Abstract
In this chapter I lay the theoretical groundwork on which this book is built. I look at the definitions of identity, identity-making and how genocide and identity-making influence one another. I also explain that identity plays a pivotal role within genocide, more so than in other crimes against humanity. I try to explain why this is and how this gives us a new analytical approach with which to study genocide.
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Notes
- 1.
Arpine and the names that follow are pseudonyms, as is customary in anthropology. This to guarantee the privacy and anonymity of my informants.
- 2.
William Ewart Gladstone was an English politician, who in 1896 gave a passionate speech about the Armenian massacres in the Ottoman Empire.
- 3.
It is important that this should not be overestimated. Language was closely connected to the Church. Outside the Church people spoke distinct dialects. It was only in the nineteenth century, due to the rise of secularization, that the linguistic monopoly of the church was broken. Since that time there has been a distinction between Ashkharhaparr (Armenian spoken language) and Krapar (classic Armenian), which was mainly used in the Church and for education (Demirdjian 1989: 13).
- 4.
It is important to note that Japan, contrary to Germany, has undergone one of the largest actions of retaliation then any modern nation had to endure. It would be interesting to conduct further research into the influence of Hiroshima and Nagasaki on the collective history and identity of the Japanese people and on how in their emic points of view on their role in World War II is being approached and interpreted.
- 5.
On 5 July 1919, out of 130 suspects, the leaders of the Ittihad regime—Talât, Enver and Dr. Nazim—were sentenced to death. Other members of the party received a sentence of 15 years of imprisonment with heavy labor (Dadrian 1997: 331). Many of them managed to avoid their sentences by fleeing abroad, and on 13 January 1921 the military tribunals were abolished (ibid.: 333). See also Zwaan (2001: 427) and Melson (1992: 148–152).
- 6.
From the Dutch newspaper Trouw, 26 April 2001. Opinion piece: “Ephimenco”.
- 7.
There are various estimates of the death toll. Lewis (1961) states that 1.5 million Armenians were killed. The Turkish historian Professor Yusuf Halacogly estimates the number of deaths at 56,610 (See an interview with him in the article “Armeens-Turkse dialoog weer doodverklaard” [Armenian-Turkish dialogue declared dead] in the Dutch newspaper: De Volkskrant, 1 February 2002.) An estimate between 800,000 and 1.5 million is, according to some scientists, the most plausible (Zwaan 2001: 426, 427).
- 8.
This is what Zwaan (2001) calls “the reversal of truth”, in which the perpetrators are declared victims and the victims, perpetrators (ibid.: 428).
- 9.
In the Armenian community in London circulates an illegal videotape with the title “A Journey Through Western Armenia.” In this documentary, a Scottish camera man secretly goes into the museum and films the skeletons that are on display under the sign “genocide”. Most of the skeletons are probably Armenian.
- 10.
See the Dutch newspaper article “Armeense genocide leidt tot ruzie tussen Turkije en Zweden” [Armenian genocide leads to arguments between Turkey and Sweden] in the Dutch newspaper: NRC Handelsblad, 7 February 2002. For more information, I refer to the following articles “Turkije en VS botsen over Armenië”, [Turkey and US collide over Armenia] in NRC Handelsblad, 23 September 2002, “Holocaust in Armenië” [Holocaust in Armenia] in De Volkskrant, 4 November 2000, “Paus zoekt hereniging in Armenië” [The Pope seeks unification in Armenia] in Trouw, 26 September 2001. I also refer to the book “The Key Elements in the Turkish Denial of the Armenian Genocide: A Case Study of Distortion and Falsification”, Dadrian (1999).
- 11.
This can be found in resolution A2-33/87, accepted on 18 June 1987. See also: http://www.armenian-genocide.org/index.htm.
- 12.
As presented in the introduction, Lemkin is the legal scholar who coined the term “genocide”. In an unpublished autobiography, he wrote: “In Turkey, more than 1.2 million Armenians were put to death (…) all the Turkish criminals were released. I was shocked. A nation was killed and the guilty persons were set free”. This quote can be found in The Armenian Genocide, 1915–1923, published by Armenian Assembly of America.
- 13.
The United Nations holds the following definition of the term “genocide”: “genocide means any of the following acts with intent to destroy in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group as such by: (a) killing members of the group, (b) causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group, (c) deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part, (d) imposing measures intended to prevent births within the group and (e) forcibly transferring children of the group to another group” (Article II, 1948, United Nations, Genocide Convention).
