Discourses of Memory In Iranian Languages

Religion and Oral History: The Origin Myth of the Yezidis
Eszter Spaet, Central European University, Budapest

This paper aims at analyzing the "origin myth" of the Yezidis, and placing it in a context of religious oral history.

According to this myth, transmitted orally, the Yezidis are not the offspring of Adam and Eve, as the rest of mankind, but of the divinely created Shehid bin Jar, the mythological ancestors of the Yezidis.

The myth of Shehid is one of the central myths of Yezidi religious lore, as it served both to distinguish Yezidis, the true believers, as a uniquely created race from "non-believers," as well as to explain and reinforce the strict endogamy practiced by this group. I shall first (of all) trace the roots of the myth to Late Antique and Gnostic mythological traditions concerning the Biblical figure of Seth and his righteous offspring, and explain how such a myth not only served to forge a community identity, but also conferred a religious "pedigree" on a group of people in a society where all spoke, or at least understood, the same mythological language. Next I shall examine and interpret the peculiar changes this myth, once incorporated into Yezidi mythology, underwent with time. Finally a few words will be devoted to how today, becoming obsolete, meaningless and even ridiculous in contemporary (historical) discourse, the myth is gradually replaced by new, secular "origin myths." These new "origin myths" that trace the descent of Yezidis from the former glorious cultures of the Middle East, provide a "pedigree" that is more comprehensible to people with a modern education than the legend of Shehid bin Jar.

Historiography and Oral Epics in Balochi Oral Tradition
Sabir Badalkhan, University of Naples

To peoples with no written traditions oral tradition forms the main available source for a reconstruction of the past. In such societies, oral poems function as historical references and people often take them as record of facts, using them to settle disputes on such matters as land and ancestors, and the like.

The Baloch did not have a written history until the arrival of the British in the region during the 19th century. Historians had to rely on their oral traditions to reconstruct their history. In these attempts, a poem, published in Longworth Dames under the title of the "Ballad of Genealogies", has been the most widely cited one and treated as a record of their past. This poem states that the original homeland of the Baloch was Halab (identified as Aleppo in Syria by the vast majority of scholars); they were followers of Ali, the son-in-law of Prophet Muhammad; they migrated towards east as a result of their siding with Imam Husain, son of Ali who was then martyred by Yazid, and so on. The poem maintains that migrating from Halab they first settled in the areas east of modern-day Bandar Abbas, then moved further east and settled in the Bampur area now in Iranian Makran. Due to the mounted pressures from Iran the most numerous and powerful tribes decided to leave that land some time around the 14th and 15th centuries and proceeded to other parts of Balochistan, Sind and the Punjab.

Since the first appearance of this poem it has been the most widely quoted one in the whole collection of Balochi oral poetry. There is hardly any scholar, writing on the Baloch and Balochistan, who has not made mention this poem and many have even claimed, without having any first hand information, that this poem is universally found among the Baloch. As such, this so-called 'Ballad of Genealogy' has become the base of the majority of conjectures about the origins and early migrations and settlements of the Baloch.

In this paper I will discuss two major points: 1) the historicity of the poem and its contents; and 2) whether it is true to claim that this poem is universally known among the Baloch.

"Are You Writing Our Book Yet?" War, Culture, Structural Violence, and Oral Historical Representation. (A work in progress from Herat, Afghanistan)
Margaret A. Mills, Ohio State University

This paper will reflect on some problems and dilemmas of representation and authorship when undertaking, with the respondents' full encouragement, the oral history of an Afghan family from the viewpoint of the parent generation over their own lifetimes. While the exigencies of war, exile and return provide an abundance of shared themes, including opportunities to compare and analyze alternative versions of the same events, on closer inspection, some key events in family history are also, almost inevitably, painfully and indiscreetly contested, more so as the parental perspective on the family expands from a nuclear family to an extended one with multiple married children and their own offspring.

Over a thirty year period, aging, the emerging aspirations of the elders for religious achievement, and the hard experiences of repeated displacement and economic marginalization modulate the stories told in the family and the stakes of different family members in the outcomes of family decisions. Examples of these modulations will be presented from excerpts of taped conversations and related data over the course of the author's acquaintance with the family. Particularly at issue at this late stage are the parents' perceptions of their responsibilities to adult children and their families, and vice versa.

