Workshop 28
This workshop intends to explore the relationship between memory, history, and anthropology through the discussion of anthropological work in the Middle East. Ideally, the discussion should address the scope (and limits) of memory as a key concept of anthropological investigation, and reflect critically on the interchange of anthropology and history in the study of Middle Eastern societies.
Representations of history, and narratives of memory, have been a subject of anthropological research in the Middle East since the mid 1990s. While some scholars have emphasized the conceptual links between memory and history, using both terms almost interchangeably as ways of representing the past, others have formulated memory and history as mutually exclusive and sometimes contradictory realms of study, referring to the first as the site of repressed and subjective accounts of non-privileged subaltern groups and the latter as an official account of the past and hegemonic narrative of truth. However, as recent critiques have pointed out (Berliner 2006; Ahiska 2006), the conceptual relationship between history and memory, as well as the epistemological and political aspects of the concept of memory, still need to be clarified further.
The workshop intends to contribute to this ongoing discussion and open up a space for a critical analysis of the relationship between history and memory with reference to ethnographic work on Middle Eastern contexts, including reflections on our own practice as anthropologists "in history". More specifically, papers should address (any of) the following questions:
a) What are the modes of producing historical knowledge? How is the past represented in different media and narrative genres? How are European representations of "Oriental" history reflected and taken up in local narratives?
b) How do different narratives of the past engage with, structure, or reconfigure each other? How do, for instance, individual or family biographies intersect with, counter, or complement more "official" meta-narratives of local, communal or national history? In which situations and contexts is the past invoked and articulated, what is the relationship between narratives of memory and perceptions of current regional or global transformations and events?
c) What epistemological and methodological position do anthropologists take in the writing of history and memory? How does the issue of accountability affect the relationship between memory and history, how do we tackle the politics of memory and truth in politically sensitive ethnographic contexts, and which ontological status do we attribute to local (self)representations of the past?
Organisation
Zerrin O. Biner; Berlin / Halle
Katharina Lange; Berlin
Datum, Uhrzeit
Donnerstag, 04.10.2007, 14:00-18:00 Uhr
Ort
Melanchthonianum, Hörsaal XIX
Vorträge & Abstracts
Zerrin Ozlem Biner: The Ghostly Effects of the 1915 Massacres: Acts of Defacement and Memory of Loss in a Cosmopolitan Border City, Mardin, South-eastern Turkey
The 1915 Armenian massacres marked the history of Turkey, moving across communities, families, international courts, parliaments, states and supra-national organizations. In the official and public discourse, the 1915 massacres were interpreted as a defensive yet legitimate counter action by the Ottoman to protect its sovereignty against destructive and separatist acts in a time of […]
H. Nese Ozgen: “MEMORABLE PAST of KURDISHNESS in TURKEY: Reelaborating and reinterpreting the memory of Kurdishness in two movies on ‘border’”
In this paper, I focus on “border” and take it as an agent to produce and reproduce “memory” on both citizenship and sovereignty. I do this by “conceptualizing history” as memory [1] on the one hand and “actualizing history” as past, on the other hand. Borders offer privileged sites for studying the intersection of […]
Alice von Bieberstein: The Reluctant Criminal: Turkey and the Armenian ‘ Genocide’ Through a Legal Lense
In recent years, intellectuals and journalists have been taken to court under paragraph 301 of the Turkish civil penal code for having publicly labelled the Armenian massacres of 1915 as ‘genocide’. Simultaneously, the Armenian diaspora and its supporters continue to lobby for international recognition of the event as ‘genocide’, both through national parliaments and […]
Babak Rahimi: Ethnography, Identity and Memory: The Case of Jalal Al-e Ahmad
This paper is an attempt to explore the relationship between memory, identity and history in the ethnographic works of Jalal Al-e Ahmad (1923-69). Focusing on his four important works, Owrazan (1954), tat Neshin-haye Boluk Zahra (1958), ‘A’ine Fasl (Seasonal Custom) (published in 1978), and Jazire-ye Kharg: Dorre yatim-e Khalij (1960), this paper argues […]
Nefissa Naguib: Portable Permanence: The anthropology of memory and skills
An enduring question in anthropology has been how cultural groups respond to historical ruptures. Armenians, who were scattered throughout the world after experiencing the collective trauma of genocide and deportation from Turkey in 1915, are an example of a people who have lived through the loss and suffering of such a rupture. Displaced by […]
Leyla Neyzi: Memory Studies, History, and Anthropology: A Critical Interdisciplinary Approach
Today, the field of memory studies is asking new questions which challenge earlier assumptions. It is clear now that the well-meaning but romanticized goal of representing the powerless through memory work is at least as fraught with contradictions as attempts to write conventional history. The widely held opposition between history and memory studies is […]
Anne Clement: Between histories and memories: The Dinshaway Incident as a “Lieu de Mémoire” of the Egyptian nation
With the publication of the first volume of his “Lieux de Mémoire” in 1984, French historian Pierre Nora became one of the first scholars to suggest that History and Memory should not be simply seen as two diametrically opposed forms of representation of the past, but rather as two different - though closely interrelated […]
Seda Altug: The memories of the French mandate in Syrian Jazira (1921- 1946) and the making of Christian Identity: History, Community and Land
This presentation will attempt to analyze the role of the memories of the regionalist movement that emerged in the French-mandated Syrian Jazira following the signing of the Franco-Syrian treaty (1936) in the making of a Christian identity in Syria today.
French-mandated Syrian Jazira bordering the eastern end of the Turco-Syrian border was one of those […]