- 14.
See the newspaper articles “Die politieke lading stoort ons enorm” [The political charge disturbs us] in Trouw, 22 September 2000 and “ArmeensTurkse dialoog weer doodverklaard” [Armenian and Turkish dialogue has ended again] in De Volkskrant, 1 February 2002. For other articles, see: “Standbeeld-affaire in Assen breidt zich uit” [The monument-gate in Assen expands] in De Volkskrant, 21 December 2000; “Mail bommen duperen Assen” [Mailbombs in Assen] in Algemeen Dagblad, 21 August 2000; “Fel verzet tegen monument Assen” [Protest against the monument in Assen] in Het Parool, 9 January 2001; “Monument voor Armeniërs maakt Turken woedend” [Armenia monument angers Turkish immigrants] in De Volkskrant, 9 May 2000; “Elke dag, elke minuut voel ik de pijn” [Every day, every minute, I feel the pain] in Trouw, 22 September 2000; “Nooit vergeten, dat is ons ingeprent” [Never forget, that is drilled into us] in De Volkskrant, 5 January 2001; “Toch Armeens monument” [The Armenian monument will come] in NRC Handelsblad, 3 April 2001; “Rechter beslist over Armeense gedenksteen” [Court decides over Armenian monument] in Trouw, 21 March 2001; “Armeniërs zegenen alvast de steen der conflicten” [Armenians already bless the ‘monument of conflicts’] in Trouw, 24 April 2000; “De strijd om een Armeense gedenksteen” [The struggle over an Armenian commemorative stone] in Het Parool, 9 January 2001; and “Gedenksteen” [Commemorative Stone] in Trouw, 22 September 2000. I have received further information from the interview I conducted with Nicolaia Romashuk on 4 June 2003.
- 15.
The Netherlands officially recognized the Armenian genocide in 2004, but in an indirect way. The Dutch parliament speaks of “the question of the Armenian genocide.”
- 16.
For further information about the changes within Turkey I refer to the following articles: “ArmeensTurkse dialoog weer doodverklaart” [Armenian and Turkish dialogue has ended again] in De Volkskrant, 1 February 2002; “Ephimenco”[opinion piece] in Trouw, 26 April 2001, “Het was een geweldige tragedie” [It was a great tragedy] in De Volkskrant, 9 May 2000; “Je gelooft die onzin toch niet? Wij Turken doen zulke dingen niet” [You don’t believe that nonsense do you? We Turkish are not capable of this.] in NRC Handelsblad, 6 May 2002; and “Een taboe op de helling” [A taboo under review] in Trouw, 9 February 2001.
- 17.
See Gellner (1997: 103).
- 18.
When Baumann researched the definitions of ethnicity and national identity in a dictionary, he discovered significant similarities. Both appeal to: “descent, often recognizable by physical appearances, sharing cultural traits (language, perceptions, values, etc.) said to be acquired from birth.” Only when considering a state and/or political entity do the two identities differ. An ethnic group is “a community of destiny” and a political organization, “a community of destiny” based on a present state (Baumann 1999: 31).
- 19.
Print capitalism is the process in which various dialects are merged into one language to create a larger market. Thus, printed language can abstract feelings of commonalities among individuals (Anderson 2006: 44–46). Nowadays, we can also recognize other abstract identities such as identities of “civilization.” These identities don’t claim language as a shared denominator, but rather claim a shared history and (at least so it is interpreted) specific norms and morals derived from this history. Autochthony (Geschiere 2009), which can be translated to a sense of belonging to a land/soil is another example of one abstract identity.
- 20.
The nation state and the national identity, therefore, are relatively recent developments that only started to take shape in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries.
- 21.
In this quote, we see a difference from Connerton’s writing (1989). According to Connerton, societies remember on a subconscious level; memories are trapped in ceremonies, rituals and in what he calls bodily practices. Bodily practices are actions and behaviors that often indirectly and unintentionally carry out the collective past. Because of this, the past is “trapped” as it were in the body. (But, be careful: Connerton does not use the term body politics or embodiment, which is a term that is generally used in medical anthropology and refers to how the body captures, alters and creates culture.) Therefore, Connerton does not look at man as an agent or as a negotiator who tries to give meaning to his memories, but rather he looks more at the historical origin of behaviors and how these can be connected to collective memories.
- 22.
