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Sexuality and Kinship in Post-Soviet Armenia by Tamar Shirinian

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Sexuality and Kinship in Post-Soviet Armenia by Tamar Shirinian Survival of a Perverse Nation: Sexuality and Kinship in Post-Soviet Armenia by Tamar Shirinian Department of Cultural Anthropology Duke University Date: __________________________ Approved: __________________________ Diane M. Nelson, Supervisor __________________________ Anne Allison _____________________________ Anne-Maria Makhulu _____________________________ Tomas Matza _____________________________ Ara Wilson Dissertation submitted in partial approval of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in the Department of Cultural Anthropology in the Graduate School of Duke University 2016 Abstract Survival of a Perverse Nation: Sexuality and Kinship in Post-Soviet Armenia by Tamar Shirinian Department of Cultural Anthropology Duke University Date: ________________________ Approved: ________________________ Diane M. Nelson, Supervisor ________________________ Anne Allison ________________________ Anne-Maria Makhulu ________________________ Tomas Matza ________________________ Ara Wilson An abstract of a dissertation submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in the Department of Cultural Anthropology in the Graduate School of Duke University 2016 Copyright by Tamar Shirinian 2016 Abstract Survival of a Perverse Nation traces the ways in which contemporary Armenian anxieties are congealing into the figure of the “homosexual.” As in other post-Soviet republics, homosexuality has increasingly become defined as the crisis of the times, and is understood by many as a destructive force linked to European encroachment. In Armenia, a growing right-wing nationalist movement since 2012 has been targeting LGBT and feminist activists. I suggest that this movement has arisen out of Armenia’s concerns regarding proper social and biological reproduction in the face of high rates of emigration of especially men in search of work. Many in the country blame this emigration on a post-Soviet oligarchy, with close ties to the government. This oligarchy, having quickly and massively privatized and liquidated industry and land during the war over the region of Nagorno-Karabagh (1990-1994) with Azerbaijan, created widespread un(der)employment. A national narrative attributing the nation’s survival of the 1915 Genocide and dispersion of its populations to strong morality preserved by institutions such as the Church and the family has now, in the post-Soviet era, ruptured into one of moral “perversion.” This dissertation is based on 15 months of ethnographic research, during which I participated in the work of two local non-governmental organizations: Public Information and Need for Knowledge, an LGBT rights organization and Women’s Resource Center, a feminist organization. I also conducted interviews with 150 households across Yerevan, the capital city, and did in-depth interviews with other activists, right-wing nationalists and journalists. Through psychoanalytic frameworks, as well as studies of kinship, I show how sovereignty – the longed for dream for Armenians over the last century – is felt to have failed because of the moral corruption of the iv illegitimate figures that fill Armenian seats of authority. I, thus, examine the ways in which a missing father of the household is discursively linked to the lack of strong leadership by a corrupt government, producing a prevalent feeling of moral disintegration that nationalists displace onto the “homosexual.” v Table of Contents List of Figure Acknowledgements Prologue: Armenianness Introduction: Survival of a Perverse Nation Chapter 1. Queer Life: Invisible Visibility, Visible Invisibility and the Coding of Everyday Life ***** Part I. Perversion (Aylandakutyun) Chapter 2. Wandering Yerevan: Nostalgia and Post-Hope in a Presentless and Empty City of Ruins Chapter 3. The Names of Illegitimate Fathers and the Ends of Symbolic Authority Part II. Perversion (Aylaserutyun) Chapter 4. The Figure of the Homosexual: Fetish, Freedom, and Separation Chapter 5. Kintimate Encounters: The Nation-Family and Practices of Intimacy Chapter 6. Perversion and Gender ***** Chapter 7. No Father, No Future? The Politics of “No!” as Negation and Affirmation Conclusion: Concluding and Moving Forward in a Brave New World of Disorder Appendix Works Cited Biography vi List of Figure Figure 1. Rosa’s building. Photograph by Author vii Acknowledgements Writing something this large demands activity that begins not on the first day of graduate school, or even undergraduate training, but way before then. For this, there is no particular order or start that is better than any other to take a moment to acknowledge all of the events and people who made this work possible. Beginning in my “youth,” however, will have to suffice. The kind of intellectual curiosity that has shaped this work surrounded me then. For this, I thank my network of extended family and friends for building the kind of community around which ideas, thoughts and imagination