Alternative Narratives depicting Alternative Histories and forming Alternative Archives: Case Studies Related to Cyprus; Facebook group ,Artwork(s), Oral History project

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Serap Kanay

UvA No: 10227482

Cultural Analysis Research Master

2011-2013

Thesis

Supervisor: Dr. Astrid Van Weyenberg

Second Reader: Dr. Esther Peeren

Alternative Narratives depicting Alternative Histories and forming Alternative Archives: Case studies related to Cyprus; Facebook Group, Art Work(s) and Oral History project.

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I am a Cypriot woman artist with African Heritage who was born into an ‘independent’ Republic of Cyprus but who has had to spend most of her life with the overarching “Cyprus problem”. This situation is due to a dysfunction of this so called republic since 19631. Although the issues I engage with here are mirrored elsewhere, I will focus on issues within a Cypriot context. I want to write about some alternative ways of existence in Cyprus which have not only existed, but also persisted alongside the infamous “Cyprus Problem”.

First of all I want to set up some points of reference. In my title I refer to ‘alternative narratives’. At this point, I want to make it clear that I take narrative to mean any kind of coherent and sustained account of expression and not necessarily a written one. Within this definition I include Facebook postings and communications, as well as art work and oral history. At the same time I do recognize that all the cases I deal with ultimately meet in written form, within my thesis. Mediation and memory are two important and overarching threads which run through this work. The narratives at hand stem from different sources such as storytelling, interviews, collected stories, photographs, and installation art records, hand written text and Facebook sharing of scanned photographs and written narratives.

The second point I want to stress from the start is the fact that I examine my own artistic work, Monument: Her/story; an installation, and discuss my own empirical research, African

Cypriot Heritage; an oral history project, within my analysis, I also look at a Facebook group

1_{Breakup of the 1960 Cyprus Republic partnership in cabinet and the parliament.}

On 30th November 1963 Makarios peoposed amenaments to the constitution that the Turkish-Cypriot members of parliament (MPs) found unacceptable and as a result, they withdrew from the parliament.

Working Papers Series in EU Border Conflicts Studies EU and the Cyprus Conflict Olga Demetriou Research Fellow 21st December 1963 there were killings of Turkish Cypriots and threats to lives of the MPs by Greek-Cypriots.

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that is based on a particular identity and of which I am a member. Ben Baflıyım (I am a Paphodian, from Paphos, a town in west of Cyprus).

I have chosen these three as my objects because they all relate to groups of people that are underrepresented within the ranks of society and that, despite lack of general recognition and official acknowledgement, have found ways of persisting within the dominant culture. As the other main topic of my thesis is alternative archives related to alternative histories, I want to examine these objects for their archival value and historical credibility. In the first two objects I have chosen, women and African Heritage in Cyprus are in the forefront whereas the Facebook group depicts the (re)construction and archiving of lost identities.

The third point of clarification relates to my use of the word ‘archive’ in the title of this thesis. While I recognize that ‘archive’ can describe a wide range of collections from family albums to personal diaries, the archive I question and critique is what can be termed as the official archive, the one, which usually depicts the events and values in the life of any given nation. Again, this is not unique to Cyprus but for the purpose of this thesis the main focus is on the official archive of Cyprus, and in particular of Turkish speaking Cyprus. In my view, an archive is seen as the main source of history any nation can leave for those to come in the future. It is taken as status quo and it is trusted. The main question I want to deal with in this thesis is about who and what have been excluded from the official archive. I will present works of literature, art and oral history and argue the value of these pieces of work as a case for an alternative history. And I will examine how alternative history challenges the archive and show the archival status of these works. I will employ Jacques Derrida’s book Archive Fever: A Freudian Impression as support to convey my point.

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Finally, I need to state that I find the words ’mankind’ and ‘human’, for example, problematic because they stem from a patriarchal base and although they are supposed to represent the experience of all, they actually highlight the male experience. To evaluate women’s experience or look at the female condition one needs to pass through and acknowledge men and male as if to borrow from it. In the same vein, history, the science which studies our past, is seen as if it is (was) his story. Even the word testimony which is a notion I have to engage with within this thesis stems from the word testis and testament which means bearing witness to masculinity. In other words, one’s utterance only counts if one can prove to be in possession of a pair of testicles! (Dictionary.com Unabridged. n. pag) Therefore throughout this thesis I aim to highlight and tell herstory from a ‘she’ perspective rather than a ‘he’ point of view or experience.

Chapter one in this thesis features the Facebook page named Ben Baflıyım. In this chapter I will explore the possibility of a visual archive created through the posting of photographs of Baf (Paphos). This page is enriched with the remembered and collectively constructed narrative of Turkish speaking ex-inhabitants who are dispersed and now lead diasporic lives. They were subjected to a population exchange and separated, following the inter-communal war of 19742. Does this virtual page bear witness to Paphodians who form a

community with an achievable history?

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In Cyprus, June 1974 saw the overthrowing of President Makarios, by, l Nikos Samson, backed by the Junta in Greece, the president was declared dead and Sampson declared himself the new president. This resulted in battles between the government forces and the EOKA-B supporters, which escalated into civil war, first between the Greek Cypriots themselves then began to affect the Turkish Cypriots. Nikos Samson was supported on the ground by the nationalist EOKA-B, a fanatic breakaway group of the official EOKA leadership. All sections of EOKA wanted ENOSIS; joining Cyprus with Greece. On July 20th, Turkey intervened as one of the three guarantor signatories of Republic of Cyprus, established in 1960. As a result there was war between the two sides and this resulted not only in the defeat of the Greek Cypriots’ in the areas where the Turkish Military advanced, but this action by Turkey also had an indirect effect on the Colonels’ Junta being brought down in Greece. There were further interventions for four days from the 14th of August onwards. Following this, some areas where Turkish Cypriots inhabited were “liberated, saved” and some others fell under Greek military rule. Baf was one such place belonging to the latter category. Makarios was not killed but escaped to Seychelles and later returned to Cyprus and back to his position as president. In October 1975 there was a mass population exchange which took all Greek speakers to

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In chapter two I will introduce Monument: Her/story, an art installation executed by myself in 2010 and exhibited in Verket-Avesta, Sweden. I will do a close reading of the art piece looking at multifaceted layers of history created both with the stories told and by the way the piece was installed. Monuments archive and spectrality will be the main focus.

In chapter three, African Cypriot Heritage, an on-going oral history project since 1999, will be under scrutiny and I will analyse the collective threads that follow from the participants’ remembering and telling. I will investigate the elements which may make up this particular group of people, a community, whose different historical experiences have been excluded from “The Cypriot Archive”. The main concepts employed will be remembering, testimony, oral history and archive.

In this way I will explore different aspects of each object while the connecting threads will be formed around the question of archival, the historical value, and the fulfilment of ethical responsibility in each case. The question that will form the core of the discussion throughout my thesis will be based on whether the objects I have chosen and the cases I have presented are the right candidates as alternative archives with historical value.

the South and all the Turkish speakers to the North of the island. Although some changes happened regarding mobility of the two groups Cyprus has remained in a perpetual cease fire and divided until now.

