good book, and writers would have done anything to get a political post. A typical two-way perversion of ambitions, which shows the reversal of roles and the experience of ‘values’.

Written by: Ismail Tasholli

Here in Kosovo, there has never been any serious talk about the ‘rot’ of intellectuals. There is talk about politics, crime, corruption, but not about the ‘impotence’ of the cultural and intellectual sphere. Because, just as we have politics, we also have culture and intellectuals.

The Term ‘Intellectual’ – a Historical Abuse

I don’t believe in the ‘intellectual’ as a moral figure. The term itself has been historically abused – from the ‘Dreyfus affair’, where it was first ‘invented’, to Jean-Paul Sartre who turned it into an ideological hero of his era. Since then, the word has been laden with a dirty romanticism. The intellectual was seen as the ‘voice of truth’, the ‘conscience of society’, etc.

I don’t use it like that. When I use it, I understand it only as a technical concept, and I don’t even have in the back of my mind the ‘intellectuals’ (read: some – not all – half-stupid) of us in the Academy, who like to consider themselves as having some additional role. I understand it as a notion by which I designate people who ‘produce’ and disseminate ideas in the public sphere. No more, no less.

The absolute majority of our intellectuals are mediocre – from Rexhep Qosje to Shpend Ahmeti

The antinomy ‘vegetarians with leather’ best describes this situation. Our intellectuals are the type who behave like ‘vegetarians’ – that is, they preach morality, ethics, idealism – but at the same time wear ‘leather’ (animal leather jackets), that is, they live in open contradiction to the values they preach.

These ‘vegetarians with skin’ are the SYMBOL of transitional societies. People who are not theoretically formed, do not have the inner maturity to be consistent with their ideas, but use moral discourse as a lifestyle and as symbolic capital. Thus, the intellectual in Kosovo appears more as a ‘pose’ than as a ‘substance’.

In this sense, the Enlightenment myth – the idea that the intellectual is the ‘moral voice of the nation’ – has been a false shield for many of them. The absolute majority of our intellectuals are mediocre – from Rexhep Qosja to Shpend Ahmeti (insert the names you ‘like’:). It is theoretically meaningless to say that all other spheres are rotten, and only intellectuals have ‘good’ heads. No: we are all participants in the same collective schizophrenia.

And, besides the ‘normal’ mediocre ones, there are also some worse ones, who change their tune every time the government changes. These are the most annoying type – the ‘intellectuals of official truths’! The latter are ‘vegetarians with skin’ par excellence, who become the moral guardians of every new political dogma, just to gain some public relevance.

To give you a comical example of this schizophrenia, there is, for example, the person called Enver Robelli – a mouthful of ‘other systems’. A few weeks ago, he wrote a text about the ‘time of charlatans’ and wondered why no one was seeing a ‘palace priest’ who was proclaiming himself Archbishop of the Albanian Autocephaly in Kosovo. His name is Nikolla Xhufka from Elbasan, who is a liar by profession. The great irony imposed by this reaction of Robelli is that he himself was one of the ‘intellectuals’ who did not see the biggest political charlatan of the transition, Albin Kurti. On the contrary, he supported him, gave him moral legitimacy and alluded to him as ‘rebel hope, … who will free Kosovo from corruption’. Robelli saw the ‘palace priest’ through a telescope, but never saw the ‘powerful agitators’ in front of him. No, he only saw ‘Tirana’s determined silence as indirect support for Vučić’s Serbia’.

Robelli is not simply a case of an individual, but – along with other karate kids – a symptom of our general condition, where mediocrity has occupied public space and institutions.

Resentment – hatred and envy as a driver of participation

Hannah Arendt, in The Origins of Totalitarianism, explains this phenomenon clearly. Many ‘intellectuals’ who joined totalitarian (read also populist) regimes were neither idealists nor pure opportunists, but ‘disillusioned with the cultural middle order’. They had a ressentiment – a description somewhere between hatred and envy – towards those who had greater symbolic capital.

In our transitional societies, this resentment takes a special form. Mediocre intellectuals do not see themselves as part of the problem, but as victims of a rotten system that has not allowed their voices to be heard. Populist autocrats exploit this feeling and release the hooks that hold theoretical Chuck Norris, presenting them now as, ‘the voice of truth that is finally being heard’.

How do you distinguish the mediocre public? The mediocre intellectual. Usually these people have high ambitions, but low real potential. This contradiction creates permanent psychological tension on the mediocre intellectual, and autocrats have always had the ability to dictate and exploit this complex of theirs. Citizens are told: you are extraordinary, but the corrupt elites have stolen your future. While mediocre intellectuals are told: you are great thinkers, but undervalued, they have not let you express yourself, it’s a shame you were not born in Europe.

Thus, personal resentment is transformed into false moral capital. Mediocre intellectuals, like Qosja, Robelli, Surroi…, preach morality against the old elites, but fall silent as soon as the new government carries out its symbolic revenge…

Populism as discourse, Laclau and the people/elite divide

Ernesto Laclau, in On Populist Reason, explains that populism is not just low politics, but a logic of discourse construction. It creates the people as a political subject, creating a simplistic division: the pure people versus the corrupt elite. This division only works when it finds a ‘common enemy’.

Mediocre intellectuals become the ‘vegetarians in leather’ of this discourse. They try to legitimize this division, to present it as a moral category, not as a discursive construct.

They do this not because they are obedient, but because populism gives them public space, sees them as ‘voices of conscience’. Thus, their strategy of silencing them later, when the populist government begins to commit the same sins it criticized the old elite, is no coincidence: they are ‘captured’ by the very discourse they have constructed.

The case of Kosovo – the repetition of the historical pattern

In Kosovo, the phenomenon is similar to the historical cases described by Arendt (Germany in the 30s), Laclau (populist discourse in Latin America), or Hirschman (strategies of justification of reaction).

A group of intellectuals, disillusioned with the post-war elites, saw in the new populist powers an opportunity for moral rehabilitation. They reinforced the populist narrative: ‘This is the voice of the betrayed people, this is the voice of free thought.’

When the new power was consolidated, these intellectuals switched to strategic silence or mild criticism, because their main goal – symbolic revenge – was realized.

This is the classic immaturity of thought without tradition: a ‘passionate’ thinker defends principle even when it goes against personal interest, while the ‘vegetarian with skin’ changes his diet every time the government changes.

LIABILITY

There is also one issue that must not go unmentioned: these ‘intellectuals’ will have to be held accountable, one day.

Naturally, not by trial – because they are not punished by the law – but morally and contextually. Because they have names (some are mentioned) and they were not just passive. They were the ones who created an alibi for the political leader, who came to power based on false moral and theoretical dogmas.

These ‘intellectuals’ are not just ‘naive’ or ‘used’. They have contextual responsibilities. They gave a ‘human face’ to a cartel of theoretical-political fools, who used their narrative to come to power.

They silenced criticism when this government started doing the same things they mentioned to its opponents.

Hannah Arendt, in Eichmann in Jerusalem, speaks of the ‘banality of evil’. Many people, even without being active criminals, participate in crimes simply because they accept silence when they should speak out. Even our ‘kožni’ intellectuals are part of this banality, their silence is participation.

The strategy of silence does not escape responsibility, on the contrary, it deepens it. Because whoever uses the voice to bring power to power has an obligation to also use it to criticize that power.

We must create a tradition of critical thought that does not depend on the fluctuations of power, but on the autonomy of thought itself. Without this, the intellectual remains just a boring ‘pose’!

Well, don’t be too hard on yourself. The Internet has more Albanians. The algorithm, our friend!