Changing subjects: Ottoman belonging in Armenian refugee print culture
Coffee will be served from 11am.
The community was the defining condition of Ottoman belonging. Being a legitimate subject required abiding by the imperially prescribed collective identities of either Muslim or legally recognized and accommodated – but unequal – non-Muslims. Beyond inequality, this juridico-political necessity also produced a socio-political context that was inimical to individuation and subjectivity. One’s selfhood was existentially bound to the Empire’s communalist dictates. Historiography has tended to shy away from chronicling the dynamics and effects of this tension. And where available, existing histories have struggled either with the scarcity or viability of available archives. Yet, in the late 19th century, leaders of Ottoman-Armenian print culture – which is to say, also of Armenian social and political life – began to identify this tension as a significant psycho-social challenge to Armenian sociality. As migrants, emigres, and refugees, they brought a de-communalized perspective to Armenian subjectivity. Focusing on three such individuals – the self-taught son of a migrant laborer, a cosmopolitan émigré feminist, and a self-proclaimed stateless “ex-arménien” –, this presentation will discuss their meta- or trans-communal challenges to Ottoman and Armenian communalism. To that end, it will draw on their social, cultural, and political involvements; autobiographical texts, including memoirs; and underexamined or previously unknown literary works.
Date:
7 November 2024, 11:15 (Thursday, 4th week, Michaelmas 2024)
Venue:
Balliol College, Broad Street OX1 3BJ
Venue Details:
Old Common Room
Speaker:
Dr Nanor Kebranian (Vienna)
Organising department:
Faculty of History
Organisers:
Joe Leidy (Exeter),
John-Paul Ghobrial
Organiser contact email address:
movingstories@history.ox.ac.uk
Part of:
Religion and Mobility in Late Ottoman and Modern Middle Eastern History (The ‘Moving Stories’ Seminar)
Booking required?:
Not required
Audience:
Members of the University only
Editor:
Alexia Lewis