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Chapter One

PAPHODIANNESS Ben Baflıyım on Facebook.

Key words: Archive, Baf (Paphos), Cultural Identity, Nostalgia, Cyprus, Diaspora, Facebook, Paphodian/ness.

Introduction: A background

Geographically Cyprus is the most eastern island in the Mediterranean Sea, neighbouring Turkey 65km to the north, Syria 112km to the east, Lebanon 162 km to the south east, Israel 267 km to the south east, Egypt 418 km to the south and Greece 965 km to the north west (KITREB). It is the 3rd largest island in the Mediterranean after Sicily and Sardinia. Cyprus has a ten thousand year known history and has been a host to many civilizations and their cultures from Neolithic times until now. Though small, due to its strategic position it has always been a bone of contention for many civilizations and more recently of different nations. Currently, the country is suffering the effects of the events over the last 60 years. In particular, one section of the Cypriot population, the Turkish speaking community, has been isolated from the world for the last 50 years. Isolated in one way but connected in another. Isolated as a political entity of Northern Republic of Turkish Cyprus, but connected as individuals to the rest of the world. The global phenomenon of social networking through Facebook has also taken hold in Cyprus where many people seek to contact and communicate through the internet.

Due to the political situation described earlier many Cypriots live abroad in diaspora. I know from personal experience that most of them have a perpetual longing for their home town, be this

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in the north or the south of the divided island. This is also true for those who had to leave their homes and livelihoods behind in the southern part of Cyprus and move to the Turkish speaking north following the events of 1974. This movement of people resulted in an internal migration that has created similar experiences to the ones who have left the island altogether.

A Facebook group whose members live in diaspora is Ben Baflıyım and is made up of the former residents of Baf; the Turkish speaking quarter of Paphos. They have been living in many different towns and cities both in the north of Cyprus and abroad. In other words, the Paphodian population has been living in diaspora that has virtual borders spanning the globe as well as including parts of the island itself. Facebook has allowed the formation of groups based on their town of origin. By origin I mean place of birth or place of birth of one’s parents to which one has strong attachments. I am interested in how these groups succeed in maintaining and (re)constructing new identities. And in particular how do cultural groups in (predominantly Turkish speaking) Cyprus function on Facebook? What kind of dynamics are at work in the communications posted and the narratives shared on each site? How does this affect life both within and apart from the rest of the community? How does a virtual ‘site’ relate to geographical ‘territory’ and why do so many people spend their time and energy participating in and

contributing to such groups?

To seek answers to these questions I have chosen to look at the operation of such a site on Facebook of which I also happen to be a member of. This site is, Ben Baflıyım; I am a Paphodian (from Paphos, my translation), a term I am coining. Baf, the Turkish quarter of Paphos, is where I went to primary school, where most of my early childhood until 1974 was spent, and where I experienced the war (referred to earlier in a footnote) as a 12 year old. For the development of this particular chapter, I will start with cultural analyst Stuart Hall’s article “Cultural Identity and

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Diaspora” (1990), in which he depicts experiences of communities in the Caribbean and analyses historical reasons for the similarities and the differences in culture identities between the

Caribbean islands. I will draw parallels between the diasporic cultural identity and the situation in Cyprus. In addition, I want to examine how the existence and the functioning of Ben Baflıyım correlates to my main focus of this thesis, namely, the formation of the archive, the reflection of history, and the fulfilment of an ethical responsibility. For the discussion on the first chapter I will employ theories of Homi K. Bhabha, and Jacques Derrida on the use of the notions of remembering and return. Summing up I will draw conclusions on the functioning of the group in (re)construction of an archival cultural identity on Facebook.

“Nationality as a concept harbours a problem within, as it ignores any plurality which does not succumb to its rules. Furthermore, it only accepts those differences which it can license and assimilate within itself.” (April 2013, class notes, İlter) In this sense the concept of a nation is problematic. Still, Cyprus has particular conditions that problematize the notion of a nation. One of these conditions is the division of the island and the fact of physical borders which still exist on its soil. The other is the international recognition assigned to a Republic of Cyprus which ceased to exist in 1964.

The third situation, is, the fact of the existence of Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus (TRNC), which is beset by problems of recognition and lack of allegiance. Furthermore, “Turkishness is divided by the difference of Turkish Cypriots from mainland Turks and the colonial relationship between the two.” (İlter in a conversation on the subject-July 2012) Within this relationship Turkey is seen as the ‘mother’ who supplies and supports and the Turkish Cypriots as the naughty children who demand and exploit the situation. “Cypriotness is divided by the exclusivity of Hellenism as the marker of that identity and the resultant history of conflict

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and exclusion.”(İlter in a conversation on the subject-July 2012) Does this become easier if we look at the way Stuart Hall questions the notion of identity as, “an already accomplished fact” (222) in his article “Cultural Identity and Diaspora”, where he suggests two definitions of Cultural identity. He states the following: “First definition of 'cultural identity' in terms of one, shared culture, a sort of collective 'one true self', hiding inside the many other, more superficial or artificially imposed 'selves,’ which people with a shared history and ancestry hold in common” (Hall 223).

But can identity ever be truly ‘one’ or indeed a ‘true self’? Isn’t there always an irreducible secondariness3 in the very notion of identity even from the very first time it is recognized and mentioned? I relate this condition to Jacques Derrida’s claim regarding the idea of the law of repetition. ”Now, law is always a law of repetition, and repetition is always submission to the law.” (Derrida 1980: 125) In Contested Knowledge: A Guide to Critical

Theory, John Phillips reads this as follow:

“If there is sameness, and there is only repetition if it is of the same, but the repetition of the same can never be identical. This dissociation of the same from itself is the principle that governs the identity of the idea (its ideality and invisibility). But the principle and the medium of this dissociation and repetition of the same just is writing”. (sic) (157) This to me translates as; there always exist words or signifiers somewhere which are within my knowledge and in the knowledge of the person I am relating to. Therefore both of us understand the subject matter of my communication. However, in the context where I employ one particular concept, in this instance the word identity is different to its prior use, it will mean the same but with a difference contained within it. “In each repetition a particular word carries a singularity contained within its understood meaning” As İlter put it in a conversation. In this case when

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For an explanation of this term see: Contested Knowledge: A Guide to Critical Theory, John Phillips (2000 pp 147, 165)

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Stuart Hall writes about many other and more superficial or artificially imposed ‘selves’ he might be thinking about those other selves which gets created every time a claim is made to one’s identity. (Hall 223) If indeed this was the meaning Hall attaches to the above statement then the case of Ben Baflıyım Facebook site in their search of their ‘lost’ Paphodianness (I coin this term too in relation to the earlier term Paphodian) seem to come close to his ideas. However, later on in the same article Hall offers a second definition which is predicated on an

understanding of cultural identity that focuses on differences within and not just the similarities. Consequently a discussion of Hall’s second definition and the way it might apply to the workings of Ben Baflıyım on Facebook becomes warranted.

