Shant Parsy Bayramian - 12048976 Supervisor: Dr. Marie-Aude Baronian
Second Reader: Dr. Floris Paalman June 28, 2019
Word Count: 23,000
Abstract
The purpose of this thesis is to explore the filmic representation of the Armenian diasporic “third space” by formally analyzing different filmic representations of Armenian diasporic subjects relating to the Armenian “homeland”. These filmic representations have emerged due to the postcolonial and poststructuralist understandings of identity and diasporas, which have
subsequently led to similar conceptualizations within Armenian diasporic scholarly discourse. However, Armenian diasporic cinema discourse remains within a mono-dimensional
theorization, as it has understood Armenian diasporic films from a singular and static identity position. Such an insight doesn’t shine light onto the fluctuations, fluidity, and elasticity of the Armenian diasporic identity within Armenian diasporic films. Therefore, Homi Bhabha’s concept of the “third space” is applied to the Armenian diasporic identity and the Armenian diasporic films of Calendar (Atom Egoyan, 1993), Ararat (Egoyan, 2003), Apricot Groves (Pouria Heidary, 2016), and The Journey (Edwin Avaness and Emy Hovanesyan, 2002) in order to formally analyze how the “homeland” is negotiated, contested, and articulated for different Armenian diasporic subjects that come from varying Armenian diasporas. In doing so, the heterogeneity of the Armenian diasporic identity and ways of relating to the “homeland” become foregrounded. It is suggested that the Armenian diasporic subjects relate to the Armenian
“homeland” through the negotiations and intersections that take place within other parts of their identity. Therefore, the conceptual breadth of Armenian diasporic cinema is widened and more justly related to the Armenian diasporic identity and the diasporic identity more generally.
Keywords: In-betweenness, third space, Armenian diasporic cinema, Atom Egoyan, “homeland”, Armenian diaspora, Pouria Heidary, and Edwin Avaness & Emy Hovanesyan.
Acknowledgements
This thesis is devoted to all the diasporic subjects who feel misunderstood and lost. Thanks for driving me to constantly search for meaning.
I would like to thank Edwin Avaness, one of the the directors of The Journey, for his determined cooperation to make his film available to me.
I would also like to thank Pouria Heidary, the director of Apricot Groves, for providing a digital copy of his film to me.
Last but not least, I would like to show my gratitude to Dr. Marie-Aude Baronian for her unprecedented guidance and supervision during the writing process of this thesis.
Table of Contents
Abstract 2
Acknowledgements 3
Introduction 5
CHAPTER 1: THEORETICAL FRAMEWORK 12
1.1: Diasporas: Conceptualizations 12
1.2: The “Third Space” 13
1.3: Diaspora, Identity, and the “Third Space” 16
1.4: Diasporic Cinema and Diasporic Cinema Studies 18 1.5: Armenian Diasporic Cinema and Armenian Diasporic Consciousness 22 CHAPTER 2:EXPLORING HETEROGENEITY IN ATOM EGOYAN’S ARARAT (2003) AND
CALENDAR (1993) 30
2.1: Staging in Depth in Atom Egoyan’s Calendar (1993) 30 2.2: Off-screen Dialogue as the Creator of Space in Calendar 35
2.3: Self-reflexivity in Calendar 37
2.4: Heterogeneity in Egoyan’s Ararat (2003) 39
2.5: (Dis)connecting to and Touching the “Homeland” in Ararat 47 CHAPTER 3: OTHER ARMENIAN DIASPORIC FILM SPACES 52
3.1: Pouria Heidary’s Apricot Groves (2016) 52
3.2: Edwin Avaness and Emy Hovanesyan’s The Journey (2002) 60
Conclusion 67
Bibliography 71
Appendix 77
Introduction
I should like to see any power of the world destroy this [Armenian] race, this small tribe of unimportant people, whose wars have all been fought and lost, whose structures have crumbled, literature is unread, music is unheard, and prayers are no more answered. Go ahead, destroy Armenia. See if you can do it… For when two of them meet anywhere in the world, see if they will not create a New Armenia. 1
William Saroyan
The quote cited above is from Inhale and Exhale (1936), a book written by Armenian-American author, William Saroyan. The last segment is significant, where Saroyan emphasizes the creation of a “New Armenia” based off a post-Armenian genocidal memory. This would entail that a new entity forms that is not synonymous to Armenia; one that synthesizes different traditions and cultures, and emerges as an in-between hybrid. Saroyan, being part of the earlier Armenian diaspora, comprehends and has observed the diasporic condition. He is aware of the diasporic process within Armenian communities, where new spaces of signification and modes of belonging emerge through the coalescence of cultures and varying identities. Nevertheless, Saroyan’s explication also emphasizes the importance of the Armenian “homeland”, however that is experienced and related to. Therefore, Saroyan’s premise is further explored within an Armenian diasporic filmic context in this thesis. In doing so, filmic representation becomes a means for new significations of the Armenian diasporic identity, which involve relating to the “homeland”, to be explored and displayed. However, Armenian diasporic film scholarship has not been in line with such a discourse about the heterogeneity and fluidity of the Armenian diasporic identity. For example, Anahid Kassabian & David Kazanjian have made the
advancements in Armenian diasporic filmic scholarship, where they situate Armenian diasporic cinema in two tropes: the nativist and the assimilationist. Both tropes view identity as a one-2 sided element, whether on the Armenian side or on the host society side. Viewing Armenian diasporic films from this static identity politics position is problematic as they are deemed as such; it doesn’t shine light onto the play, fluctuations, in-betweeness and complexities of identity.
William Saroyan, Inhale and Exhale (New York: Random House, 1936), 438. 1
For a more in-depth exploration of the two tropes, see section 1.5. Anahid Kassabian and David Kazanjian, “From Somewhere Else,” Third Text 2
Additionally, the tropes are outdated as most of the films the theorists mention are films from the late 20th century, which were made when ASALA was pushing for genocidal recognition, and 3 4 during the pinnacle of the Nagorno-Karabakh War. These two events were hotbeds for the resurgence of Armenian nationalism, which included genocidal recognition from Turkey. The films the theorists mention might be a response to the socio-political events, and the tropes are a reflection of the films’ production, as cultural theorist Hamid Naficy argues, “One typical initial media response to the rupture of displacement is to create a Utopian prelapsarian chronotope of the homeland that is uncontaminated by contemporary facts.” This is crucial as it showcases the 5 normative construction of the utopian Armenian diasporic “homeland” though films and media, which is fueled by a lack of acknowledgment from Turkey and by displacement as a
consequence of the Armenian Genocide. However, the face of Armenian diasporic cinema has been changing since the 1990s. Other Armenian diasporic films, such as the ones explored in this thesis, do not fit into the aforementioned tropes. Many Armenian diasporic films reject a pure and homogenous notion of Armenianness and identity by exploring the complexities the Armenian diasporic identity embodies, and by representing different ways in which Armenian diasporic subjects relate to the “homeland”. In doing so, Saroyan’s “New Armenia” comes to 6 fruition, where Armenianness takes on different significations and meanings.
Furthering and reconciling Naficy’s differentiation between “exilic cinema” and
“diasporic cinema”, Nellie Hogikyan coins the term “post-exile”, which doesn’t revolve around 7 the ideal search for the “homeland” as experienced by exiles, but it “makes no claim to an ancestral homeland as the sole space of belonging. Instead, what defines the identity of the post-exilic subject is the set of aesthetics associated with postcolonial and diasporic realities such as
For a list of films that they have mentioned and some I have added, see footnote 97. These are the films that the theorists use to highlight their 3
mono-dimensional tropes.