Ultimately, the folklorist as oral history author, working with a small, interconnected group such as a single family, must balance the family members' individual and collective viewpoints and expectations for respectful representation with her own need to represent the depth and intensity of dilemmas faced by the family, the difficulty of some choices they have had to make, over a time that has entailed some extraordinary stresses on physical and social resources. Representing ordinary Afghans to non-Afghans involves analyses of agency, and perhaps of species of everyday heroism, which the represented may or may not find adequate or even acceptable. Research ethics questions inherent in some draft textual examples will be presented for discussion.

I would like to present examples from this work in progress to the group for critical and logistical commentary and advice. Are the felt responsibilities and priorities of the ethnographic author different in our different respective academic fields? How do macro- and micro-political considerations condition our analytic discourse? How can one develop a balance between the presentation of extraordinary (or even ordinary) needs and achievements of ones subjects? Especially in the wake of the widely read, and vilified, personal memoir, The Bookseller of Kabul, one is mindful of the need for a workable compact of mutual respect between the represented subjects and the author they let into their lives. This is particularly the case when the work, at their own request, precludes the subjects' anonymity.

Putting Ortachiya Online: The Potential of the Internet for Memory Projects
Christine Allison, INALCO, Paris

This paper will discuss the possibilities of the Internet for academic research projects on memory. The proposed project is a case study of discourses of memory in a Yezidi village, Ortachiya in Aparan (Aragats), Armenia. The original idea was to carry out oral history interviews with inhabitants of the villages, observe the practice of commemoration and thus make an analysis of the discourses of memory. The results would be displayed online in a dedicated website as a showcase, a relatively common practice in oral history work.

However, the current situation in the villages makes me wonder if one could take this idea further, in a way which might produce interesting results for my research and perhaps for the Yezidis themselves. The current economic situation in Armenia has produced a depopulation of villages in general, and many have emigrated, to Russia in particular, to find work. This is also the case amongst the Yezidi minority in Armenia, but due to their already small numbers (probably about 50,000 at the fall of the Soviet Union) this depletion in the population has grave implications for the survival of their distinctive culture and traditions. When one visits the villages, one finds households of middle-aged and elderly people whose children are in Russia,and therefore unable to participate fully in village life.

This paper will consider the possibility of creating a website in the appropriate languages which would contain oral history material and would then be controlled by people from the Aparan area. (There is considerable online activity amongst Yezidis in Russia with at least one active Yezidi website with an interest in heritage). Comparisons will be made with existing websites, such as twentyvoices.com (which has different aims but shows the potential of the internet medium) and akakurdistan.com, the 'Kurds' family photo album'. Such a website might become a useful resource for local people and would certainly be an interesting test case for myself as a researcher.

Untying the Tongue-Tied: Linguicide, language, and memory in Dersim
Ugur Ü. Üngör, University of Amsterdam Center for Holocaust and Genocide Studies

The establishment of the Turkish Republic in 1923 was a watershed in the modern history of the Middle East. It marked the turn of the multi-ethnic Ottoman empire into ostensibly homogenous nation states. Very often the respective political elites carried out encompassing programs of demographic engineering. Turkish government policies too, in the period 1910-1940 were marked by these campaigns of ethnic cleansing. In this period, a generation of Turkish politicians also known as the 'Young Turks', managed to maintain power and persisted in implementing plans of demographic homogenization. The consolidation and institutionalization of party supremacy combined with a virulent nationalist ideology lead to large scale ethnic policies including deportation, genocide, and forced assimilation of non-Turkish minorities, mostly carried out under the banner of nation-building.

One of the areas that was targeted was the Kurdish Alevi stronghold of Dersim, in eastern central Anatolia. The implicit conflict between its semi-independent tribes and the government simmered until the Turkish Interior Ministry decided in the 1930s to "radically solve the Dersim question". The infrastructure of the nation state invaded the mountainous Dersim district and the conflict escalated. For one year, the tribes held against the vastly superior Turkish army. When their defense collapsed in July 1938, the army conducted meticulous massacres of dozens of villages in Dersim. Thousands, possibly tens of thousands of people died. Thousands more were deported to western Anatolia where they met with unfamiliarity, poverty, and discrimination. After the massacre, a process of forced cultural assimilation was set in motion. Girls from Dersim were targeted for turkification in a special boarding school, as a result of which entire families were cut off from their native languages (Zazaki and Kurmanci) and consequently from the traumatic memory embedded in those languages. Utilizing Dersim as an example, this paper will address the nature of trauma, language and memory in Dersim.