Ben Baflıyım: Does the Facebook site promote an archival historical identity in its performance?

As pointed out above, any kind of identity talk is particularly complicated when dealing with Cyprus. Even within that context there is the issue of identity attached to one’s place of origin, a village or a town. Ben Baflıyım falls into the latter category. This means that the members of

Ben Baflıyım on Facebook are affected by national identity, marked by a linguistic identity and a

regional one, which falls into the category of a particular cultural identity that transgresses the actual physical border of the region. In this sense, Stuart Hall’s definition “a sort of collective ‘one true self,’ hiding inside the many others,” (Hall 223) taken on its face value, probably can reflect most of the reasons behind the establishment of Ben Baflıyım.

On the other hand if we consider İlter and Alankuş’s take, on identity configuration in North Cyprus, it can be said that they would look at the case of Ben Baflıyım group members as

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bearers of diosporic identities which never really settle within a particular place or identity. In their article published in 2010, they write about this idea which works with notions of ‘proper’ and ‘improper’ homes in the imagination of those with diasporic identities. In this argument ‘proper’ is identified with one’s true identity of belonging to a place where this ‘true identity’ stems from. In the case of Ben Baflıyım group members this place would be Baf/Paphos. İlter and Alankuş further argue that “This imaginary representation of diasporic identity makes it seem like a detour on its way back to a teleologically pre-ordained home.” (İlter and Alankuş 266) This means that those who inhabit ‘improper’ homes are in a constant nostalgic wait for a time when they can return to their proper home where their ‘true identity’ awaits. (İlter and Alankuş 266) İlter and Alankuş’s argument is based on Bhabha’s idea used in the formation of a nation. Bhabha’s idea further stems from Derrida’s notion of the “de-tour is a re-turn” (1982: 270). “Every return after the diasporic detour is a re-turn, a change in direction, a displacement itself. Every remembrance of the history that founds a nation is a re-membering, a re-peopling of that nation a new. (İlter and Alankuş 266)” Although I can see their reasoning when this point is applied to the case of Ben Baflıyım, I have to also say that I have noticed a resistance on the part of the group members despite their awareness of the impossibility of a ‘true return’ either to that place itself or to the identity related to that place. “Cultural identities come from somewhere, have histories. But like everything which is historical, they undergo constant transformation.” (225) is how Stuart Hall explains this impossibility. Still actions which relate to an imagined essential Paphodian identity continue to exist on the Facebook page Ben Baflıyım.

The notice below is a very good indicator of such resistance to an otherwise implied change. It is about a new play produced by a foundation established in honour of an ex-footballer of BÜY, Baf’s football team. The advert states that the name of the play is Bizim Mahalle (Our

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Neighbourhood). It depicts daily life in Paphos prior to 1974 featuring characters alive then. The play was to be staged for the first time in Famagusta, one of the three towns with a large

concentration of Paphodians, on the 11th of June 2013. The notice also urged people to attend and support this event.

The photographs shown below, in figures 1, 2, and 3, are scenes from performances and were also posted on Facebook.

Fig. 1. The cast of the play Bizim Mahalle.

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Fig. 2. Depicting old days with traditional costumes worn then

Fig. 3. Telling the story of the story in the play

On the other hand, the resistance to let go of the past can said to be persistent. There seems to be actions performed and events organized which insists not only on the existence but also on the continuum of such essential identity as Paphodianism. To this effect and as if to

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challenge the point made about re-turn and re-tour, by İlter and Alankuş following on from Bhabha and Derrida, part of the old days and ways of Paphodian life in Baf is the subject of new a book written by Erhan Alihan, one of the members of the Facebook group Ben Baflıyım. The book was launched on 05.06.2013 at the Eastern Mediterranean University in Famagusta where he works. The book is titled Çocukları Uyutmayın (don’t put the children to sleep) and features the story of escape from Paphos following the events of 1974. The inscription by the author in front of the cover translates: ‘I hope that no one has to leave their home or country ever again’. Figure 4 is the notice of the launch event and the cover of the book which was posted on to the Facebook page.

Fig. 4. The Book launch notice and the cover of Çocukları Uyutmayın.

The insistence on an almost essentialist identity by the members of the group also manifested during the collectively attended, myself included 2nd mass trip to Baf on Sunday 2nd of June

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2013. Every one of those, who used to reside in Kasaba (town centre of Baf) among the 500 visitors, went to find their former house, the ‘proper’ home in İlter and Alankuş’s terminology, and had themselves photographed in front of the house if they could not get inside. This act is performed alongside telling the self and the accompanying others that these particular houses belong to them. It is a reiteration of a ‘fact’ no longer valid which is believed to become legitimized through saying as well as strengthened by the evidence of a photograph which in their imagination links each person to that particular house. This act is repeated each time one visits Paphos. The difference of performing this act as part of the mass visit is to have others, the collective of Paphodians, to bear witness as to the legitimacy of this claim stated and

demonstrated in the photograph. Figures 5 and 6 are examples of such photographs.

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The case of Niyazi Altan is particular, but not uncommon amongst old established Paphodians. His family was unsettled both as a result of the bi-communal conflict in 1960s.. The family had to abandon their home in 1964, and move from lower to upper Paphos for the safety of their lives against attacks by Greek Cypriots. The same happened again in 1975 as part of the larger conflict referred to earlier. This time, the family had to leave behind the new home they managed to build in 1969 as a result of the population exchange which took effect for the areas that were ‘not liberated’ by the Turkish army’s July/August 1974 intervention . Below is the house built in 1969 at Mutallo, a section of town, in Kasaba Baf.

Fig. 5. Niyazi Altan and his family in front of their 'new' house built in 1969

Although essentially private, these photographs are then posted on the Ben Baflıyım page on Facebook following the mass visit on the 2nd of June 2013.This act of posting a family photograph along with captions that has street names, location, dates and details of the day’s

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circumstances on Facebook, in my view, performs two tasks. One, it adds to the visual archive which has been collected through such postings, and compliments the visual with historical. The other is related to the inclusion of his new family in the photographs taken in front of the houses he lived in as a child or as a young person. This inclusion establishes a genealogy which links not only Niyazi Altan but also his spouse, siblings and his offspring to the house and to the town. Together, these two tasks connect his past, along with the remembered past of the town, to his present and reflect on a future possible for him and his family. The inclusion of his family is in fact an act of re-membering the Paphodian community as in Bhabha’s re-membering the nation (Bhabha 1994, p 311). As the rules of virtual communities are same as those of ‘real’

communities and this act was performed in ‘actual life’, this re-membering becomes both ambiguous and real at the same time and remains blurred within both communities. This means that on one hand, due to nostalgic longing, the postings on Ben Baflıyım are aimed at

perpetuating a lost identity in virtual life with its sharing and communications, almost defying any theory that predicts otherwise, and on the other, as a result of the spillage of this

communication into actual life, the page ends up doing exactly as the above mentioned theory predicts.