could flow. I thank the adults who gathered to drink whiskey, vodka and wine. While you discussed the stuff that makes life worth enjoying in the backyard of the house on Crenshaw Ave., Los Angeles and the old house in Malibu – you created possibilities of curiosity and imaginative will. Special gratitude is owed to Sarkis Kalashian and Aghavni Jouharian Williams. Growing up with you in these spaces and places gave meaning to my own interior life-world. We not only grew up together, but we raised each other as able to enjoy the chaotic streams of thought that surrounded us like ether. It was in this environment, unbeknownst to me at the time, that I became interpellated as Armenian. I became interested in Armenianness not as a historical site, but as a set of practices involved in reflective and reflexive thought on cultural productions that were not like any other. I was very aware, in other words, that I was growing up in a different social context. Or, it felt different. And I treasured it. I was surrounded by Armenian artists, musicians, intellectuals and those who generally experienced conversation and other forms of relational exchange as rapture. I would like to thank my father, Moses Shirinian, who was surprised when I first told him in Spring viii 2010 that I would be going to Armenia to conduct research. “What?!” you asked “What are you doing going there?!” Well, it shouldn’t be such a surprise that I wanted to go there. “There” was a nostalgic place for me, filled with post-memory, to which I wanted to one day (re)turn. But I did not know it at that time. I thank you now, as a grown-up who has the privilege of sharing and learning with you, for giving me that Armenia. And, I thank you for your support – all kinds of support – but, especially the kind that came with constant argument-making. To my mother, Aida Mouradian Shirinian – the pianist - it was you who taught me how to feel and experience in ways that take you away, break you away, from reality. Feeling, I saw in you, can make you face what you may not want to, but it can also be fugue, allowing experience on other realms, other worlds. Thank you for all of your support – material, affective, labor-intensive love – through the years and for believing that I am who I want to be. To my sister, Sose, even if younger than me and even if the teasing relation we had in our youth may have led you to believe I know better, I am always learning inquisitiveness and courageous posing of questions (and acting on them!) from you. I know you know what I mean and the many layer-upon-layer jokes over the years have allowed me to tap in to long-standing relation and the ability to come back to moments to treasure them again…and again, and again. When I arrived to UC Berkeley for undergraduate education, I was ready and unable to wait to add academic language to these long-established longings for intellectual production. Thank you, Paola Bacchetta, for my first Gender and Women’s Studies course, from which there was no return, and teaching me forms of theory-making ix that broke with other, more traditional, binds. Thank you Roshanak Kheshti for introducing me to the worlds that theory can make. And, Mel Chen, thank you for making me feel the necessity in thinking about melancholy and the joy of writing that pushed me to go to graduate school. I would also like to acknowledge my graduate school cohort in Cultural Anthropology with whom and from whom I learned: Yasmin Cho, Layla Brown, and, finally Cagri Yoltar. Cagri, my colleague and friend, without you, graduate school would have been an entirely different, and much less joyous, experience. Thank you for all of the trips to Turkey and Kurdistan, for late night conversations, daytime conversations, as well as the sometimes much needed silence. I would also like to thank Yektan Turkylimaz for the music and for your patience in (re)teaching me to read in Armenian. Without my teachers at Duke, who pushed my reading and writing in new directions, I would not have been able to produce this massive object called a dissertation. Thanks go to Anne Allison, Tina Campt, Frederic Jameson, Ranjana Khanna, Anna Krylova, Ralph Litzinger, Anne-Maria Makhulu, Tomas Matza, Diane M. Nelson, Jocelyn Olcott, Charles Piot, Kathy Rudy, Irene Silverblatt, Orin Starn, Rebecca Stein, Antonio Viego, Robyn Wiegman, and Ara Wilson. The space of the classroom as a site of sharing and collaboration seemed especially necessary for me when I returned from year-long fieldwork in Armenia in Fall 2013 and the Cultural Anthropology Dissertation Writing Workshop fulfilled that need. For this, I would like to thank my fellow-dissertators for sharing their work-in-progress and for engaging with my own work and providing feedback: Lorien Olive, Jatin Dua, Samuel Shearer, Patrick Galbraith, Jennifer Bowles, Yasmin Cho, Layla Brown and Cagri Yoltar. I am also very x grateful to the faculty who led these workshops – Tomas Matza, Rebecca Strein, Louise Meintjes, Katya Wesolowski, and Charles Piot – who provided valuable comments on early versions of the chapters that appear here.
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