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Paper short abstract

This paper examines visitor books from the Atheist Museum in socialist Albania as ethnographic archival sites, analysing ideological language, performative conformity, and silences to explore how museums functioned as instruments of political discipline.

Paper long abstract

This paper examines visitor books from the Atheist Museum in Shkodër (1973–1990) as ethnographic archival sites through which ideological performance, political discipline, and archival silences can be analysed. Rather than approaching these documents as spontaneous expressions of individual experience, the paper treats them as institutional devices embedded within a broader apparatus of socialist ideological governance.

Drawing on close textual analysis, the paper shows how the act of writing in visitor books functioned as a ritualised moment at the end of the museum visit, where visitors were invited to publicly affirm the exhibition’s anti-religious narrative. Standardised language, repetitive ideological formulas, and explicit expressions of loyalty reveal how conformity was performed and normalised through writing. Alongside these formulaic entries, rarer autobiographical narratives of ideological “conversion” illustrate how the museum staged political transformation as a personal and affective experience.

Situating the analysis within debates on “fieldwork in the archive,” the paper treats visitor books as spaces of mediated encounter rather than passive historical traces. Read alongside institutional documentation such as work plans, internal meetings, and exhibition photographs, these materials allow for a layered ethnographic reading of how ideological consent was both produced and archived within the museum.

By focusing on repetition, silences, and performative language, the paper contributes to anthropological discussions on archival research under authoritarian regimes and demonstrates how museums operated as sites where political subjectivities and controlled forms of public memory were actively shaped.