Does this Nostalgic Longing fit in a Theoretical set up?

In her book Future of Nostalgia, Svetlana Boym explains that the word nostalgia comes from conflation of two ancient Greek roots, nostos meaning the return home and algia meaning pain. Then Boym writes: “In my view, the spread of nostalgia had to do not only with dislocation in space but also with the changing conception of time.” (Paragraph 12:11 48.4/1072) Later on Boym mentions Kant, who had already made a point about this nature of nostalgia and

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elaborated further on how it was experienced. ”Kant thought that space was the form of our outer experience, and time the form of inner experience” (paragraph 12.21 55.2/1072). This could perhaps explain the collective sharing of Paphodians on Ben Baflıyım as sharing the time of their inner experiences which has stayed stagnant as a result or their traumatise departure from their homes which was a part of their outer experience. Linda Hutcheon, in her article ‘Irony Nostalgia and the Postmodern ( 19 January 1998) ’ adds to this point by stating: ‘As early as 1798, Immanuel Kant had noted that people who did return home were usually disappointed because, in fact, they did not want to return to a place, but to a time, a time of youth.’ Hutcheon then remarks that; ‘Time, unlike space, cannot be returned to--ever; time is irreversible. And nostalgia becomes the reaction to that sad fact.’ (Points 22-23, Paragraph 8).

It can be deducted from the cases above that the main aim of Ben Baflıyım page on Facebook may be hidden in the desire for the ‘good old days, the time of our youth,’ which could be noted on the statements below that were used on the page to advertise the 2nd mass trip to Paphos on 2nd of June 2013. ‘Mazimizle kucaklaşma gezimize’ (our trip to embrace our past) (27.05.2013 12.16) ‘YOKSA SİZ HALA KAYDINIZI YAPTIRMADINIZMI HAYDİ 2

HAZİRANDA BAFA O ESKİ GÜZELLİKLERİ ANMAYA. (9.5.2013-11.40 near lefkoşa)’ (Come

on, have you not registered yet? We are going to Paphos to relive the beauty of the old). The wording of the original advert for this event which was pinned on the Ben Baflıyım page for several months also called people to come to go visit Paphos of the good old days all together ‘(hep beraber Baf’ın o eski güzel günlerine gidiyoruz)’

The awareness of the irreversibility of the past by members of the group and other participants of the trip to Baf was once more illustrated in the article which was published in a supplement of Havadis newspaper on, 08.06.2013. The article is shown below in figure 7 with

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the accompanying photographs from that trip. It is interesting to note the comments relating to nostalgic euphoria experienced by those who visited for the first time, ‘trying to gather their nostalgic dreams’, while ‘a wave of nostalgic scream filled the air’. The article was entitled BAFLILARIN PAZAR “GÖÇÜ”’ (Paphodians’ Sunday “Migration”).

Fig. 6. Article Published in Havadis Newspaper following the Paphos trip by Ben Baflıyım Facebook members and families.

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I do acknowledge Derrida’s point that a ‘return’ is a new turn in each return and can never be reduced even to itself. (1982: 270) Nonetheless, in the case of Ben Baflıyım, the return does seem to create new turns, which at the same time, perpetuate some kind of continuum for the members of this particular group on Facebook.

The material presented thus far Ben Baflıyım detail historical accounts that have not been included elsewhere in any official archive of Cyprus. It can be said that the information on Facebook then supplements the archive by alternative means from the outside. As illustrated above, this supplementation and archiving is also fed by the spillage of information done in the newspapers and other media about the group’s activities. This then ‘adds to’ the archive but without ‘adding up’ if I am to borrow from Bhabha, in his article ‘Dissemination: Time, Narrative and the Margins of the Modern Nation’. (1990: 232) Does this adding to without adding up then also leads to a situation of fulfilling one particular community’s ethical responsibility for the future? (Derrida: 1994) I do believe by insisting on remembering and re-membering their past and their collective group identity, the group members certainly do perform some activity which will be left to the future. Nevertheless, there are two points which leave me uncertain. One is the fact that they do this for nostalgic reasons more than ethical reasons and two that even today, 40 years after the departure from Paphos, they still blame ‘others’ for being ‘thrown all over’ (words of members in conversations) and do not necessarily take responsibility for full integration in their new communities instead of harbouring this eternal nostalgic longing. Nevertheless, the future to come, however uncertain, needs to contain hope of a just and right future with equal possibilities for all different sections of a community or of the nation indeed. The Ben Baflıyım, on Facebook, a cultural identity group seems to hold a promise for such a future to come, if it will come, in its overlap of virtual and the actual lives (a case of Derrida’s

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actuvirtual perhaps)4 performed almost simultaneously, leaving a record both on Facebook as well as an inheritance to their children and perhaps beyond.

Do the Members of the group adhere to ‘Ethical Responsibility’ on and off Facebook?

Members of Ben Baflıyım identity group page come from Baf (Paphos). Baf is at the very west of the island of Cyprus. It was also the most isolated of the six main towns which existed prior to 1974. Each town had a Greek side and a Turkish side and following the 1963/645 events, being the most isolated town, Baf became ghettoized and had to deal with its own internal affairs. This was true not only for the district centre called Kitima Paphos, or Kasaba Baf in Turkish, but the whole district which held the largest number of Turkish speaking villages prior to 1974. Related to this, another particular thing about Baf and its people is that the inhabitants of the whole district are considered Baflı (from Baf - Paphodian). Especially between the years of 1964 and 1967 when there was almost no contact between the Greek speaking and the Turkish speaking Cypriots, Baf became an important administrative centre for the whole district. The Facebook group name Ben Baflıyım, reflects this in the sense that in translation, it does not simply mean I am from Paphos, but more like I am Paphodian in Turkish they simply say Bafidi. It indicates a stronger attachment, an identity related not only to the place but also to the values assumed to be

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For exploration on Derrida’s use of this neologism see: The Derrida Dictionary by Simon Morgan Wortham (2010, 9)

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Republic of Cyprus did not stay in operation as a joint venture for long. Towards the end of 1963 anti-Turkish Cypriot legislations were passed through the parliament, as a minority in a 7=3 equation, the Turkish Cypriot members of the cabinet did not have any effective power. Villages were attacked, their inhabitants forced to leave and they became refugees elsewhere. The MPs themselves did not feel safe anymore, abandoned their seats in the parliament and the end of December 1963 saw the beginning of actual killings of Turkish Cypriots by their Greek compatriots. All through 1964 there were many battles, a lot of harassment, disappearances, and killings of innocent Turkish Cypriots. Many barricades were established by the Greek Cypriots separating two sides of all main towns and vulgar searches went on for many years. There was no social contact or any collaboration between Greek and Turkish speaking Cypriots, the two main communities in Cyprus, until 1967.