ASALA is the acronym for the Armenian Secret Army for the Liberation of Armenia, which was a militant organization with a highly 4
nationalistic agenda. Some sources would coin them as terrorists. For more see Razmik Panossian, The Armenians: From Kings and Priests to
Merchants and Commissars (London: Hurst & Company, 2006), 310-311.
Hamid Naficy, An Accented Cinema: Exilic and Diasporic Filmmaking (Princeton (N.J.): Princeton University Press, 2001), 152. 5
By “Armenian diasporic subject” here I mean the Armenian diasporic characters in the films. Additionally, in this thesis, I define 6
“Armenianness” as how the Armenian (diasporic) subject relates, understands, and identifies to their Armenian heritage and culture; how the subject experiences being Armenian is what defines Armenianness.
Naficy understands “exilic cinema” as films made by exilic subjects, who are marked more by a “cathected relationship with a single homeland 7
and on a claim that they represent it and its people.” Henceforth, exilic filmmakers’ works are expressed more in the narratives of retrospection, loss, and absence or in strictly partisanal political terms.” While “diasporic cinema” is more marked by the exploration of many different spaces and communities; the films embody elements such as plurality, hybridity, and multiplicity. Hamid Naficy, An Accented Cinema, 14.
hybridity, postnationalism and post-ethnicity.” The films that will be analyzed tie into 8 Hogikyan’s conceptualization as these films foreground hybridity and heterogeneity, and dismantle the notion of a pure and original identity and a “homeland”, as diasporas belong to many spaces. By doing so, they raise awareness of the heterogeneity and flexibility of the 9 Armenian identity, which shapes and evolves the Armenian diasporic sphere. In line with this discourse, I formally analyze the contemporary Armenian diasporic feature films, which I define as feature films in which the content of the film revolves around Armenian diasporic matters, of 10 Atom Egoyan’s Calendar (1993) and Ararat (2001), Pouria Heidary Oureh’s Apricot Groves (2016), and Edwin Avaness and Emy Hovanesyan’s The Journey (2001), as these films 11
understand that Armenian diasporas are neither fully nativist nor assimilationist, which gives rise to their ambivalence. In other words, the films deem the Armenian cultural identity as neither 12 fixed nor fully constructed. The Armenianness in itself is somewhat inherited, but how it is related to is individually fabricated off of diasporic lines. Subjects are thus partially able to craft their own identity and significations of the “homeland”. This ambivalent position should also be marked by a discourse that understands the socio-cultural interstitially of diasporas. Therefore, it is significant to view the Armenian diasporic identity and its manifestation through these films from Homi Bhabha’s the “third space”. Hence, these films and the Armenian diasporic identity 13 are not understood as a binary that fit within the “homeland” and the host society, but as an identity space that negotiates between the two. Viewing it from a binary logic, as suggested by Kassabian and Kazanjian, does not fully understand Armenian diasporas, as diasporas don’t
What Hogikyan mainly finds problematic with Naficy’s distinction is that it shouldn’t be too discretized; diasporas are comprised from exiles. 8
Nellie Hogikyan, “Atom Egoyan’s Post-exilic Imaginary: Representing Homeland, Imagining Family,” in Image And Territory: New Essays on
Atom Egoyan, ed. Monique Tschofenm and Jennifer Burwell (Ontario: Wilfrid Laurier University Press, 2007), 193-217.
“Spaces” within this context entails areas (doesn’t necessarily have to be a physical area, but can also be imagined and conceptual) where 9
aspects of identity are (de)constructed, (dis)affirmed, and (de)constituted. Diasporas may feel a connection to more than two “homeland(s)”, and may construe their identity based on those cultural spaces; this entails that the diasporic identity construction and identification extends beyond the nation. It may even extend onto spaces that are not necessarily cultural, such as spaces that are linked to sexuality, gender, ethnicity, etc. as these types of spaces impact the diasporic identity and the cultural spaces. This belonging of different spaces comes together in Avtar Brah’s “the diaspora space”. Brah notes: “Diaspora space is the intersectionality of diaspora, border, and dislocation as a point of confluence of economic, political, cultural, and, psychic processes. It is where multiple subject positions are juxtaposed, contested, proclaimed, or disavowed; where the permitted and the prohibited perpetually interrogate; and where the accepted and the transgressive imperceptibly mingle even while these syncretic forms may be disclaimed in the name of purity and tradition.” Avtar Brah, Cartographies of Diaspora (Abingdon: Routledge, 1996), 205.
For a more in-depth exploration of what Armenian diasporic cinema is, see section 1.5 and the conclusion. 10
All but Heidary are of Armenian origin. Egoyan is Canadian of Armenian origin; Avaness and Hovanesyan are Americans of Armenian origin 11
who were raised in Iran. Heidary is Iranian.
According to the British Film Institute (BFI), a feature film is a film that runs for 40 minutes or more. “FAQ,” BFI, accessed on May 6, 2019, 12
https://www.bfi.org.uk/archive-collections/bfi-filmography-faq.
While more traditional modes of theoretical conceptualizations do not do justice to the mechanisms of diasporas, such as Marxism, modernism, 13
settle within binaries; diasporas are caught in-between nations, in-between the “homeland(s)” and the hostland(s). This is iterated through Sossie Kasbarian’s argument: “Their [the Armenian Diasporic Identity] own identities are located in the evolving, dynamic, and hybrid space of the transnational, and their individual encounters at the level of society are similarly increasingly fluid. Their actual experience therefore transgresses their reifying discourse about ‘Armenia,’ ‘homeland,’ and ‘diaspora’ and is situated in a new space that they shape actively.” It is this 14 new space that Kasbarian mentions that produces new meanings to the Armenian diasporic identity and Armenian diasporic cinema.
Following Kasbarian, I aim to explore the filmic representation of the Armenian diasporic “third space” by formally analyzing different conceptions and representations of the “homeland”. In doing so, I aim to show that the Armenian diasporic identity lies within the “third space”, where subjects bring subjectivity, performance, and imagination to the fore. It is within the in-between space where these characters craft their Armenianness. By constructing their own conceptions and constructions of the “homeland”, the characters fall within the in-between space because they are able to negotiate what Armenianness and the “homeland” mean to them based on external socio-cultural relations; relations to the “homeland” directly affects the degree of 15 the diasporic subject identifying with their Armenianness. This transforms and fluctuates the conception of Armenianness and the “homeland”, as the “homeland” “is constantly negotiated and encountered, at the individual, community, national, and global levels.” This heterogeneity 16 of different ways of identifying with the “homeland” arises due to how there are different
structures of belonging to the “homeland” in the Armenian diasporas. The films within this thesis foreground these differences based off of the type of diaspora the character is part of. While Egoyan mostly explores western Armenian diasporic subjects, Avaness and Hovanesyan explore eastern Armenian diasporic subjects. Albeit Heidary explores a western Armenian diasporic subject, he also characterizes his subject through transgendered and queer lines. The rationale in choosing these films lies in their diversity. Therefore, to explore the filmic spaces of the
heterogeneity of the Armenian diaspora I pose the overarching question of: “What does the ‘third Sossie Kasbarian, “The Myth and Reality of ‘Return’ - Diaspora in the ‘Homeland’,” Diaspora 18, no. 3 (Fall 2015): 377.