Emic and etic are described as follows: the emic point of view is the experiential world of the “insiders.” The etic point of view is how “outsiders” see the experiential world of the group.
- 23.
Ethnicity and autochthony have many similarities since they both focus on “descent”. Even though there is overlap in the definitions, these definitions are fluid. In general, we can say though that autochthony focuses more on notions of belonging to soil (Geschiere 2009: 2) and civil citizenship to a specific nation (ibid.: 98). “Ethnicity” focuses more on “descent” and “kinship” and “blood”. This is a very superfluous distinction, however. I think due the fluidity of symbols and classifications, and identifications of autochthony and ethnicities are often intermixed in the field. What can be carefully stated is that autochthony seems to represent a stronger link with “land”.
- 24.
I do not wish to suggest that there are no national feelings amongst the Armenians. Both Herzig (1996) and Suny (1983) point out that although Soviet Armenia was part of the Soviet Union, there were very strong national sentiments amongst the Armenian people (Suny 1983: 45). On 20 January 1974, a 25-year-old woman torched a portrait of Lenin. She did this, as she would later state, to “resist the Soviet occupation of Armenia” (Suny 1983: 79). National sentiments were therefore deeply rooted within Armenian society. The war in Karabach can be described as a nationalistic war (Herzig 1996: 262).
- 25.
This approach is most apparent in the definition of culture by Tylor (1871): “Culture…taken in its wide ethnographic sense is that complex whole which includes knowledge, belief, art, morals, law, custom, and any other capabilities and habits acquired by man as a member of society. The condition of culture among the various societies of mankind, in so far as it is capable of being investigated on general principles, is a subject apt for the study of laws of human thought and action” (ibid.: 1).
- 26.
Various anthropological schools of thought have implicitly and explicitly used this essentialist approach to culture. This approach can for instance be seen in the evolutionism of Spencer and Tylor, in the historical particularism of Boas, in the structuralism of Radcliffe Brown and in the functionalism of Malinowski (See also McGee and Warms (ed.) 1996: Anthropological Theory: An Introductory History. Mayfield Publishing Company: California).
- 27.
I learned early on during my research to never use the word “interview”; this immediately scared respondents. I think this is because of the connotations of the word “interview” as it sounds important, formal, weighty and static. It sounds “official” and therefore has political consequences. Because of this, I quickly switched to the term “personal conversation”.
- 28.
There is another side to this debate that I cannot fully discuss in this paragraph. This has to do with my presence as a researcher and how much this influenced the data that I gathered. In other words, is the researcher not an actor him/herself in the dynamic process of creating constructions? One could argue that although my presence magnifies certain topics and conversations, these magnifications did not develop outside of the social context. The respondent does not construct views or ideas that are strange to him or her. The respondent uses ideas and worldviews that are already commonplace. The topics and magnifications are not useless by definition, and can tell much about the respondent and his or her experiences.
- 29.
By “informal conversations,” I refer to coincidental meetings, appointments and/or conversations that did not have the structure of an interview. These were conversations in which I refrained from asking questions with particular topics in mind. These informal meetings occurred during performances, lectures, music and dance events, etc. After every meeting, I made a summary, and scribbled down the most important and outstanding observations. I count approximately 53 informal meetings, however, there could have been more, since I didn’t note the dates in the beginning of my research diary.
- 30.
These questionnaires were not meant for statistical analysis, but rather for providing me with an orientation to Armenian worldviews and ideas.
- 31.
Campbell (2010) explains this contradictory individual behaviour through social distance and social closeness within the context and structure where the violence takes place. If there is a high degree of distance between “cultural” commonalities, or a high degree of “relational distance” (interaction between individuals) or “functional independence” (political or economic interdependent relationships between individuals) it is more likely that violence occurs (ibid.: 303). Campbell explains why some perpetrators kill victims on some occasions and rescue victims on other occasions. Even though I think that social proximity is of importance of understanding contradictory behaviour, I do not think that even this approach or analysis explains all contradictions. Human behaviour is too complex for “one” overarching theory. We are driven by psychological aspects (fear, experiences, stress) and political, social and cultural aspects. In this sense, Campbell makes the same mistake that he warns us about: “over-collectivize” behaviour.
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Holslag, A. (2018). The Remembrance of a Genocide. In: The Transgenerational Consequences of the Armenian Genocide. Palgrave Studies in the History of Genocide. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-69260-9_2
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