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commonly shared. During a ‘traditional trip back to Baf, on 02.06.2013, I have witnessed a conversation where the understanding of this common identity was explained by a woman born in one of the villages of the district. She commented as in a call and response style and played both parts herself.

Where did we come when we needed the hospital? Kasaba(town)-Baf. Where did we come when we needed to register our new born? Kasaba-Baf. What does it say on our birth certificates for place of birth? Kasaba-Baf. Where did we come to register our dead?

Kasaba-Baf. Where did we come to pay the utility bills, electricity and water? Kasaba- Baf. Where did we come to go to secondary school, then lycee? Kasaba- Baf. See we are

from Baf – and Baflı (Paphodian)

Most Paphodians regard Paphodianness as a very special identity view the Facebook site

Ben Baflıyım as sort of substitutes for a lost, real place. -Facebook as a new form of cultural

expression enabled 1728, and growing (The population prior to 1974 was around 2800) Paphodians, Baflı from all over the world, to access not only a place they miss dearly but also to visit and hold on to their somewhat unique culture. Below are photographs which show members of Ben Baflıyım in Baf during a mass trip on 2nd of June 2013, organized by the Facebook group

Ben Baflıyım.

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Fig. 7. Paphodians of my generation and their daughters in front of Baf Castle

Fig. 8. A view of the Minaret through a narrow street .

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Fig. 9. Remembering in front of the Mosque

Most Paphodians do not actively practice religion as they are part of a secular community of Turkish Cypriots. However, on both their mass trips, visiting the mosque as a symbol of Islam became a focal point. In 2013 the visitors were disappointed to find the mosque surrounded with metal fencing and the adjoining gate locked.

The difference of those from Kasaba and the ones from villages showed during the visit on Sunday. Those who lived in the villages and came to the town either for administrative purposes or for schooling did not have any attachment to the physicality of the actual space in town. While those of us went round most streets looking for ‘our houses’ and pointing to each building uttering the names of the owners prior to 1974, they simply remained silent. One person, when I asked for a confirmation as to the former residents of a house, pointed out that he did not live in Kasaba. This shows that even back then, before the war, there were different understandings as well as different experience and manifestations of Paphodianness.

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Nevertheless, for those who are members of the Facebook page, Paphodianness is lived and experienced as a collective within the virtual imagined community. When they post similar photographs which receive exactly the same response over and over again, the members perform something like a collective rewriting of their past. This performance is what Homi Bhabha called remembering as in re-membering. Bhabha explains this when he refers to Fanon’s work on racism in the following words.

“Remembering Fanon is a process of intense discovery and disorientation. Remembering is never a quiet act of introspection or retrospection. It is a painful re-membering, a putting together of the dismembered past to make sense of the trauma of the present.” (Bhabha 1994: 63)

I believe walking round ‘our streets’ and pointing out to ‘our houses’ and ‘our shops’ was a repetition of this very re-membering. It was a manifestation of the trauma of the present being reflected back on the past. A way of healing the hurt of this constantly painful dismembered past. These streets, houses and shops, the town itself in fact has not been ‘ours’ for a long time now and in actuality might not have been ‘ours’ as such even back then. The two houses my family and I lived in, during our time spent in Paphos, were rented properties as we were sent to Paphos as a result of my father’s appointment there as a police officer. Like Derrida’s return being also a re-turn in itself each time, Bhabha’s remembering is iteration every time it is performed; it can never be reduced to the truth as the truth is always represented by a signifier if we were to allude to Derrida’s statement “representation regularly supplements presence” (1982: 313). We can never get at the very origin of a place/situation as we are never exactly the same person. The iterability6 of the performance bears the other/ness within itself. This remembering is a very clear example of the reconstruction of an identity by constantly performing the same task of posting the same photos and comments over and over again. Since its establishment in March 2012

6

For an explanation of the way Derrida utilises this word, see: The Derrida Dictionary by Simon Morgan Wortham (2010, p 78)

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postings have moved from very old photographs of people collectives and football teams to more recent scenery (which was opposed by the majority of the members) back to old black and white photographs then to more recent photos of the buildings, and the state of people’s houses taken by those who visited recently. Nowadays there is a mixture of old black and white, street scenes and family or individual photos taken much more recently. The narrative these various kinds of photographs recall is also different in the sense that it opens up a discussion to present lives of the members as well as remembering those who have passed away.

Why the long wait to launch the Facebook page Ben Baflıyım in 2012 as an act for establishing a platform for remembrance and perhaps for mourning. The reason(s) behind the 38 year gap for action might find some explanation starting with D Stuart Hall’s questioning below. What is the nature of this 'profound research' in which drives the new forms of visual and cinematic representation? Is it only a matter of unearthing that which the colonial experience buried and overlaid, bringing to light the hidden continuities it suppressed? Or is a quite different practice entailed — not the rediscovery but the production of identity. Not an identity grounded in the archaeology, but in the re-telling of the past?” (224) The effects of the trauma lived both in the war itself, during the months of captivity and because of unsettlement caused by the splitting of the population to three main towns in the south might relate to “which the colonial experienced buried and overlaid” in Bhabha’s statement while “bringing to light the hidden continuities it suppressed” (224) might express the riches that are shared with the postings on the Ben Baflıyım page. Lives of Baf’s ex- inhabitants might not have become subject to cinematic representations yet, as in the Caribbean but a lot has certainly been written about the time lived there. Ulus Irkad is a member of the Facebook group who has researched and written many political articles on Baf which have been published in newspapers. Another Ben Baflıyım member, Gürol Özkaya was the first to publish a book back in 2005, which depicts those places, people and the lives he remembers from Paphos. His book was

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appropriately entitled Kasaba Baf: Things I can remember. This book came out eight years prior to Erhan Alihan’s book Çocukları Uyutmayın: Baftan Kaçıs which is referred to earlier. Though they may not be the kind of cinematic representations Stuart Hall refers to, the visuals which are collected and shared with no initial comment definitely seem to be. These are new

representations over the old faces and places in the hope of finding that precise identity. They are re-telling the past, by performing it over and over again on Facebook today through a collective performance. Having been relocated in three different towns by October 1975, most of the ex-inhabitants of Baf never became accustomed to calling themselves something other than Baflı,

Paphodian. Through this group Paphodians have become reacquainted and started to organize

events outside Facebook as well. These included those people who have no internet access, those who do but are not members of this particular group as well as those members who do not have regular contact online. The events comprised of a community dinner, a fundraising evening for the football team, which still bears the same name BÜY, and mass visit to Baf itself. I have already talked about the second one of these trips which was organized on 2nd of June 2013. 500 Paphodians who went back to their beloved Paphos was 200 more than last year’s 300. Now there are photographs posted on Facebook which shows scenes from this last visit, which adds these revisiting Paphodians to the timeline of new Baf/Paphos.