14
External socio-cultural relations denotes other aspects that construct one’s identity other than Armenianness (e.g. the host-society they were 15
brought up in, their sexual orientation, other places they have resided in, etc.). Kasbarian, “The Myth and Reality of ‘Return’ - Diaspora in the ‘Homeland’,” 360. 16
space’ entail for the Armenian diasporic identity, relations to the ‘homeland’, and Armenian diasporic cinema vis à vis the aforementioned films?” Based on such an understanding, in the second chapter I aim to answer the subquestions of: “How does Egoyan filmically present the cultural, mostly western, Armenian diasporic third space?,” and “How is the ‘homeland’ understood and perceived for the Armenian diasporic subjects in Egoyan’s films?” In the third chapter, a subquestion that revolves around other Armenian diasporic spaces is explored: “How do the eastern Armenian and transgendered diasporic subjects relate to the ‘homeland’?”. By answering these subquestions, I aim to demonstrate that the Armenian diasporic identity is heterogenous and fluid.
To undergo such research, I take a qualitative approach to analyze these Armenian diasporic films and use a formalist method, which focuses on the film, its structures, and its forms. I analyze the filmic and narrative techniques that produce meaning onto how characters within these films relate to the “homeland” and Armenianness. This would suppose a qualitative content analysis of the textual tradition with a primary focus on the narrative and the image, as Kim Macnamara states: qualitative content analysis “focuses on the narrative or story-telling within a text with emphasis on meaning that may be produced by its structure and choice of words.” The meaning is thus produced through how the film speaks and how it presents itself. 17 However, the meaning of certain symbols and signs used in the films hark back to other socio-cultural elements and units. The meaning of these symbols and signs in which characters relate to as a connection to the “homeland” is not found within the films themselves, but through
perpetuated and common traditions within Armenian heritage; this would entail more of a symbolistic and semiotic approach, which is used for the analysis of Mount Ararat. The analyses of the films to come are also symptomatic meanings, in the sense that the films display
significance and larger implications within society and culture, and implicit meanings, in the sense that the films construct indirect meanings, themes, or symbolic meanings. This is a more 18 general and further aim of this thesis after all; to demonstrate how these films propel, affirm, and give meaning to current discourses on the Armenian diasporic identity.
Jim Macnamara, “Media Content Analysis: Its Uses; Benefits and Best Practice Methodology,” Asia Pacific Public Relations Journal 6, no. 1 17
(2005): 15.
For more see on different types of meaning within films see David Bordwell, Making Meaning: Inference and Rhetoric in the Interpretation of 18
In the first chapter, I introduce the theoretical framework used to situate the analyses of the films and the Armenian diasporic identity. I first summarize the conceptualization of
diasporas I use, and explicate its significance in relation to the following sections. I then move on to highlight the concept of the “third space” vis à vis cultural and postcolonial theorist, Bhabha. Henceforth, I understand the diasporic identity in relation to the “third space”, and explicate why the “third space” is suitable and applicable to conceptualize the diasporic identity with
theorizations from mainly postcolonial and cultural theorists. Taking these conceptualizations into consideration, I then move on to explain what this particular notion of diasporic identity entails to diasporic cinema. I extend these previous conceptualizations and apply them to the Armenian diasporic identity and Armenian diasporas to craft a potential working definition of Armenian diasporic cinema using theorizations on the Armenian diasporic identity. 19
Chapter two focuses on Atom Egoyan’s Calendar and Ararat viewed through the aforementioned framework. It focuses on how Egoyan, through the narrative and use of filmic techniques, foregrounds mostly characters from the western Armenian diaspora that all relate to the “homeland” differently and construct their Armenianness through varying means. To argue as such, I focus on the cinematography (internally focalized objective shot, long shot, and direct address) and scène (staging in depth and off-screen space) in Calendar, and the mise-en-scène (significance of props and objects), editing (crossfade and crosscutting), and the narrative in Ararat. In addition to viewing these films from the “third space”, I used other theorizations from other theorists who have written on diasporic cinema and diasporas to concretize the articulations that take place within the Armenian diasporic identity. These theorizations are thus used to back up the meanings that the films create.
Chapter three moves from Egoyan’s films and explores other spaces within Armenian diasporic cinema. Through the analysis of Heidary’s Apricot Groves and Avaness and
Hovanesyan’s The Journey, I showcase how other contemporary Armenian diasporic films negotiate the Armenian diasporic identity by foregrounding an eastern Armenian diasporic subject in the latter film and a transgendered Armenian diasporic subject in the former film. I analyze the cinematography (medium shot, internally focalized objective shot, and camera
This potential working definition of “Armenian diasporic cinema” is expanded in the conclusion of the thesis based on the analysis of the films. 19
movement), editing, narrative structure, and mise-en-scène (clothing and objects) in relation to Aram’s character in Apricot Groves and the cinematography (wide-angled time lapses), editing, mise-en-scène (symbol of Mt. Ararat, the letter, and the spaces of NYC and Armenia), and narrative (Eve’s character) in The Journey. Additionally, I use theorizations by Daniela Berghahn about the diasporic queer subject and by Judith Butler about gender identity to understand
CHAPTER 1: THEORETICAL FRAMEWORK
In order to set the basis for the filmic analyses to come in the subsequent chapters, it is crucial to delve into the theoretical considerations to demonstrate the mechanisms and structures in which Armenianness is constructed, and how Armenian diasporic cinema is a means to represent the oscillations within the Armenian diasporic identity and “homeland”. Therefore, the first step in fulfilling this aim is to outline conceptualizations about diasporas to illustrate how diasporas are tied to a “homeland”. Then, the theoretical gist of the “third space” is highlighted, which is applied to the concept of diasporas and identity, presenting the implications of Bhabha’s concept. The implications that stem from the perspective of the “third space” and other conceptualizations of diasporic cinema cognates are used to shine light onto the mechanisms of diasporic cinema. The breadth is then specified to Armenian diasporic cinema and what it entails with regards to its non-mutually exclusive relationship with the Armenian diasporic identity and the different Armenian diasporas.
1.1: Diasporas: Brief Conceptualizations
The theorizations on “diasporas” differ based on the perspective and the socio-historical context. I take Robin Cohen’s guidelines for what constitutes a diaspora as a working definition (see Fig. 1.1 in Appendix). Cohen’s conceptualization is crucial as it remains faithful to the pivotal concept of the homeland as advocated by William Safran. Safran holds a strong view that 20 diasporas are partially defined by their collective memory and emphasis of the homeland. This 21 aspect of the homeland was rejected by the social constructivist approach (emerged in the mid-1990s) as they aimed to deconstruct essential features within diasporas: ethnic/religious community, home/homeland, and displacement. Cohen doesn’t merely borrow Safran’s 22 conceptualizations, but also adds new features to it. This centrality of the “homeland(s)” is the main aspect that defines diasporas, and taking it out of its classification would cause diasporas to
For more, see William Safran, “Diasporas in Modern Societies: Myths of Homeland and Return,” Diaspora: A Journal of Transnational Studies 20
1, no. 1 (1991): 83-99.
Robin Cohen, Global Diasporas: An Introduction (Abingdon: Routlegde, 2008), 4. 21
Cohen gives the example of a program on diasporas at the University of Leeds which started to address the question if certain communities 22
lose their meaning in relation to other transnational groups, as Berghahn states, “what
distinguishes the diasporic family (…) is the connection between the ancestral homeland and the host country, which is based on the collective experience or (post)memory of migration.” 23 However, as will be exemplified later on, the homeland doesn’t have to be tied to the singular, but can also be plural.