Oral History of the Yezidis - Recollecting and Forgetting
Ilhan Kizilhan, University of Konstanz

In many regions of the world, letters have been used as a storage medium rather late. Above all, this is true for groups which had no state or semi-state institutions, and were not supported by them, respectively. In the Middle East, time and again gladly quoted as birthplace of civilization, where various science disciplines have taken their origin, there existed as well a number of societies which, due to their religious and ethnic affiliation, did not get access to schools where they could have learned how to write. Other groups again rejected writing for manifesting and preserving their religion, since they were not convinced of that means, and the elite did not wish to relinquish religious contents as an instrument of power. For these and probably some other reasons, some groups to this day do not possess any collective memory in writing. They try to pass on their history and religion by oral tradition to the next generation. The question of recollecting and forgetting on the example of the Yezidis is the base of our research-discussion.

"Rice and Chickpeas": Remembering and Forgetting Fahriye's Story in Kurdish Nationalist Discourse
Rojda ALAÇ, EHESS, Paris

In January 2006 discussions about a documentary film titled "Nohutlu Pilav" (Rice with Chickpeas) have invaded Kurdish film makers' minds. The movie was about the life of a Kurdish woman named Fahriye whose guerrilla husband was put to death by the Turkish Army in an armed conflict with the PKK. Upon this tragic event, Fahriye started to cook rice with chickpeas and give it to a man to sell in the streets of Istanbul in return for a share. Her experience attracted the attention of a film maker who wanted to deal with her life, in his movie, as an example of the displaced Kurdish women in Istanbul.

The film, however, did not show other events that affected Fahriye's life. Fahriye wanted to marry someone who has denounced all his political activities after having served ten years in prison. In spite of the outspoken objection of his late husband's family, Fahriye insisted on marrying him. Later, the family and the Kurdish political groups objected the premier of the film, asserting that "she does not deserve" the film depicting her life. Thus, as a result of this political pressure the premier of the film has failed.

In my presentation I would like to discuss the contradicting accounts about Fahriye and her life experience. Fahriye's life in an atmosphere, where male dominated political discourses win the day, gives me -in my opinion- a unique chance to analyse the agency of a displaced Kurdish woman in Turkey. In this framework Fahriye's life offers not only one social narrative but many that are constructed by a variety of social and political groups such as the family, nationalist Kurdish group and the Turkish state. Thus, with that in mind, I will try, in my presentation, to explore the ways in which narratives about Fahriye's own life are produced by these groups and how can Fahriye create a narrative of her own life in spite of the male dominated discourses that create the Kurdish nationalist imaginary today in Turkey.

The Memory of an Archive: Nineteenth-century Ottoman Empire and the Post-colonial Debate
Yavuz Aykan, EHESS, Paris

My paper intends to understand the ways in which the modern administrative practices of the Ottoman Empire produced a body of archival knowledge in order to define its eastern border peoples as 'stagnant' and 'self-consolidating other'; and the impact of this process on the construction of modernity in the Ottoman Empire and Republican Turkey. In juxtaposing the terms 'modernity' and 'border peoples' I will try to show the process through which the images of a people on the borderlands have been produced in the 'modern' imperial imaginary. Thus, an important inquiry informing my paper will be the meanings of 'east' and 'easterner', from within the empire, in the nineteenth-century Ottoman reform literature.

As well as the modern administrative practices of the empire, my paper will analyze the continuities and the discontinuities of this imperial knowledge in Republican Turkey and its effects on the memory of the latter through the Ottoman archives. Finally, my paper will try to contribute to the understanding of the following question: as is well known, the foundation of Republican Turkey has been considered to be a radical rupture from the Ottoman past, which stands for 'Islam' and 'tradition' for the modern Ataturkist legacy. This paper seeks to question this dominant view (in Turkey) that there is a distinct rupture in this historical process by showing the governmental continuities in the archives.

My paper intends to understand the ways in which the modern administrative practices of the Ottoman Empire produced a body of archival knowledge in order to define its eastern border peoples as 'stagnant' and 'self-consolidating other'; and the impact of this process on the construction of modernity in the Ottoman Empire and Republican Turkey. In juxtaposing the terms 'modernity' and 'border peoples' I will try to show the process through which the images of a people on the borderlands have been produced in the 'modern' imperial imaginary. Thus, an important inquiry informing my paper will be the meanings of 'east' and 'easterner', from within the empire, in the nineteenth-century Ottoman reform literature.

