76 HE ARMENIAN INTELLIGENTSIA TTODAY: DISCOURSES OF SELF-IDENTIFICATION AND SELF-PERCEPTION Yulia Antonyan Laboratorium. 2012. Vol. 4, no. 1:76–100 Vol. Laboratorium. 2012. © Yulia Antonyan is an assistant professor of cultural studies at Yerevan State University. Address for correspondence: A. Manukian street, 1, 375001, Yerevan, Armenia.
[email protected]. Research for this article was conducted within the Caucasus Research Resource Centers–Armenia Research Fellowship Program, with funding from the Carnegie Corporation of New York. INTRODUCTION Most studies of the intelligentsia have one common peculiarity: they are carried out by people who themselves are intellectuals or members of the intelligentsia. Consequently, studies of the boundaries and meanings of “the intelligentsia” usually end up applying to their authors as well. These studies have the latent goal of self- cognition, of understanding how their authors’ own identities have been shaped and whether they can and want to be part of the group called intellectuals or intelligentsia. I will not deny that a need for self-cognition and self-definition in social and cultural terms prompted me to undertake research on the Armenian intelligentsia and write this article. But more generally, the goal of my research is to find out how cultural roles and representation patterns developed and adopted by the Armenian intelligentsia have defined the group’s place in society and politics. The terms “intelligentsia” and “intellectuals”—in Armenian, mtavorakanutiun— are frequently used in the Armenian political, cultural, and domestic life but are con- ceptualized and interpreted differently in different contexts. In this article, I de- scribe the central discursive patterns of self-identification and self-representation among contemporary Armenian intelligentsia.