“There is an inextricable relationship among the Greeks”: Local intellectual discourses in the Greek minority village of Dervitsani (Southern Albania)

This paper approaches and questions the notions of a continually proved-to-be relationship with the Greek state, as this was narrated by some of our informants during a short fieldtrip in a Greek minority village of Southern Albania; specifically, of the ones largely perceived as intellectuals by the community. It questions not so their validity, nationalistic as most of these notions appear to be, but the degree to which they could be differentiated and how they are being constructed by the identity of a Greek minority villager and, furthermore, of a dominant " Northern Epirus " legacy. To achieve that, the writers also adopt a comparative reading of published works by such intellectuals and discuss their arguments with other members of the Greek minority found far from the border zone, in Athens. Life-narratives are quoted for a more accurate depiction of the informants' perspective, focusing mostly on the experience of Albania's communist past. Finally, the Albanian-Greek borders are proved to be anything but solid for these people, who develop a discourse around history, culture and politics to promote and justify their stance on their minority status; this stance being sometimes rigid and some others negotiable. The theoretical background of the paper is mainly Anthropological, but theories from History, Psychology and Political Sciences are also revisited.