1.2: The “Third Space”
The concept of the “third space” was first introduced by cultural and postcolonial theorist, Homi Bhabha, in his seminal book The Location of Culture. Bhabha aims to understand cultural 24 identity and sociocultural dynamics from a perspective that is not dominated by western critical enlightenment discourse. Bhabha sees this as problematic as it perpetuates its own discourse, and by doing so, it maintains its differences with the “other”. It is this distancing that is present in the cultural difference between the “other” and the institutional hegemony that deems the former as powerless. So, Bhabha finds western critical discourse problematic as it has led to the 25
repression of the “subaltern” , mainly because it does not extend beyond strict structural 26
integrity. This is why Bhabha’s greater aim is to advocate for another form of theorizing, one that is freed from the shackles of “Enlightenment humanism and aesthetics.” The understanding of 27 such a discourse as such posits cultural identity as not only static, but one where hierarchy resides. The “other” in this case is usually subjugated, the one who is inferior.
Bhabha uses and harks back to Jacques Derrida and his concepts of “différance” and “deconstruction”. Using Derrida’s concepts are essential to reverse this binary hierarchical 28 thinking when it comes to cultural identity. Bhabha does so as he believes that the
Daniela Berghahn, Far-flung Families in Film: The Diasporic Family in Contemporary European Cinema (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University 23
Press, 2014), 48.
Homi K. Bhabha, “The Commitment to Theory,” in The Location of Culture, (Abingdon: Routledge, 2004), 19-39. 24
It is precisely due to these binaries (superior/inferior) that this thinking gives rise to that has partially led to colonialism in the first place. 25
Term first coined by Antonio Gramsci more from a perspective of class and socio-economics. See Antonio Gramsci, Prison Notebooks, trans. 26
and ed. Joseph Buttigieg, vol. 3 (New York: Columbia University Press, 2007), 73. It was later later developed in a cultural and postcolonial context by Gayatri Spivak. See Gayatri Spivak, “Can the Subaltern Speak?,” in Colonial Discourse and Postcolonial Theory: A Reader, ed. Patrick Williams and Laura Chrisman (New York: Columbia University Press, 1994), 66-111.
Bhabha, “The Commitment to Theory,” 32. 27
“Différance”, according to Derrida, is a play on words used to “deconstruct” meaning and to showcase that meaning in signs is dominated by 28
binaries and hierarchies due to how signs are differentiated from each other. Additionally, the concept understands that meaning is always deferred because whatever used to describe a thing is different from the thing itself. “Différance” is one of the concepts present in the wider approach of “deconstruction”. For more on these concepts by Derrida see Jacques Derrida, Of Grammatology, trans. Gayatri Spivak (Baltimore: John Hopkins University Press, 1997), 23-24.
poststructuralist mode of thought deconstructs the rational modern man and nation, and then, he revisits Saussure’s linguistic sign, which has given rise to these cultural binaries. Bhabha uses a poststructuralist approach as it would question the binary oppositions in any structure. He uses the idea that meaning harks to a signified chain and that the meaning of something is always linked to the meaning of something else; each sign has traces of another sign. This is how 29 postcolonial theorists acquire the meaning of identity, from the poststructuralist view on
discourse and language; that meanings are undecidable. Bhabha then understands the meaning of something to be in-between spaces, in-between signs, because meaning is always interlinked: “The production of meaning requires that these two places be mobilized in the passage through a Third Space.” This “third space” is the space in-between rigid and static meanings where traces 30 of different signs and their meanings collaborate and negotiate. Viewing culture and identity from the “third space” allows the two aforementioned entities to be signified not as what is within their rigid boundaries but in terms of their “marks, traces, or inducible features, in terms of their margins, limits, or frameworks, and in terms of their self-circumscriptions or self delimitations.” This means that the “third space” destroys the rigid structures of reference and 31 meaning, and puts them - structures of reference and meaning - in “an ambivalent process.” By 32 doing so, cultural knowledge is deemed as a construct, as unnatural: “[the ‘third space’] destroys this mirror of representation in which cultural knowledge is customarily revealed as an
integrated, open, expanding code.” 33
Meaning is fluctuated within the “third space” - this is how the concept of modernity and modern history is demolished, by deconstructing the theory that precedes and has constructed it. In doing so, Bhabha exemplifies his main point, namely that the “meaning and symbols of culture have no primordial unity or fixity; that even the same signs can be appropriated,
translated, rehistoricized, and read anew.” All these negotiations and articulations of differences 34 of cultural signs, and even non-cultural signs, are in dialogue and in communication with each
It is a common practice for feminism studies, postcolonial studies, and cultural studies to take poststructuralist and postmodernist thought when 29
theorizing about the respective disciplines. Bhabha, “The Commitment to Theory,” 36. 30 Ibid. 31 Ibid., 37. 32 Ibid. 33 Ibid. 34
other within the “third space”. It is not a certain synthesis which emerges from an addition of the thesis and the anti-thesis, but a space where cultural identities are fluid, free to be translated, where difference is not static and not synthesized like in a multicultural society. The formulaic 35 aspect of the Hegelian “synthesis” is further refuted by Stam and Shohat in their understanding of “hybridity” (a term that Bhabha has also coined): “Hybridity is dynamic, mobile, less an achieved synthesis or prescribed formula than an unstable constellation of discourses.” This 36 instability would entail that the meaning of culture is not the offspring of cultures or different signs, but its meaning lies in the in-between and liminal spaces, the interstices of cultural signs. Consequently, viewing identity or anything for that matter from the “third space” enables “new forms of identity” to emerge “at any point in time,” where the subject slips “in and out of determinate identity at will and generally displaying protean, ambiguous and sometimes
diametrically opposed attributes such as alienation, confusion, amorphousness, ambiguity and/or individuality, among other things.” The emphasis on the disfiguration (“at any point in time”) 37 of a linear temporality is essential here as it doesn’t fixate on a specific origin or even a node; it is a continuous process of flux. To reiterate, the “third space” produces new meanings, not only within the cultural sector, but also other fields as well, through the collaboration and contestation of existing meanings. This is crucial for the diasporic identity which I explicate in relation to 38 the “third space” in the next section.
It is important to understand that Bhabha and later on, Laura Marks, intentionally and explicitly refrain from understanding multiculturalism as 35
a form that possesses “hybridity” and the “third space”. They understand multiculturalism as a form of “othering,” where categorizations and signifiers are still static and intact. “Hybridity” and the “Third Space,” however, as explicated above, do not fall within this conception of society as they are “unpredictable and generative”. See Laura Marks, “A Deleuzian Politics of Hybrid Cinema,” Screen 35, no. 3 (1994): 251.
Ella Shohat and Robert Stam, Unthinking Eurocentrism: Multiculturalism and the Media (Abingdon: Routledge, 2014), 42. 36
Fetson Kalua, “Homi Bhabha’s Third Space and African Identity,” Journal of African Cultural Studies 21, no. 1 (2009): 24. 37
Bhabha, “The Commitment to Theory,” 2. 38
Furthering Bhabha’s concept, Edward Soja has suggested a more conceptually versatile 39 understanding of the “third space”: 40
a space of extraordinary openness, a place of critical exchange where the geographical imagination can be expanded to encompass a multiplicity of perspectives that have heretofore been considered by the epistemological referees to be incompatible, uncombinable. It is a space where issues of race, class, and gender can be addressed simultaneously without privileging one over the other; where one can be Marxist and post-Marxist, materialist and idealist, structuralist and humanist, disciplined and transdisciplinary at the same time. 41
Actually, Soja’s conceptualization is not far off from Bhabha’s at all, and while Bhabha’s lexicon and writing style might be vertiginous for a reader, Soja offers a more parsimonious explanation of the space. I borrow Bhabha’s and Soja’s understanding that a conceptual space of negotiations and articulations between two or more realms exist within culture and identity, and that two or more irreconcilable entities can exist in unison to produce a new sign and meaning; this process isn’t finite in itself, but always in a state of flux, and that meanings are found in-between signs and binaries. I apply this particular notion of the “third space” to the diasporic identity to shine light onto the interstitiality of the Armenian diasporic identity.
