Critics’ Forum
Literature
Perennially Transnational: Armenian Literature after the Genocide
By Myrna Douzjian
As a graduate student in Comparative Literature, I recently had the
opportunity to present a talk entitled "Post-Genocide Armenian
Literature of the Homeland and Diaspora" to students in an Armenian
Studies undergraduate seminar at USC.
I was initially confounded by the notion of having to unify a vast
period of literary production in two complex and fluid locales – the
homeland and the Diaspora. The term homeland lacked geographical and
historical fixity – Western Armenia, Karabagh, Javakhk, the Armenian
SSR, and the two periods of the Republic of Armenia (pre-Soviet and
the contemporary, post-Soviet) had to be taken into account.
Defining the Diaspora presented a separate slew of considerations: the
generation of Genocide survivors; the distinctions in perspective that
their successors would come to offer; different waves of voluntary
dispersion throughout the 20th century; and an abundance of locales
and shifting centers of literary output (Argentina, Canada, France,
Lebanon, Russia, Syria, US, etc.) were factors contributing to the
heterogeneous nature of the Diaspora. I would have to convey that
Armenian Diaspora literature represents various networks of
ever-changing communities and a diverse range of diasporic
experiences.
But even these issues were not the most important of my worries. There
remained the rather conspicuous fact that, for the most part, I had
studied and read about literature in the homeland and Diaspora
separately. Subcategories in Armenian literary studies abound:
Eastern, Western, Soviet, Armenian Republic, French-Armenian,
Armenian-American, second generation Armenian-American, ad
infinitum. Academic scholarship perpetuates the specialization of
Armenian literature into narrower, separate subfields, thereby
limiting the amount of dialogue that acknowledges the connections
between the parts of the whole. What thread would tie it all together
in order to produce a coherent lecture?
Certainly, the conscientious critic strives to bring out the
particularities in the work of individual authors. Thus, an attempt at
effectively homogenizing nearly a century of Armenian literary
production would seem like a counter-intuitive move, positioned
directly against the norm. But I’ve come to understand that the
attempt to find a unifying thread in the Armenian literature of the
last century proves, nevertheless, to be a worthwhile endeavor. When
viewed as a whole, Armenian literature after the Genocide exhibits a
striking constant: its transnational character.
In academic terms, the concept of "transnationalism" involves a
constant negotiation of cultural identity with the identity of others
– neighbors, colonizers, and empires – and a grappling with the power
dynamics involved between various positions, including dominant and
dominated, and central and peripheral. Throughout the 20th and 21st
centuries (and certainly well before that) Armenians have been living
in the interstices, between cultures and identities, thereby
problematizing the traditional definition of the nation-state. As a
result, Armenia, or the homeland, has existed as a place; but its
presence as a state of mind in the cultural imagination has arguably
had equal weight. The significance of geographical specificity becomes
lessened in this regard: Armenian literature, no matter where or when,
has a transnational character, because it has always existed at the
intersection of cultures as well as power politics.
To take a simple example, Soviet Armenian literature, if considered
part of literature of the homeland, was always based on an interaction
between Soviet policies and Armenian interests. Throughout this
period, authors in the Armenian SSR had to manipulate their actual
priorities according to the Soviet party line and the dictates of
Socialist Realism. Although the amount of pressure placed on writers
varied depending on the political climate in Moscow, punishment
through exile and limitations placed on the articulation of national
and ethnic concerns remained unchanging issues for Armenian
writers. Similarly, though in the era of post-Soviet independence, the
work of contemporary writers like Berj Zeytountsyan, Aghassi Ayvazyan,
and Kourken Khanjyan has addressed the lasting effects of the Soviet
regime on the new nation-state as well as the rise of the influence of
neocolonial powers, most notably Russia and the US.
As a result of the transnational character of the Armenian experience,
a fixation in the literary criticism of the last two decades has been
the question of where to place Armenian literature in the context of
global literary trends. Authors and critics have constantly evaluated
the literature of the Republic in comparison with "European
standards." Just as Armenia continues to be subjected to the Great
Game – the world powers’ quest for leverage over the Transcaucasus
region – the literature of the homeland struggles to affirm its
cultural viability. By the same token, Diaspora literature has defined
itself based on an awareness of itself in relation to external
socio-political and cultural forces. Its struggle for cultural
viability therefore represents the difficult tug of war between
Armenians’ resistance against and assimilation into dominant cultures;
and, its transnational themes include dual or hybrid identities,
language, cultural transference (such as the use of memory and history
in the grand narrative that unities Armenians), cultural survival, and
the Genocide.
To take a specific example from the literature, Simon Vratzian’s
semi-autobiographical work Kianki Ughinerov begins with a description
that highlights the age-old relevance of transnationalism to
Armenians:
In the beginning was the land of Armenia and the Kingdon of Bagratuni
– Ani. And Ani became the Volga. And the Volga became the Crimea. And
Crimea became the Don. And the Don became the Republic of Armenia. And
the Republic became the entire world. And the Armenian became a
citizen of the world. This is my story, and, changing names, the story
of all Armenians, past and present. (Qtd. In Richard G. Hvannisian,
"Simon Vratzian and Armenian Nationalism." Middle Eastern Studies
5. No. 3. Oct. 1969. P. 192.)
Being located between various flows of cultural capital or on the
periphery of hegemonic cultural activity – in other words, struggling
with and against the cultural and political forces around it – binds
together the multiple locales that the terms homeland and Diaspora
encompass. And since the historical definition of the homeland as a
place has itself changed, Armenian cultural identity, and by
implication, the obsessions of so much of its literature, is defined
by both the status and the struggles of a complex, transnational
identity.
Literary and cultural critic Gayatri Spivak sees Armenia and the
Diaspora as a model that can be applied to a great deal of
contemporary global realities. She writes, "Any theory of postcolonial
hybridity pales into insignificance when we consider the millennial
ipseity of the Armenian, existing in uneasy double bind with the
hybridity imposed by the locale" (Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak. Other
Asias. Blackwell Publishing: Malden, 2008). In simpler terms, the
identity (the "ipseity") of Armenian literature and the Armenian
experience lies somewhere between the global and the local; it is
defined by the "uneasy" combination of the two. And rather than
representing an anomaly, the transnational character of the Armenian
experience is fast becoming the norm. Likewise, irrespective of the
geographical divisions intrinsic to the categories of Armenian
homeland and Diaspora, the literature of the two shares a strong
common ground – the constant necessity of negotiating the politics and
identities of various others..
Homeland and Diaspora are widely accepted, nearly undeniable
categories for things Armenian – in the arts, academia, politics, news
media, and, above all, daily life. Having found at least one framework
by which to represent Armenian literature in its variety, I was able
to let go of these occasionally divisive designations, however
unintentional they might be. At a time when politics has driven a wide
rift between the Diaspora and the homeland (now defined in the
traditional sense of the nation-state), I found that literature and
literary criticism offered us a reminder of the inextricable link
between the two.
All Rights Reserved: Critics’ Forum, 2009.
Myrna Douzjian is a doctoral candidate in the Department of
Comparative Literature at UCLA, where she teaches literature and
composition courses.
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