Violent Pasts, Difficult Confrontations: On the Armenian Genocide and Hirschkind’s “The Feeling of History”

Abstract

The violent expulsion of Ottoman Armenians from their homelands between 1915 and 1918 had been erased from Turkish historiography and collective memory. If and when this past is addressed, the official narrative echoes Turkey’s second president İnönü’s statements at the Lausanne Conference: that Armenians betrayed “the generosity of the country in which they lived for centuries in comfort and plenty.” This narrative of Armenian betrayal is so pervasive that even referring to the mass killings of an estimated million Armenians as genocide is a dangerous statement that may result in ostracization, imprisonment, and sometimes violent repercussions and death. Given this ubiquitous denialism, many survivors follow Heranuş in spending their lives hiding who they truly are, turning the original act of violence into a transgenerational trauma for Turkey’s remaining Armenian population. As I read Hirschkind’s masterful reading of the Andalucismo and stories and writings of the thinkers, poets, musicians and activists associated with this tradition, Çetin’s description of the utter unsettlement of herself and her world upon finding out her roots, and how she then rebuilt her sense of identity and life kept coming back to me (Çetin became a prominent human rights lawyer following her grandmother’s revelation). Hirschkind’s book analyzes the Andalucismo as a “modern tradition of critical reflection on the norms of European politics and culture based on a cultivated appreciation for the histories and legacies of southern Iberia’s Muslim and Jewish societies.” Advocates of this tradition push back against official historiographies that disavow the