1.3: Diaspora, Identity, and the “Third Space”
Diasporas occupy a great space in the contemporary public sphere and politics. Discourses about migration, integration, assimilation, globalization, and multiculturalism have all partially
The concept of the “third space” was later more widely developed and appropriated to other fields such as pedagogy and spatial studies, and 39
hence the breadth of the concept has been extended and elaborated due to its versatility. For more on the implementation of “third space” theory in pedagogy see Amita Gupta, “Pedagogy of Third Space: A Multidimensional Early Childhood Curriculum,” Policy Futures in Education 13, no. 2 (February 2015): 260–72. Soja primarily focuses on the significance of spatiality on human life. Therefore, his book is relevant for spatial sciences, which studies how humans interact with the spaces around them. For more on the “third space” and its relevance in spatial sciences see Edward W. Soja, Thirdspace: Journeys to Los Angeles and Other Real-and-Imagined Places (Cambridge, MA: Blackwell, 1996).
Soja’s conceptualization is not merely derived from cultural studies, much like Bhabha’s, and that is why the concept’s applicability is widened. 40
Soja brings in previous theorizations from various academic traditions (epistemology, sociology, and postcolonial theory) to assert the conceptual breadth of the “third space”; the concept is one that reconciles irreconcilable traditions and entities. Soja, then, distangles the concept from its criticisms, namely that it is deeply embedded within postcolonial theory and that it “obstruct[s] rather than encourage[s] encounters with cultural and literary realities in a world of globalized modernity.” This limitation highlighted has been solved through Soja’s concept, as he understands the term in a more balanced setting; in-between modernity and postmodernity. Although Bhabha aims to antagonize the modernist discourse as much as possible, Soja attempts to reconcile them with his “third space”. Soja’s conceptual framework and appliance of the term thus sounds less abstract and more concrete, which frees the concept from its critique as a “space of endless play” and a utopian aim. Bhabha, however, uses postcolonial discourse and theory and the relationship between the colonizer/colonized as a basis for his argumentation which somewhat restrains the scope of the “third space” to culture and ethnic identity, but nevertheless it can be expanded and integrated into other fields. For more on the criticisms of Bhabha’s concept and the source of the first quotation see Frank Schulze-Engler, “Transcultural Negotiations,” in Communicating in
the Third Space, ed. Karin Ikas and Gerhard Wagner (New York: Routledge, 2009), 166. For the source of the second quotation used in this
footnote see Lawrence Phillips, “Lost in Space: Siting/citing the In-between of Homi K. Bhabha’s The Location of Culture,” Scrutiny2 3, no. 1 (1998): 18.
Soja, Thirdspace: Journeys to Los Angeles and Other Real-and-Imagined Places, 5. 41
emerged due to the rise of diasporic communities and diaspora studies. Such discourse is
necessary as there needs to be fitting frameworks to understand them; diasporas do not fit within national discourses on identity. Simon Payaslian observes a similar phenomenon: “Theories from the modernization, Marxist, and other schools of thought fail to capture the essence of the
delicate balance required between integration and prevention of assimilation in the process of diasporization.” Other theorizations and concepts of importance about the interstitially of the 42 diasporic identity include Avtar Brah’s “Diaspora Space”, Stuart Hall’s concept of identity as 43 positioning and how diasporas “live with and through” difference, Sujata Moorti’s “Diasporic 44 Optic”, and Sossie Kasbarian’s “Sojourners” . All of these concepts stem from a postmodernist 45 46 understanding of identity politics; that is how it displaces the notions of national identity that have fundamentally dominated the values of western enlightenment. As Kobena Mercer states: In sociological terms, this [postmodern structures of feeling] means a recognition of the
fragmentation of traditional sources of authority and identity, the displacement of collective sources of membership and belonging such as ‘class’ and ‘community’ that help to construct political loyalties, affinities and identifications. One doesn't need to invoke the outmoded base/superstructure metaphor to acknowledge the impact of deterritorialised and decentralised forms of production in late modern capitalism. 47 Within this era, diaspora studies is interested in dismantling national identity meta narratives, and in doing so, the notions of identity and community are also renewed. Concepts such as these re-conceptualize notions of identity and diaspora which remap the field as multicultural “within a global space.” 48
Simon Payaslian, “Diaspora Subalternities: The Armenian Community in Syria,” Diaspora: A Journal of Transnational Studies 16, no. 1/2 42
(Spring/Fall 2007): 122.
“Diaspora space” is a concept that “includes the entanglement of genealogies of dispersion with those of ‘staying put’.” Avtar Brah, 43
Cartographies of Diaspora, 181.
Hall understands identity and diasporic identity as well as a one that is always in flux, and based on how one positions themselves within that 44
identity. Stuart Hall, “Cultural Identity and Cinematic Representation,” Framework: The Journal of Cinema and Media, no. 36 (1989): 80. Moorti coins the term “diasporic optic”, which is “a way of seeing that underscores the interstice, the spaces that are and fall between the 45
cracks of the national and the transnational as well as other social formations.” Sujata Moorti, “Desperately Seeking an Identity: Diasporic Cinema and the Articulation of Transnational Kinship,” International Journal of Cultural Studies 6, no. 3 (2003): 359.
Kasbarian understands “sojourners” as people who “challenge the notions of home, of being settled, and the concept and realities of 46
‘homeland.’ They embody and carry with them at least two and sometimes several versions of ‘home’ and move from one to the other with self-awareness and intent.” Kasbarian’s concept is important as it deems the “return” as flexible, and not permanent, which is how previous conceptualizations of the “return” were previously understood. It is important to note that this mobility that Kasbarian highlights need not be physical, as it can also be a traversing in the realm of the imaginary. Kasbarian, “The Myth and Reality of ‘Return’ - Diaspora in the ‘Homeland’,” 376.
Kobena Mercer, “Welcome to the Jungle: Identity and Diversity in Postmodern Politics,” in Identity: Community, Culture, and Difference, ed. 47
Jonathan Rutherford (Dagenham: Lawrence And Wishart, 1990), 50.
Shohat and Stam, Unthinking Eurocentrism: Multiculturalism and the Media, 243. 48
Through their ambivalent position, diasporas pose a threat to the nation state as they are difficult to categorize within the confines of nationhood; this has its effects on both the diasporic identity and the national identity. Diasporas blur the static signifiers of meaning within a 49 nation; they are neither the ultimate “other” nor the native; they are somewhere in-between. This is why viewing diasporas from the “third space” is meaningful as they do not fall within the boundaries of the national narrative, and, concurrently, puts the nation and the diaspora in a dialogue as “the intersubjective and collective experiences of nationness, community interest or cultural values are negotiated in the emergence of the interstices, the overlap and displacement of domains of difference.” Through this interstitial space, new signs of individual and collective 50 identity and identities within a society can emerge. As I will show, these new signs are visually manifested through the films that the aforementioned filmmakers create, in which the films also then perform interstitially.
