Time and the Image in the Armenian World: an Ethnography of Non-Recognition
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Time and the Image in the Armenian World: An Ethnography of Non-Recognition by Rik Adriaans Submitted to Central European University Department of Sociology and Social Anthropology In partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy Supervisors: Professor Dan Rabinowitz Professor Jean-Louis Fabiani CEU eTD Collection Budapest, Hungary 2018 Statement I hereby state that this dissertation contains no materials accepted for any other degrees in any other institutions. The thesis contains no material previously written and/or published by another person, except where appropriate acknowledgment is made in the form of bibliographical reference. Rik Adriaans Budapest, March 29, 2018 CEU eTD Collection Abstract The last three decades have seen the socioeconomic collapse of Armenia occur simultaneously with a proliferation of media links to Los Angeles, the new capital of the nation’s global diaspora. This multi-sited ethnography analyzes how new cultural repertoires and moral appeals play out in increasingly mediatized life-worlds by tracing the circulation of images in and between these two locations. Highlighting how histories of rupture, from the Armenian Genocide to post-Soviet collapse, inform media engagements, the entanglement of time and images of the nation is explored. The first half of the thesis inquires into the iconic forms of pan-Armenian campaigns in relation to alliances between Los Angeles diaspora institutions and the post-Soviet oligarchic state. The second half examines how the global nation’s socioeconomic and symbolic inequalities are refracted in participatory visual media in Yerevan and Los Angeles. The case studies exemplify a distinction between a recognition-oriented diaspora, seeking justice for the tragedy of the 1915 Genocide but also aspiring to respectability in the US, and a developmental diaspora, driven to realize its visions of Armenia’s future in the present through a redistributive ethos. They also show that how the nation is imagined around the world is increasingly shaped by Los Angeles diasporans, who have privileged access to represent the country in public cultures. The thesis provides a new take on debates concerning the potential of media to synchronize strangers to common concerns across distances. It shows how historical ruptures and inequalities in symbolic and economic power complicate the production of a shared time between homeland and diaspora, even when new media technologies facilitate the alignment of ethnic imaginaries with the unfolding present. This study also contributes to wider debates in critical social theory on the relation between redistribution and recognition, as it illustrates how different understandings of the CEU eTD Collection sources of social suffering are transformed into ethnic and diasporic identities. Acknowledgments This thesis was written in five different countries: in Hungary mostly, but also in Romania, Armenia, the Netherlands and the United States. Its ideas have emerged from exchanges with many different voices in all of these places. First and foremost, I am indebted to the guidance of my supervisors in Budapest. Dan Rabinowitz never ceased to insist that there can be no clarity of thought without clear, disciplined writing, and often enriched my understandings of Armenia with comparisons to other diasporic nations. Jean-Louis Fabiani has provided careful readings throughout that always brought out new insights into larger conceptual and theoretical issues. As in any anthropological project, the people who populate my ethnographic diaries are the invisible co-authors of all analyses. Per anthropological convention, their names have been anonymized, except for the small handful of public figures who regularly appear in the media. I extend my gratitude to all those who shared their time and hospitality in Yerevan and Los Angeles, and apologize for (m)any shortcomings. CEU is a place where one learns something new every day from fellow doctoral students. Many of my colleagues became not just my closest friends but also my intellectual mentors, whether in a classroom, pubs from Terv and Tulipán to Gólya and Ellátó, or an online group chat. Only a few names can be mentioned here: Raia Apostolova, Volodymyr Artiukh, Ana Chiritoiu, Victoria Fomina, Annastiina Kallius, Wiktor Marzec, Sergiu Novac, Alexandra Oanca, Ezgican Özdemir, Szilárd István Pap, Omar Qassis, Salome Schaerer and Jana Tsoneva. I am also grateful for the feedback and support of resident and visiting faculty members at the department, such as John Clarke, Alexandra Kowalski, Daniel Monterescu, Vlad Naumescu and Anna Szemere. My stays in Yerevan were made all the more intellectually stimulating by providing me CEU eTD Collection with the opportunity to converse with such bright minds as Levon Abrahamian, Karena Avedissian, Babken DerGrigorian, Elen Grigoryan, Lusine Margaryan, Karolina Pawlowska and Gayane Shagoyan, and the participants in the weekly Methodological Seminars of the Institute for Ethnography and Archaeology of the National Academy of Sciences. In Los Angeles I learned much from Peter Cowe, Neil Crowley, Daniel Fittante, Tanya Matthan and Arno Yeretzian. In the earliest stage of my research, Daniel Miller’s critical comments inspired me to move away from abstract theoretical concerns to themes closer to the life-worlds of people in Yerevan and Los Angeles. Many of my ideas were formed during a five months stay as a visiting lecturer at the Department of Sociology of Babes-Bolyai University in Cluj-Napoca, Romania. My students there taught me more about popular culture in a digital age than I could have taught them, and its faculty provided helpful feedback during a departmental seminar. The 2014 Graduate Student Colloquium in Armenian Studies at UCLA deserves special gratitude for two reasons. First, its generous travel funding allowed me to combine the presentation of my work from Yerevan with my first fieldwork in Los Angeles. Second, the enlightening exchanges and warm welcome of those affiliated with UCLA’s Armenian Studies Program during this event were crucial to my return for an extended stay as a visiting graduate researcher in 2015. Funding was also provided by CEU’s doctoral support research grant, short term travel grant, and a research support grant from the USC Institute of Armenian Studies and the Gulbenkian Foundation as part of the institute’s initiative named “The End of Transition: Shifting Focus a Quarter Century After the Soviet Collapse.” Parts of Chapter 3, “Materializing an Unrecognized Republic,” have appeared as a journal article titled “The Humanitarian Road to Nagorno-Karabakh: Media, Morality and Infrastructural Promise in the Armenian Diaspora” in Identities: Global Studies in Culture and Power (included in the references as Adriaans 2017b). The comments and insights of the anonymous reviewers also helped me to rethink the rest of the chapter. Above all, I am indebted to my parents Piet and Ank, who have encouraged me to CEU eTD Collection explore my interests at all stages of my life, and to my brothers, sisters-in-law, nieces and nephew, for always bringing joy and laughter between my many long stays abroad. Table of Contents Abstract ..................................................................................................................................... 2 Table of Contents ...................................................................................................................... 5 List of Terms and Abbreviations ............................................................................................... 7 List of Figures ........................................................................................................................... 8 1. Introduction: The Armenian World in Times of Exodus ...................................................... 9 1.1. Recognition and Redistribution in the Armenian World .............................................. 16 1.2. The Transition Years Between California and the South Caucasus ............................. 22 1.3. 1988: The Los Angeles Diaspora as a Witnessing Public ............................................ 25 1.4. The Karabakh Conflict and the Homeland Eligibility of Armenia ............................... 28 1.5. The Homeland and the Diaspora: Contested Notions................................................... 32 1.6. Time of the Nation, Immediacy of Mediation .............................................................. 36 1.7. Diasporic Iconicity and the Internal/External Dialectic ............................................... 39 1.8. Methodology and Research Ethics ............................................................................... 44 1.9. Overview of the Chapters ............................................................................................. 48 2. The Genocide Centennial in Red and Purple....................................................................... 50 2.1. The Red Centennial: Remediating the Moral Wound .................................................. 54 2.1.1. Mural Art and the Armenian Emcee Cypher ............................................................. 63 2.1.2. Circulations of Woundedness, from Los Angeles to Yerevan .................................. 66 2.2. The Centennial in Purple: Branding for Unity ............................................................. 67 2.2.1. From Soviet to Post-Soviet Commemorative Iconography ....................................... 70