Who Handles the Dead: An Exploration of Roma, Balkan Egyptians, and Proximity to Death in Albania and Kosovo?

• In Event: Critical Approaches to Forgotten, Overlooked, and Ignored Histories

Abstract

This presentation draws from exploratory questions about race, being, and humanness, and draws in particular from a work-in-progress about the intersections of transnational anti-blackness and anti-Romani racism. Numerous scholars have chronicled the ways that Roma and Balkan Egyptians have been racialized outside of Southeast European nation states, including my own work on this subject. In doing this work, however, I have not yet come across much scholarship on the subject of handling the dead, and the role played by Roma and Balkan Egyptians. Focusing primarily on present-day regions in Albania, Kosovë, and Serbia, in this presentation I will share about newly emergent work that uncovers the ways that death and burial practices illustrate racialized hierarchies in the Balkan region. I rely on two particular examples, early-to-mid twentieth century execution practices, and burials during the 1999 Kosovë Serbia, to demonstrate the roles that Roma and Balkan Egyptians were required to play in terms of carrying out executions and conducting burials, and why they were deemed more suitable for such tasks, and not simply due to occupation. In doing so I hope to be able to speak to those forms of racialization and dehumanization that are “hidden in plain view.”

Author

• Chelsi West Ohueri, U of Texas at Austin