1.4: Diasporic Cinema and Diasporic Cinema Studies
Diasporic films are not necessarily films made by people from a diaspora, but they are films that deal with narratives that portray the diasporic situation, the diasporic consciousness, or even the “diasporic optic” . It would be reductive to say that only filmmakers from a diaspora fall into 51 the boundaries of the framework, as many non-diasporians have tackled the subject matter through their films. Therefore, in this thesis, I classify diasporic films in accordance with the subject matter and content they display as they are demarcated as such “rather than by a
combination of biographical and representational factors.” The diasporic situation and diasporic 52 consciousness can be understood as the experience of oscillating between two or more different cultures, nations, and/or cultural identities. Important for this process of oscillation is the process of how people in diaspora relate to their varying and multiple identities which can be through their various connections to the “homeland(s)”. This is similar to Laura Marks’ understanding of
Kim Butler, “Defining Diaspora, Refining a Discourse,” Diaspora: A Journal of Transnational Studies 10, no. 2 (Fall 2001): 211. 49
K. Satchidanandan, “That Third Space: Interrogating the Diasporic Paradigm,” India International Centre Quarterly 29, no. 2 (2002): 52. 50
Moorti coins the term “diasporic optic” which is “a way of seeing that underscores the interstice, the spaces that are and fall between the cracks 51
of the national and the transnational as well as other social formations.” Sujata Moorti, “Desperately Seeking an Identity: Diasporic Cinema and the Articulation of Transnational Kinship,” 359.
Daniela Berghahn and Claudia Sternberg, “Locating Migrant and Diasporic Cinema in Contemporary Europe,” in European Cinema in Motion: 52
“intercultural cinema”, which “represents the experience of living between two or more cultural regimes of knowledge.” This would entail that plurality, multiplicity, and hybridity are 53
foregrounded within the disaporic film. Naficy points out, “while binarism and subtraction in 54 particular accent exilic films, diasporic films are accented more by multiplicity and addition.” 55 Naficy’s understanding of diasporic film resonates with the diasporic condition as diasporas live with a multiplicity of identities which are always in a constant state of negotiation and
contestation between these identities and binaries. The films can constitute, (re)construct, destroy, debunk, negotiate, destabilize, co-habitate and syncretize identities and “homeland(s)” within the films themselves, within the host community, and within the diasporic community, as “people in diaspora have an identity in their homeland before their departure, and their diasporic identity is constructed in resonance with this prior identity.” Diasporic films in general can thus 56 accentuate and shape that previous identity even to a greater degree, or they can even destabilize and dismantle it, as they are governed by the “temporal component of memory and the spatial component of dislocation.” However, it is not as dichotomous as it seems. Diasporic subjects 57 are constantly in a process of negotiation where one identity can be more pronounced than others. 58
Therefore, elements associated with postmodernism, and the postcolonial take on 59 identity, are brought to the fore within diasporic cinema studies and diasporic films. By doing so, the diasporic subjects’ narratives are brought to the center from the periphery; from marginalized to popular discourse. Within this process, these narratives become part of the dominant discourse as they partially use dominant aesthetics (such as continuity editing) as a tool to penetrate the boundaries, and then transform the mechanisms of the dominant as they also bring something new into its boundaries. Thus, they use their diasporic consciousness as a creative tool to modify power relations. Foregrounding either individual or collective issues is a “postcolonial, Third 60
Laura Marks, The Skin of the Film: Intercultural Cinema, Embodiment, and the Senses (Durham: Duke University Press, 2000), 1. 53
Hamid Naficy, An Accented Cinema, 14. 54
Ibid., 14-15. 55
Ibid. 56
Daniela Berghahn, Far-flung Families in Film: The Diasporic Family in Contemporary European Cinema, 64. 57
It is important to keep in mind that within the “third space” ethnic identity is not necessarily emphasized but all different types of identities are 58
also found within its space.
Elements such as multiplicity, hybridity, reconciliation, mediation, construction, re-construction, de-construction and performance. See Hamid 59
Naficy. An Accented Cinema, 269.
Virinder Kalra, Raminder K. Kalhon, and John Hutynuk, Diaspora and Hybridity (London: SAGE, 2005), 4. 60
Worldist, and exilic oppositional strategy to create locality, local knowledge, and located
knowledge” that counters the hegemonic structural potency of universalization and abstraction. 61 Therefore, representation becomes a means to alter the hegemonic discourse. This also happens the other way around as well, where the marginal subject is also transformed, and a new hybrid entity emerges, as “when the margin resists and discovers its own words, it not only de-centers the dominant discourses and identities that have suppressed it, but also transforms its own meaning.” Diasporic filmmakers thus destroy misconceptions and meanings from the inside; 62 those misconceptions and meanings that come from the two spaces (colonizer and colonized) need to be deconstructed and negotiated in the third space. Diasporic films thus become the 63 intermediator between individual (can also be collective in the sense that the film speaks for a group, community, nation, etc.) identity expression and/or construction and societal
acknowledgement. This whole process then destabilizes and obscures boundaries within the social and personal, individual and collective, and private and public orders, as it has produced, 64 according to Naficy, “new fears and freedoms, leading, on the one hand, to new kinds of narrow-minded essentialism and utopian heimatism and, on the other hand, to new forms of dystopian cosmopolitanism and opportunistic identity politics.” As these boundaries are always shifting, 65 diasporic individuals (narrative subjects and diasporic filmmakers) are then continuously inquisitive and in a process of discovery when it comes to their being and belonging to a certain group. Films and media play a major role and are a means which fuel this discovery, as Stuart Hall infamously writes: “identity as constituted, not outside, but within representation; and hence of cinema, not as a second-order mirror held up to reflect what already exists, but as that form of representation which is able to constitute us as new kinds of subjects, and thereby enable us to discover who we are.” On a global level, then, the diasporic film, and more generally, 66 media, take part in the process of globalization and transnationalism where they negotiate,
Naficy, An Accented Cinema, 115. 61
Jonathan Rutherford, “A Place Called Home: Identity and the Cultural Politics of Difference,” in Identity: Community, Culture, and Difference, 62
ed. Jonathan Rutherford (Dagenham: Lawrence And Wishart, 1990), 9-27
Laura Marks, “A Deleuzian Politics of Hybrid Cinema,” 262. Laura Marks uses arguments from Gilles Deleuze. See Gilles Deleuze, Cinema 2: 63
The Time Image, trans. Hugh Tomlinson and Barbara Habberjam (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1989), 222.
This not only applies to diasporas, but also other minorities such as women. All these groups are put into the spotlight in the era of 64
postmodernism and neoliberalism where the individual is able to construct their own reality. Naficy. An Accented Cinema, 269.
65
Hall, “Cultural Identity and Cinematic Representation,” 80. 66
distort, and expand “our received notions of national culture and identity, national cinema, and genre, authorial vision and style, and film reception and ethnography.” Diasporic filmmakers 67 are aware of this process, namely that constructed images and constructed identities function in a dialectic; representations have the power to (re)invigorate and mobilize identities.