Evaluation and Conclusion

In this first chapter I have introduced Cyprus with some background as to its geographic positioning and gave some details of its recent past. I also gave some details as to the possible identities of ex-inhabitants of Turkish Baf (Paphos). The background to the formation of the Facebook identity group, Ben Baflıyım was explained and analysed with aspects of Stuart Hall’s

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theory on Cultural Identity and Diaspora, Derrida’s notions of the re-turn and retour as well Bahabha’s ideas on re-membering a nation. What I have deducted from engaging with this object is that the construction and running of such a site depends heavily on use of memory. On one hand memory cannot always be considered as reliable in relaying an absolute truth and on the other memory itself is always in a state of change. It can never be reducible to the truth; it harbours within it an irreducible secondariness. Ben Baflıyım is a virtual community and the World Wide Web is where it finds life. At the same time it is a community and community rules apply in its construction and reconstruction of invented past tradition which reflects on what is desired and how things are wished to be.

All this activity is clearly positive. However there are some problems with what happens when I looked at it critically. One is the very obvious nostalgic aspect. The members have shown via their posts that they prefer old photographs that trigger memories of an old Paphos. This serves two purposes, one to exclude the newcomer Turkish migrants from their activity of claiming an identity the settlers cannot share in, and the other, to project onto the future from a normative past that probably never was to one that has been reconstructed over the internet. In fact, reading between the lines in the comments posted I have noticed that the majority of the members do know that the past is not as they imagine , yet they still insist on holding on to that image. Having this imagining over Facebook creates a virtual community who collectively construct a Paphos for itself. Here it is important to note that in order to maintain this notion of Paphos and Pophodiannes, a degree of control is performed by the participants of the group themselves although the postings seems a free for all. The fact that some members oppose to the content of photographs shared and the views discussed related to certain issues, while some others remain quiet and withdrawn from the group/page periodically, is a very prominent

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example of self-regulation and peer group controlled selection. The group members might find comfort in their participation in this group but in trying to hold on to a piece of ‘Cypriot’ identity, they ignore the changes last 40 year has brought. We can look at this as a reminder of the nature of the concept of nostalgia. “Nostalgia (from nostos return home, and algia longing) is a longing for a home that no longer exists or has never existed. Nostalgia is a sentiment of loss and displacement, but it is also a romance with one's own fantasy”’ (Svetlana Boym 15.1/1072).

Ultimately, we need to ask what is expected from the site going public on Facebook, if it has no possibility of recognizing the present and harbour any hope for the future. Here again, I consider that the Ben Baflıyım site is actually used as the arena for the construction of identity in line with the notions of “performance” and “re-remembering,” the past remembered from the point of today, is projected onto the present, and reflected onto the future. (Bhabha: 1990) This happens with the present acts and ways and means of representations; by the visuals, stories, retellings that are posted repeatedly. Nostalgia after all is not to do with the past but more to do with the present. In Linda Hutcheon’s words “It is the very pastness of the past, its

inaccessibility, that likely accounts (sic) for a large part of nostalgia's power” and Hutcheon further explains this as ‘the ideal that is not being lived now is projected into the past.” (‘Irony Nostalgia and the Post Modern’. Pg. 8’) It is "memorialized" as past, crystallized into precious moments selected by memory, but also by forgetting, and by desire's distortions and

reorganizations, what Bakhtin termed as "historical inversion.” (Hutcheon. Pg. 8)

As this behaviour is constituted over finding a scapegoat, in this case the Turkish settlers in Cyprus, responsibility is looked for outside the self. Dealing with the present in relation to the past and carrying it to the future is not taken seriously; the expectation is to let someone else to sort this out.

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Chapter Two

Monument: Her/story Serap Kanay

Avesta ART 2010, Sweden

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Introduction

When we write about the past there is ultimately some sort of haunting behind our writing, be this in historiography or in literature. Our memories as much as our knowledge of history plays a significant role in what triggers and starts our research into what we want to explore and consequently write about. Colin Davis is the author of the article “Ètat Prèsent: Hauntology, Spectres and Phantoms”. The word hauntology, comes from a theory developed by Derrida with the word play on the word ontology due to both words sounding the same and argues for the idea that there never is a real presence of the present, as what we take to be present is always-already represented. Davis primarily concerned with this notion as it applies in literature however, I will use it to discuss one of my own art installations that is as much a written as it is a visual narrative. Davis’s “figure of the ghost as that which is neither present nor absent, neither dead nor alive” (373) is addressed in the narrative running through my installation entitled Monument:

Her/story. Where everything is fleeting: people, places, no longer there, no longer substantial,

yet ever-present in the memories and the minds of those alive. Peoples’ stories are documented visually both in writing and with photographs and are presented in a country far away from their origins. In a sense, Davis’ comments elude that as ghosts are “a wholly irrecuperable intrusion in our world” (373), the stories depicted can travel far and call on ghosts in the spectators who view the work. Thus they evoke “our responsibility to attend to the ghost”, and this being “an ethical injunction insofar as it occupies the place of the Levinasian Other7 whose otherness we are responsible for preserving” (373).

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Levinas attempted to address the problematicof ontology by investigating and analysing the 'face-to-face' relation with the Other. The Other is not known or comprehended as such, but calls into question and challenges the complacency of the self through desire, language, and the concern for justice. Ethics for Levinas begins with the encounter with the Other while maintaining that such a relation cannot be simply reduced to a symmetrical relationship. It cannot be localized historically or temporally.

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My work was exhibited at Avesta ART 2010 (Fig. 1). Verket: The Works, a 19th century iron works plant, was the host space in the ex-industrial town of Avesta in Sweden. The

exhibition catalogue introduces the exhibition as “[a] dialogue between contemporary art and the magnificence of the ironworks with its mighty ovens, rusty iron girders and shimmering slag-stone walls” (Avesta Art 2010 5) One of these slag-slag-stone walls was to become my Monument from mid-May until mid-September 2010. The photograph below depicts Verket from outside taken from the side view. (Fig. 2) In this chapter I want to revisit this monument and reflect on the idea of the monument with two main concepts in mind: spectrality and the archive. These conceptsare closely interlinked with historiography. I will use Jacques Derrida’s Specters of

Marx: The State of the Debt, the Work of Mourning, and the New International (1994) as my

guide on spectrality. I will also turn to Andreas Huyssen and James E. Young’s ideas on monuments. I will close-read my installation in order to ask who monuments are for, whose “ghosts” they might harbour, and what purpose they might serve. A key question I will try to answer is: Did my work, Monument: Her/story along with the other works exhibited in Avesta Art 2010 fulfil any ethical responsibility to spectre in a Derridiean sense? I will discuss the monument’s interruption to historiography as an installation then scrutinize the archival quality of my work, again taking my cue from Derrida, who expands on the archive in Archive Fever: A

Freudian Interpretation (1995).

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Fig. 2. Verket; the Works at Avesta, Sweden

At the start of my enquiry I will use the introduction of Monument: Her/story -, as published in the exhibition catalogue.

