Written by: Ben Andoni
The title belongs to a poem by the well-known author Danilo Kish, one of the prominent Balkan writers of modern times, but who unfortunately did not make it to the dawn of the 21st century. At that time, he was distinguished not only for a special voice in literature, but also for opening horizons in the technique of narration and especially the depth of the themes. Education, freedom and awareness helped him in his goal, while health deprived him of greater achievements. Many years after his death (1989), it was Filip David's turn to return the honor, but this time posthumously: "He was terrified of human stupidity as much as of carelessness and dishonesty."
It should be noted that the relationship between scent and politics may seem like something obscure and difficult to connect, but a series of studies, filled with references from literature and philosophy, show many elements related to scent, where questions about freedom and restriction in politics, as well as great social and especially ontological differences, clearly arise. Rousseau described smell as the "sense of imagination". According to him, scents influenced the imagination much more than they were captured by the senses, but they could become very significant if they were included in connection with human passions and emotions. Later studies would be needed to open new horizons in this field. Scents at different times in Albania have not only had to do with the hygienic status of the classes, but also the deprivations of development in the isolation of the country, added to a kind of political differentiation, which is where our modest argumentation aims to go. The limitations of so-called luxury items played a role, for a kind of rigidity that our individual had, while the mythologizing of smell (mainly that which came from outside in various forms) somewhat distorted its value. In our case, we will go to the sense of smell that is related to the smell of power and its confusion. Such is our time, what Lea Ypi, a well-known Albanian researcher, calls the “Age of Unreason!” and where smell and smell are no longer just physiological phenomena, but go much further. Smell itself contains, in the ontological sense, elements where man feels difference and separation. Here we move to another plane, the political one. If, according to Aristotle, people can be considered by nature as political animals and actively participate in political life, since they speak through certain symbols and codes, they are also politically involved as olfactory beings (who /perceive), regardless of their nature as citizens.
Politics, from above, conveys this feeling by smelling the interest in power and the forms that spread from it. Are there different consequences from the smell that the individual feels for the phenomenon of corruption, alienation of the individual or even more so of nepotism? It is a different smell, which is related not to the smell, but to what the current Rama government smells to people who are looking for a career and are ready to alienate themselves just to keep a ruthless grip on power. Just as there is a kind of smell of where it can be touched more easily to benefit from the country's wealth and where we have the reaction of people who have lost the smell of how national wealth can be treated properly and enrich the country. The first part cultivates the smell because by getting involved or having the same smell with another group, it is easier to stay in power and benefit from it. The recent scandals of AKSH have marked entire groups that identify with each other and that have the same approach to the extortion of the country, as on the other hand the scandal with the directors of the Municipality for public money, not to mention entire corruption schemes, where the abstract smell of wealth prevails over everything. And, there remains the second group, who as political individuals are deprived of this type of smell, because the emotion that this state produces is unworthy and unperceptible (perceptible) for them. The same scent of power, conveyed differently. Two well-known researchers, Horkheimer and Adorno, teach us that: “Of all the senses, the act of smell, which is withdrawn without objectifying it, most sensuously reveals the desire to get lost in identification with the Other.” These considerations are clearly identified with the political issue and provide an explanation of how the scent of power unites, while the idea of 'purification' fades, since it concerns scents and bodies, which are ever-changing mixtures. In other words, when it comes to smell, 'identity' and 'changeability' are very slippery concepts, the researchers point out (Horkheimer, Adorno 2002: 151).
Given this fact, researchers refer that although: “Social identity can also be conceived as the result of choices that transcend any inheritance, historical and biographical origins tend to characterize the olfactory representation of a person throughout his life. The social hierarchy responds to a spatial metaphor – up/down, – which is also related to the sense of smell” states Elena Mancioppi in “Towards a Sociopolitical Aesthetics of Smell”.
It is surprising how many theses are articulated today about this fact, but smell really enters into the construction of power relations in our society, both at the popular and institutional levels. In this regard, researchers claim that there is a correspondence with the modern regime of olfactory silence, where the center (the power elite) governs from a kind of position of olfactory neutrality. Previously, power was personal and therefore filled with the scent of those who exercised it; now it has become impersonal and abstract, and therefore odorless. Therefore, it is easier for numerous groups with different cultural and social identities and interests to join in corruption. We are often surprised by the conglomeration of people who participate in the compositions of the groups that are emerging before SPAK, where the mere lack of the proper identifying scent, characteristic of that time, can be called identification in itself. Today, the lack of scent has become an identity, quite different from when its essence once held society together (even if stigmatized). Perhaps a little far from our argument, but the aforementioned author brings us an example from a novel translated into Albanian by Italo Calvino with the title “If on a Winter Night a Traveler”. In a tavern maintained by workers, the protagonist tells us a dialogue between drunks: an old alcoholic guard tells us about a rich girl who visited her imprisoned lover every week. After the meeting ended, she: “She left with the bad smell of prison in her elegant clothes”, while the prisoner's suit retained the scent of the lady's perfume. “And the smell of beer remains to me” – the guard concluded the story – “Life is nothing more than an exchange of scents”. Life, but also death, or as was emphasized at that moment by a gravedigger next to him: “With the smell of beer I try to remove the smell of death from myself. And only the smell of death will remove the smell of beer from myself”.
In his memoirs, the traveler, diplomat and adventurer Giacomo Casanova recalls a detachment of Albanian warriors, dressed in white frocks with an almost sublime dignity, but with an unbearable smell, but still with their historical kurma. They came from that part of Epirus, which is called Albania, which belonged to the Republic of Venice and had distinguished themselves in the last war against the Turks, he writes, identifying their commander. “But I was so drawn to him and liked him from the first moment I saw him and I would have been very happy to talk to him, if he did not smell so much garlic from his mouth. All Albanians have their pockets full of it and they enjoy it as much as we enjoy sugared plums.”
If the lower classes, therefore, embody the materiality and immanence of life, the upper ones symbolize disembodiment, detachment from necessities and the development of science, art and knowledge. Where matter is subject to processes of degradation, the spirit is immune. The first rots, releasing a foul odor; the second, being always fresh, is aromatic, expresses itself in a very philosophical vein the author Mancioppi, on which we have relied in this article. A complex argument, but in the frightening mixture of Albanian society, it is already difficult because the aroma is missing, what should distinguish a society that is slipping too much into carelessness and dishonesty. (Homo Albanicus)
Horkheimer, M., Adorno, TW 2002, "Dialectic of Enlightenment. Philosophical Fragments (1947), GS Noerr (ed.)", trans. by E. Jephcott, Stanford, Stanford University Press.
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