The descriptions above are some of the characteristics of diasporic cinema. There are other characteristics highlighted within more specific cognate concepts: Laura Marks’
“intercultural cinema,” Hamid Naficy’s “accented cinema,” Shohat and Stam's “post-colonial 68 69 hybrid,” Elsaesser’s “cinema of double occupancy,” Ghosh and Sarkar’s “cinema of 70 71
displacement,” Isolina Ballesteros’ “immigration cinema,” and Daniela Berghahn and Claudia 72 73 Sternberg’s “migrant cinema.” All of these concepts are nuanced in relation to each other in 74 terms of framework and inspiration, but “diasporic cinema” envelops all of them and acts as an umbrella term. My aim is not to expand on these concepts, but to use the gists of their 75
conceptualizations throughout my analysis section to understand the dynamics of Armenian diasporic cinema. It is also reductive to strictly define what diasporic cinema is as its framework can expand. However, Berghahn and Sternberg have outlined what they understand as diasporic and migrant cinema. Their conceptualization is useful as they take previous conceptualizations of diasporas and diasporic cinema into consideration (see Fig 1.2). Briefly put, they understand 76 migrant and diasporic cinema as a cinema that “addresses questions of identity formation, challenges national and ethnocentric myths, and revisits and revises traditional historical narratives.” These classifications can even be furthered in accordance with the films made by 77 specific diasporas, which revolve around the experiences that specific diasporic subjects and
Naficy, An Accented Cinema, 8. 67
Laura Marks, The Skin of the Film, 1-23. 68
Naficy, An Accented Cinema, 4. 69
Shohat and Stam, Unthinking Eurocentrism: Multiculturalism and the Media, 42. 70
Thomas Elsaesser, “Space, Place and Identity in European Cinema of the 1990s,” Third Text 20, no. 6 (2006): 648. 71
Bishnupriya Ghosh and Bhaskar Sarkar, “The Cinema of Displacement: Towards a Politically Motivated Politics,” Film Criticism 20, no.1/2 72
(Fall/Winter 1995-96): 102.
Isolina Ballesteros, Immigration Cinema in the New Europe (Bristol: Intellect, 2015), 12. 73
Daniela Berghahn and Claudia Sternberg, “Locating Migrant and Diasporic Cinema in Contemporary Europe,” 40-42. 74
They mainly stem from the aforementioned concepts in diaspora studies which also harks back to postcolonial studies, migration studies, 75
feminist studies, and cultural studies.
Although their classification is contextualized within Europe, it can also be applied to other regions as the European aspect of it is that these 76
films need to have effects on the European film tradition and industry and socio-cultural relations. However, this is merely their scope and the classifications can be appropriated to other regions. Moreover, through their focus on Europe, they aim to dismantle the “world cinema” category for these diasporic and migrant films. They aim to propel a discourse that posits these films as part of a new contemporary European cinema and not merely part of a reductionist and other-ing taxonomy called “world cinema”.
Daniela Berghahn and Claudia Sternberg, “Locating Migrant and Diasporic Cinema in Contemporary Europe,” 2. 77
diasporas go through. One specific diasporic cinema is the Armenian diasporic cinema which is explored in the next section.
1.5: Armenian Diasporic Cinema and Armenian Diasporic Consciousness 78
For this thesis, I define Armenian diasporic cinema as a sub-category of diasporic cinema that explicitly focuses on the pan-national Armenian diaspora. Armenian diasporic films deal with Armenian diasporic matters in and through themselves, matters that Armenian diasporians experience, such as how characters in the films relate to the Armenian “homeland(s)” and other spaces, and how characters negotiate their Armenian identity with other identities they possess; this is how it is understood if viewed from the “third space”. This construction of the
“homeland” is a means for the Armenian diasporic subject to sustain their Armenian identity, but at the same time, they belong to other spaces as well; Armenian diasporic films portray that the Armenian “homeland” is not the only space of belonging and that these Armenian diasporic subjects don’t necessarily aspire to a permanent return to the “homeland”. Therefore, Armenian diasporic cinema studies look at how Armenian diasporic films negotiate, understand,
experience, (de)construct, and portray the Armenian diasporic experience(s) and identity(ies). So, Armenian diasporic cinema studies’ filmic corpus is not exclusively about films made by
filmmakers that are part of the Armenian diaspora. The corpus of films I have chosen for this 79 investigation correspond to this working definition of Armenian diasporic films. All of the films construct characters that perceive the “homeland” differently, based off the respective diaspora they are from, and the diversity of representations of the Armenian identity exemplifies that there is no “original” but only simulacra, mediations, and (re)creations. By doing so, they revise and challenge notions of traditional ways of relating to the “homeland”.
To understand why these filmmakers deal with issues found in the Armenian diasporic consciousness, it is essential to hark back to Armenian history. The Armenian diasporic
Armenian diasporic cinema studies can be seen as being highly interlinked with Armenian diaspora studies, as some scholars work in both sub-78
fields. Armenian diaspora studies also investigates its own discourse within Armenian diasporic films. Studying Armenian diasporic films and studying the Armenian diaspora are not mutually exclusive; the films can shed light onto the mechanisms of the Armenian diaspora and vice versa.
For example, the field shouldn’t take into consideration films that don’t deal with Armenian diasporic matters such as Richard C. Sarafian’s or 79
consciousness can be marked by a necessity to preserve and maintain the Armenian identity, which stems from the fact that the Armenian ethnic minority and the ancient “homeland” was on the brink of extinction during the Armenian Genocide (1915-1917), and, at the same time, how this Armenianness is negotiated with the identity that the subject has taken over from the host country. The former is what defines pan-Armenianness, which is the maintenance of historical memory that has been passed down from generation to generation, thus making it
transgenerational, as Marina Kurkchiyan and Edmund Herzig state, “That consciousness of the1915 killings and related horrors, universally shared, has held together thegroup identity; it is now the essence of ‘Armenianness’.” This perpetuated memory not only becomes a memory 80 for the coming generations, even though they haven’t experienced it, but the trauma in relation to it also becomes perpetuated according to Marianne Hirsch’s “post-memory”, which is “the relationship of the second generation to powerful, often traumatic, experiences that preceded their births but that were nevertheless transmitted to them so deeply as to seem to constitute memories in their own right.” There is thus a need to perpetuate and maintain this traumatic 81 memory as it partially defines the Armenian diasporic identity. This is the narrative that all Armenians in diaspora embrace; a collective historical traumatic memory that unifies a 82
heterogenous grouping. It is how Armenian diasporic artists and filmmakers deal, recycle, utilize, and valorize these historical signs and memories that shape them and the Armenian diasporic identity, as for diasporas, “the past is a resource used by ethnic groups in the collective quest for meaning and community.” I am not claiming that Armenian diasporic filmmakers explicitly 83 deal with this traumatic memory in their films, but they do, subconsciously or not, integrate aspects of it, as “to perform by making films is to remember, to memorialize yourself [and your community], and to remind others that you were there-even if you were in disguise.” Also, by 84 making films that exhibit narratives of the Armenian diasporic consciousness, they are, to some
Marina Kurkchiyan and Edmund Herzig, “Introduction: Armenia and the Armenians,” in The Armenians: Past and Present in the Making of 80
National Identity, ed. Edmund Herzig and Marina Kurkchiyan (New York and Abingdon: Routledge, 2005), 1-22
Marianne Hirsch, “The Generation of Postmemory,” Poetics Today 29, no.1 (Spring 2008): 103. 81
Levon Boyajian and Haigaz Grigorian, “Psychological Sequelae of the Armenian Genocide,” in The Armenian Genocide in Perspective, ed. 82
Richard Hovannisian (New York: Transaction, 2017), 183.
Anthony Cohen, The Symbolic Construction of Community (New York: Tavistock, 1985), 99; quoted in Ulrike Ziemer, “Belonging and 83
Longing: Armenian Youth and Diasporic Long-Distance Nationalism in Contemporary Russia,” Studies in Ethnicity and Nationalism 10, no. 2 (2010): 297.