As well as the modern administrative practices of the empire, my paper will analyze the continuities and the discontinuities of this imperial knowledge in Republican Turkey and its effects on the memory of the latter through the Ottoman archives. Finally, my paper will try to contribute to the understanding of the following question: as is well known, the foundation of Republican Turkey has been considered to be a radical rupture from the Ottoman past, which stands for 'Islam' and 'tradition' for the modern Ataturkist legacy. This paper seeks to question this dominant view (in Turkey) that there is a distinct rupture in this historical process by showing the governmental continuities in the archives.

Remembering the West: The self and the west in the memoirs of Iranian politicians, diplomats, and intellectuals
Oliver Bast, University of Manchester

I would like to present a paper comparing (re)presentations of the west and westerners and (in relation to that) the (individual) self in the memoirs of Iranian political activists, politicians and diplomats, who have been in exile, travelling or being posted to West in the period between the Constitutional and the Islamic Revolutions. I intend to take a comparative look at a couple of case studies being a limited number of famous "khaterat" that can be seen as representative for their respective period, authors that will be looked at include Wahid ol-Molk, Arfa' od-Dowhleh, Seyyed Hasan Taqizadeh, 'Abd ol-hoseyn Mas'ud Ansari, Khan Malek Sasani, Ehtesham os-Saltaneh, Nuroddin Kia and others.

Memory and Social Structure in Kurdish Society
Luqman Turgut, Georg-August University, Goettingen

Oral cultures have a broad array of mnemonic techniques to help remember their poetry, the narratives and other oral recitations. In musical performances, structural elements of the music can serve as additional aids for proper recall. Social aspects such as hierarchy, repartition of functions etc, in a given society play an important role in the transmission of oral recitations and in preserving the whole culture. Contemporary scholars of oral transmission seem to favor the idea that there is little evidence for verbatim transmission and that therefore oral traditions are constantly changing.

In the context of the oral culture of Kurdish nomadic and transhumant societies in the region of Bothan and Hekkariya, the survival of the tradition seem to depend on structures of these societies. Verbatim transmission is not essential; however the function of transmission seems to be central. Of course formulas, melody and text-rhythm are important in the recalling process, but a system of natural education is needed for the survival of the oral culture itself in the cited societies. Analyzing the dependence between oral culture and structures of respective societies helps explain how the process of transmission works and how the conditions of transmission are fulfilled.

Lullabies , Laments and Memories : a comparative study on Kurdish and Armenian examples in today's Istanbul
Estelle Amy de la Bretèque, Université Paris X Nanterre
Melissa Bilal, University of Chicago

This presentation will focus on lament-type lullabies as means of gendered transmission of experiences and memories.

In the houses, next to the cradle, Kurdish and Armenian women in today's Istanbul create an intimate space where they dialogue with themselves and with their child, expressing their feelings, their sorrows, as well as the trauma of displacement, exile and loss. Through the words, the music, the circumstances and the context in which Armenian and Kurdish lullabies are sung in today's Istanbul, women transmit memories to the community.

Our aim will be to discuss the characteristics of these memories in the Kurdish and the Armenian case, and their transmission in an urban context, sometimes seen as foreign land and sometimes as homeland.

Singing the nation; music in the construction of a "national memory" in Turkey's Kurdish areas
Yiannis Kanakis, Université Paris IV

Orality and, more specifically, music and song, have been -and remain- extremely important in the transmission and evolution of ideas on individual as well as on collective self among Turkey's Kurds. Especially from the '70s on, music has become one of the constituents of what might appear, from a certain point of view, to be a paradox: in parallel with the relative decline in hitherto traditional ways of producing, performing and consuming Kurdish repertoires, Kurdish music, increasingly part of a (Turkish or European) musical industry framework, has played a significant role in the gradual emergence of a notion of "Kurdish collective memory" concerning all the Kurds of Turkey (sometimes also projected to neighbouring countries' Kurdish populations).

The same "paradox" is also present in Hakkari, a borderline key-region for guerilla and counter-guerilla activities, and a smugglers' haven, which has been, until very recently, highly isolated from the rest of Turkey. However, due to its various (historical, geographical, cultural…) specificities, Hakkari has somehow lived its passage to "national awareness" and "national memory" in its own way.

Hakkari's very rich musical -especially vocal- traditions, as well as their recent transformations (composer, singer, player, listener, dancer, occasion, time, place, manner, related media, content, context, interpretation etc.) can be valuable guides to the study of locals' memories, which are increasingly being perceived by Hakkari Kurds (as well as Turks) as parts of "Kurdish national tradition" and "Kurdish collective memory". Remembrance, memories, memory, often (as also in other areas and cultures) have to literally sing their way into existence -song is, for instance, one of the very few oral testimonies of the area's Christian past.