The centenary year of the Armenian genocide witnessed an escalation in cultural production and both political and academic focus. This paper looks at some of the sites and spaces, physical and discursive, in which the centenary was marked. In particular, it seeks to assess how the centenary has challenged and possibly altered the context within which we approach the genocide and its continuing legacies. The paper is positioned in the diasporic space-while recognizing that this is fluid and embodies transnational sites between "homelands" in the fonn of Armenia and Turkey, and "host states" where diaspora communities have resided (at least) since the genocide, in effect their homes. This paper attempts to pick out some of the themes apparent in the discourse and in the activities during 2015, from the perspective of Armenian diasporan actors, and is based on the author's observations and participation in centenary events in the USA, Lebanon, Turkey, Switzerland, and the UK, as well as interviews with participants and organizers.
Kasbarian and Öktem explore the extent to which ‘political friendships’ between Armenians, Turks and Kurds—members of communities antagonized by the traumatic experience of genocide—can subvert hegemonic power arrangements of denial and nationalist mobilization. Based on participant observation and in-depth interviews with a group of Armenians and Turks in London, their paper explores how the members of this group experienced a transformation of their subject positions by facing each other's stories, gradually overcoming insecurities and fears of the Other. This dynamic process precipitated a shift of position, individually and collectively, enabling the formation of a community that acted beyond the confines of the reigning logics of nationalist projects. They argue that, in the relatively level playing field of the transnational, political and other friendships can develop to the point of becoming ‘moral communities’ that challenge established status quos and unequal power relations. Friendship and interpersonal relations that transgress these boundaries undermine reigning discourses and are, ultimately, political acts. However, these ‘low’ politics interactions still face the reality of ‘high’ politics, structured by the actions of an overbearing and semi-democratic Turkish state, the political expedience of third countries and a factious Armenian diaspora
The contemporary Armenian diaspora is spread throughout the world, with its core composed of descendants of the survivors of the atrocities carried out by the Turkish authorities during the decline of the Ottoman Empire (1881-1922). The majority of this established diaspora hails from what was once western Armenia and is now eastern Turkey, in contrast to the newest wave of Armenian economic migrants, who come from portions of eastern historical Armenia ruled by the czarist and then Soviet empires and who left following the fall of the Soviet Union in 1991. Unlike the new migrants, the older diasporans have to negotiate the gap between a mythical homeland and an actual “step-homeland” in the shape of the present Republic of Armenia. This background goes some way to explain why there was been very little “return” migration to Armenia by diasporans. Nonetheless, a very small number of diasporans have actually taken up the option of “return” in the sense of relocating to Armenia. I have termed this trend a particular kind of “sojourning,” located in the conceptual space in between migrant and visitor. The concept of sojourn reflects the increased mobility and flexibility of both the theory and practice of diaspora, challenging the traditional triadic framework of homeland diaspora-host state through which diasporas have been approached. This article plots the evolving and complex relationship of diaspora and “homeland” on the ground, specifically through the experiences of diasporans who have made the move to live in Armenia for varying periods of time. It analyzes and articulates the experiences of these individuals and views them as a counter-community that re-imagines and expands the “homeland” while embodying the transnational. This movement represents identity shaping from below, which does not subvert state categories of belonging (and in fact can reinforce them) but transgresses and expands the boundaries of these categories in practice and in the imagining of the “transnation.”
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