Naficy, An Accented Cinema, 282. 84
extent, already within the process of preservation and recovery. They also create these images as there isn’t much visual material of the Armenian Genocide in which one could hark back to for identification with their Armenian identity. However, these images can become infinitely 85 represented as they might not constitute to a certain closure. 86
From the explication above, the Armenian diaspora might seem like a uniformed entity as the Armenians in diaspora embrace the aforementioned historical collective narrative, which sustains the diaspora. Naficy notes, “the nurturing of a collective memory, often of an idealized homeland, is constitutive of the diasporic identity.” However, the Armenian diaspora is 87 multifaceted and heterogenous. How different Armenian diasporas and Armenian diasporians identify to a “homeland” and other means of identity formation are diverse. The Armenian diasporic identity is more or less understood on the basis of how the diasporic subject traverses between their Armenian identity and the identity they have taken over from the host society. In other words, the different ways that the sociopolitical and cultural conditions of the host countries have created “differences in the way Armenianness [is] experienced.” . Thus, within 88 the Armenian diaspora, different diasporas exist, such as the French and Armenian-American diaspora, which differ from and relate to each other, as each of them have “ever-changing representations which provide an ‘imaginary coherence’ for a net of flexible
identities.” Put differently, albeit the Armenian-French and Armenian-American diaspora feel 89 united under the umbrella notion of Armenianness, how they identify with the “homeland” and the extent that their Armenian identity plays a role in their lives differs. In that sense,
representations and identifications between diasporas differ and are subject to change as identity is flexible. The ambiguity of the Armenian diasporic identity is what fuels these films as they open up new spaces for the Armenian diasporic identity, and identity in general, to be explored
Marie-Aude Baronian, “Image, Displacement, Prosthesis: Reflections on Making Visual Archives of the Armenian Genocide,” Photographies 85
3, no. 2 (2010): 208. Ibid., 217. 86
Naficy, An Accented Cinema, 14. 87
Annie Bakalian, Armenian-Americans: From Being to Feeling Armenian (New Jersey: Transaction, [1993] 2011), 185; quoted in Susan Pattie, 88
“At Home in Diaspora: Armenians in America,” Diaspora: A Journal of Transnational Studies 3, no. 2 (1994): 188.
Ulrike Ziemer, “Belonging and Longing: Armenian Youth and Diasporic Long-Distance Nationalism in Contemporary Russia,” 291. Ziemer 89
refers to and paraphrases from Stuart Hall, “Cultural Identity and Diaspora,” in Identity: Community, Culture, Difference, ed. Jonathan Rutherford (London: Lawrence and Wishart, 1990), 222-237.
and contested; this is what all the films have in common, and therefore, how they fall underneath the “Armenian diasporic cinema” category.
Another example of the heterogeneity would be how the western Armenian diaspora (Armenians living outside of Armenia due to the Armenian Genocide) is grouped together, as their ancestors were victims of the Armenian Genocide, which caused them to disperse across the globe post-World War I. On the other hand, the eastern Armenian diaspora (Armenians from present day Armenia) has recently been (after the fall of the Soviet Union - 1991) immigrating to more economically stable and prosperous countries such as Russia and the United States of America. The discrepancies between the two diasporas are highly visible: the former is part of what Cohen calls “victim diasporas”, and the latter are economic migrants. Hence, there are 90 differences within the Armenian diaspora(s) which are marked by traumatic memory and/or economic prosperity. It can also be said there is a shift within the western Armenian diaspora. The western Armenian diaspora and its respective communities are initially marked as “victim diasporas”, but as new generations emerge, they are becoming more of a “deterritorialized diaspora”, or somewhere in between these two classifications. Cohen suggests that within a “deterritorialized diaspora”, “ethnic groups can be thought of as having lost their conventional territorial reference points, to have become in effect mobile and multi-located cultures.” Due to 91 these circumstances, subjects and communities have different conceptions of the “homeland”. In the case of Lebanese-Armenians who have moved to France or the USA during or after the Lebanese Civil War, Lebanon can also be considered as a “homeland”. Although the Armenians have a sense of unity underneath the “victim” narrative, they understand the “homeland” differently and have different “homelands” as multi-locality takes precedence; they are just a node in a vast fluctuating system.
Moreover, the eastern Armenian diaspora is rooted in the homeland proper - present day Armenia, which is governed more by the here and the now, by the present reality of
sociopolitical affairs. While the western Armenians’ conception of the homeland is governed by articulations of a collective memory that is situated in the past; it doesn’t necessarily correspond
Cohen, Global Diasporas: An Introduction, 51. 90
Ibid., 152. 91
to a homeland that is present in reality. Due to this, the diasporic Armenian feels distanced, yet related to the “homeland”, and shapes it as such. As will be demonstrated with the
aforementioned films, the “homeland” and the Armenian heimat is not a static entity, but a construction that depends on a position. As Razmik Panossian states, “How to relate to their existing homeland is what keeps Armenians separate, while the idea of relating to a homeland keeps them united as one nation.” These different representations and constructions of the 92 “homeland” “are part of the project of constructing diasporan identity, rather than homeland actuality.” Present day Armenianness within the diaspora has transformed from an objective, 93 blood-line related being, to a matter of positioned, subjective feeling. However, this persistence 94 on subjective feeling becomes a mode of being for the Armenian diasporian. This is key as it ties into the post-modernist, anti-enlightenment discourse that has dominated identity politics
nowadays. It is a view on Armenianness that emphasizes the aforementioned concepts of diaspora. Saliently, it also ties into Bhabha’s conception of how identity can be in a space that doesn’t apprehend binaries created by nationalist discourses. Contemporary diasporic
Armenianness falls within these liminal spaces. This imagining of different “homelands” is fueled by a hybrid Armenian identity based on a “‘double imagination’: a diaspora that (…) is imagining an ‘imagined community’ found somewhere between the host land and the
homeland[s] - however that homeland is defined.” Moreover, by creating and by dealing with 95 these identity and socio-cultural issues in their films, the filmmakers subconsciously and symbolically return to the “homeland”. Thus, the film becomes the instance of “return”, all the while remaining in the realm of an imaginary construction. This is the face of many Armenian diasporic films, where the films, including the ones analyzed in this thesis, explore the 96
symbolic space of the “homeland(s)” and what it means to be part of it; they make the imaginary “homeland(s)” and the genocidal trauma more palpable in terms of the fact that there is
Razmik Panossian. “Between Ambivalence and Intrusion: Politics and Identity in Armenian Diaspora Relations,” Diaspora: A Journal of 92
Transational Studies 7, no. 2 (Fall 1998): 185.
Kim Butler, “Defining Diaspora, Refining a Discourse,” 205. 93
Bakalian, Armenian-Americans: From Being to Feeling Armenian, 13. 94
Ramik Panossian, “The Past as Nation: Three Dimensions of Armenian Identity,” Geopolitics 7, no. 2 (2002): 138. 95
Many Armenian diasporic films after the Armenian Genocide make the “homeland” more “tangible” through the construction of the film (e.g. 96
Theodore Bogosian’s An Armenian Journey (1988), Pea Holmquist’s Back to Ararat (1988), and Carla Garabedian’s Screamers (2006)). The films selected for this thesis do so as well, but they also explore fluctuations in the Armenian diasporic identity and other “homelands”. Many Armenian diasporic films don’t engage with the latter aspect.