The basis of my work is telling history as her/story as a way of offering an alternative to his/story. I have long posed the question as to which stories have been included in the making up of his/story; in other words: looking at the world from the standpoint of the ‘other’. I myself am the ‘other’ as a woman in a male dominated world, the ‘other’ as a black person in a predominantly white world, the ‘other’ as a single mother raising a daughter outside the traditions of a nuclear family. Furthermore, I am the ‘other’ as an artist, a creative commentator in a world dominated by consumerism, the ‘other’ as a nurturing, compassionate person who cares deeply for Mother Earth and her scarce resources in an increasingly greedy and commercial society. (Avesta ART 2010, 16) Women have been a major ‘other’ entity even when they were part of the ruling classes. I myself felt this very strongly both as a woman of African heritage and artist. Therefore, to address this imbalance I want to write my stories into the pages of his/story, hence the use of the word Her/story in the title of my installation. Herstory8 as a term was initiated by first wave

8

Her story is history written from a feminist perspective, emphasizing the role of women, or told from a woman's point of view. It is a neologism coined in the late 1960s as part of a feminist critique of conventional

historiography, [1] and refers to history (reinterpreted, using a false etymology, as "his story") written from a feminist perspective, emphasizing the role of women, or told from a woman's point of view. (The word history—

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feminists. To emphasize a binary opposition, they deliberately joined the two words and wrote it as one just like in history. I do recognize and support this aspect. However, here, I use both words with a slash because my claim centres on the story aspect of these narratives. Therefore my main question pursues the issue of whose stories have been chosen to become his/story. By telling stories of women I aim to reach equilibrium. This equilibrium will create rapture in the usual convention of monuments in its inclusion of a group usually deemed other, who does not hold a designation as worthy subjects to commemorate. This has some parallel to Judith Butler’s subjects in precarious life;

Some lives are grievable, and others are not; the differential allocation of grievability that decides what kind of subject is and must be grieved, and which kind of subject must not, operates to produce and maintain certain exclusionary conceptions of who is normatively human: what counts as a livable life and a grievable death? (Butler 2004: XIV-XV) (sic) Those who are not worthy of grieving naturally do not get a mention on the traditional

monument or indeed a monument built in their name. To counteract this, stories depicted on my monument centre on six women of four generations in my family, I included. The stories are about our experiences at significant crossroads in our lives and about the ghosts from the past that may “haunt” us. Beside women’s, there are the stories of many others’ that have never found their way into ‘official history’ except perhaps through some forms of art.

This is true especially for installation art, because it can include many art forms, performance and theatre among these. In its immediacy, installation art is usually provocative and up your face and allows for multiple expressions to exist within the same domain. Not unlike theatre. Michael Fried expresses a similar idea about installation art, describing it as “theatrical” and states the following:

from the Ancient Greek ιστορία, or istoria, meaning "a learning or knowing by inquiry"—is etymologically unrelated to the possessive pronoun his.).[2] (en.wikipedia.org/herstory-29.01.2013 16.40-17.40)

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There is a strong parallel between installation and theatre: both play to a viewer who is expected to be at once immersed in the sensory/narrative experience that surrounds him and maintain a degree of self-identity as a viewer. { } a trademark of installation art has been the curious and eager viewer, still aware that he is in an exhibition setting and tentatively exploring the novel universe of the installation. (45)

I include this quote here because it links two aspects that I am concerned with. One is related to having/giving a voice. There is a saying in Turkish which, roughly translated, means: you are only understood as much as the comprehending capacity of the person listening to you. Relaying stories of lived experiences in hand writing, supplemented with photographs makes my particular installation attractive and easy to access. Despite some of the stories being written in a language most of the spectators in Sweden could not comprehend, the parts that they could ‘see’ through images enabled them to ‘read’ the rest of the piece. The acts of ‘seeing’ and ‘reading’ by an audience so far from ‘home’ thus gives embodiment to the people featured in the events depicted in my work, while the events depicted become legitimatized. These occurrences both form and add to the knowledge about Cyprus and its people thus becoming archival. In Avesta, both the Works itself; the name given to the building, and the installations placed there, which worked with the building, provided the visitors with a space and setting that allowed their imagination to take them to multi-layered experiences of time, and revisit history both as spectator and as participants, not unlike the audiences in a theatre. The second aspect I find parallel with, relates to the theatrical quality of the set up to the exhibition in Avesta, where the use of the old ironworks factory with all its former contents and its facade, acts as the historical stage for several installations.

Ann Rigney, is the chair of Comparative Literature and current coordinator of Culture and Identities research area at the University of Utrecht. In her article, “Portable Monuments: Literature, Cultural Memory, and the Case of Jeanie Deans”, Rigney writes that “since the

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publication of Hayden White’s Metahistory (1973), there has been widespread recognition that historiography is, among other things, a literary practice in that it uses verbal art and discursive procedures to make sense of the past” and that, correspondingly, recent studies show formal history writing to only be one way of writing history (363). History, in other words, is making sense of the past or, as Johan Huizinga puts it, it is a “symbolic form in which a society takes account of its past” (qtd. in Rigney 363). This “making sense” and “taking account” invariably comes from information obtained from various sources, both evidential and oral. Both kinds of sources, but the oral tradition especially, relies on memory and postmemory.9 A term first used by Marienne Hirsch specifically in relation to Holocaust, postmemory is explained by Hirsch as:

The relationship of children of survivors of cultural or collective trauma to the experience of their parents, experiences they “remember” only as narratives and images with which they grew up, but that are so powerful, so monumental, as to constitute memories in their own right. (9)

Whether it is traumatic postmemory, or our own memories of past events themselves, all of them are bound to be “haunted” by one spectre or another.

“Remembrance as a vital human activity shapes our links to the past and the ways we remember define us in present,” remarks Huyssen and state that, “as individuals and societies we need the past to construct and anchor our identities and to nurture a vision of future” (Huyssen, 1993: 249). In order to have this past recorded as a reminder in the present and to carry us into the future as nations, we build monuments and archives. Derrida’s main point in Archive Fever:

A Freudian Impression (1995) is to this effect. He states that “the question of the archive” is not

a question of the past, but “a question of the future itself,” entailing “a response, of a promise and responsibility for tomorrow” (36).

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In chapter one, I have written about the law Derrida writes in relation to repetition as iteration and as a way of recording a new turn, a return. Derrida states that the archive is also related to the law and to the power of where it is kept. Where it is kept is then related to what is excluded, the determination of what is remembered and what is allowed to be forgotten. In chapter one I have also demonstrated that the Facebook group Ben Baflıyım functions to overcome this exclusion from the archive by establishing and recording its own. This is similar to what I try to do with the execution of Monument: Her/story. Derrida’s idea about the existence of two different kinds of archive; the historical, the material side, and the psyche, which also stores memories over generations, strengthens this point of building an alternative archive utilising memory. He points out that here, the psyche as a form of archive in Freud’s terms is significant. It is significant because forgetting and remembering are closely related in the psyche and work in a similar way to the selection process undertaken by the archivist and selects what it keeps.

