When I say Europe, I mean Catholicism! The perception of Europe in the discourse of Albanian intellectuals after the fall of state socialism

Abstract

The fall of the socialist system in Albania aroused the desire in the vast majority of society to integrate into European structures. In the same pe- riod, many public figures undertook the ‘duty’ to show the Albanian peo- ple the way to European integration. At the same time, they began to de- scribe which elements of the country’s culture were European and which were not. From these descriptions, it can be concluded what their percep- tion of Europe and European identity was. In this paper, we will try to analyse the discourse on the image of Europe in the writings of Albanian intellectuals, making a critique of their ahistorical approach when defin- ing the idea of Europe and European identity.