The same ambiguity appears as the figure of the “ghost” in Derrida’s Specters of Marx:

The State of the Debt, the Work of Mourning, and the New International (1994).

For Derrida, the ghost is neither dead nor alive; neither present nor absent. The ghost, already more than one, is able to appear many times, yet the appearance is never the actual person who died but a new ghost, even at the first appearance. (From tutorial class notes on Spectrality) This quality of not having an ‘origin’ confuses notions of categorization and interrupts linear

temporality. The second half of the first section of Monument: Her/story in Verket, narrates the time of my family and other Turkish Cypriots’ captivity in Paphos after the 197410_{war in}

10

In Cyprus, July 1974 saw the overthrowing of President Makarios, by, Nikos Samson, backed by the Junta in Greece. The president was declared dead and Sampson declared himself the new president. This resulted in battles between government forces and EOKA-B supporters, which escalated into civil war, first between the Greek Cypriots themselves and then onto the Turkish Cypriots, by the nationalist EOKA-B, a fanatic breakaway group of

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Cyprus. Almost at the end of the panel, there is a single photograph of a birthday girl with her cake, taken on her 10th birthday in 1973. That is my sister, whose story is depicted all around her photograph along with the ghost of the events and all the ghosts then present in Paphos. “A spectral moment, a moment that no longer belongs to time if one understands by this word the linking of modalized(sic) presents (past present, actual present: "now," future present)” (Derrida 1994, xix). The relationship of the ‘ghost’ is with the past, the present and the future all at once, yet there never is a ‘real presence’ of the present. We never know when and where we will ‘bump into’ these ghosts; furthermore, the participating viewers are not spared either. This last aspect in particular is pertinent in Monument: Her/story, in relation to its contents and to what it may inspire in the viewer. Derrida’s statement is in a very similar vein to Davis’s; “a wholly irrecuperable intrusion in our world, which is not comprehensible within our available intellectual frameworks” quoted at the start of this chapter. (373)

the official EOKA leadership. All sections of EOKA wanted ENOSIS, the joining of Cyprus with Greece. On July 20th, Turkey intervened as one of the three guarantor signatories of the Republic of Cyprus, established in 1960. As a result there was war between the two sides and this resulted not only in the defeat of the Greek Cypriots’ in the areas where the Turkish military advanced, but this action by Turkey also had an indirect effect on the Colonels’ Junta being brought down in Greece. There were further interventions for four days from the 14th of August onwards. Following this, some of the areas Turkish Cypriots inhabited were “liberated, saved,” while others fell under Greek military rule. Paphos was one such place belonging to the latter category. Makarios was not killed but escaped to Seychelles and later returned to Cyprus and back to his position as president. In October 1975 there was an unconsulted population exchange where Greek Cypriots went to the south and the Turkish Cypriots to the north of the island, governed by two different administrations. This is still the current situation.

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Monuments, Memory and Visibility

When nations build monuments in order to honour the heroes of past struggles and glories or remember the victims of past atrocities, the realisation has a sort of ‘exorcizing’ of the events and the people in question, but also of the memories of them, which will not leave a nation in peace. I believe the notion of ethical responsibility Derrida arrives at as the proper response to the absent presence of the ‘ghosts’ in our lives is significant here. The idea of building a monument alleviates the responsibility we feel due to gratitude, indebtedness or guilt for our nation’s past. For the officials and the nation, the monument is about doing something with this responsibility. My installation Monument: Her/story is no exception to this reasoning, but with an important difference which interrupts the usual flow of this discourse. In reality erecting these national monuments work for exactly the opposite of the desired effect and leads to forgetting our ethical responsibility as a nation. This I will address in more detail later in this chapter. However I like to make clear why I chose to call my installation work a monument, knowing the problematic connotations of the term. Despite all the problems associated with them, monuments are still the main forms used in remembrance and commemorations

discourses. Yet, for the most part, they become invisible in their often phallic, huge visibility. In fact if we consider what Alexander Etkind11 says about hard and soft memory and view this in relation to these phallic monuments, which are often built in the name of, but do not always, bear these names, not surprisingly become invisible. In synch with their concrete structures, these examples of “hard memory” have no subjectivities, no soul, and no embodiment in their representation, therefore are bound to remain unnoticed in their hollowness. (Etkind 2004:39) In opposition to this, when I use this term for my monument which represents “soft memory” in its

11

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manifestation of intimate detail depicting names and also life experiences of the women it engages with, it is more likely to be read in its immediacy. This embodiment supplies the documentation which makes evident the lives and experiences depicted as “soft memory” and, their placement on a historic wall provides the “hard memory” and the combination together in this exhibition setting itself enables the work to become both monumental and archival in the same breath (Etkind 39). This reading then further highlights the invisibility national monuments have acquired in their isolation appearing often as ghosts who return to haunt the nation unawares. Derrida underlines this when he states;

To learn to live with ghosts, in the upkeep, the conversation, the company, or the companionship, in the commerce without commerce of ghosts. To live otherwise . . . not better, but more justly but with them. No being-with the other, no socius without this with that makes being-with in general more enigmatic than ever for us. And these being-with spectres would also be, not only but also, a politics of memory, of inheritance, and of generations. (Derrida 1994: xviii)

This “ghost figure” is not only the spectre that comes to “haunt” the present from the past, but it is also in the make-up of our memories. These may be memories we have inherited; memories of events that were experienced by our parents/elders (postmemory), or memories of our own from past experiences which some of us may also pass on to the next generation. The politics of memory Derrida talks about is about the use and abuse of the way memory has been utilised within memory discourse and in its construction in order to keep certain discourses more alive at the expense of others. This point is precisely what I deal with in depicting the stories of women in writing on Monument: Her/ story.

Monument: Her/story is concerned with the use of handwriting as visual artistic expression, the execution of the visual work in text relates to the point Derrida makes in Archive

Fever about “hypomnesis’’, which is keeping track of and organizing our memory by writing it

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spontaneous memory” and claims that “The theory of psychoanalysis, then, becomes a theory of the archive and not only a theory of memory.” (Derrida 1995: 19) This is what I mean by writing itself leaving traces as an act of archiving by the psyche performing a selection of memories it deems worthy of keeping. This very act of selection and keeping and having this outcome in writing, then theorizes both the memories and the archive. Thus it can be concluded that

Monument: Her/story with the use of hand-writing depicting the stories of the women in my life

is a manifestation of this archiving.

The Background and Monument in Place

In “Monument and Memory in Postmodern Age” Andreas Huyssen writes: “A society’s memory is negotiated in the social body’s beliefs and values, rituals and institutions, and in the case of modern societies in particular, it is shaped by public sites of memory such as the museum, the memorial, the monument” (1993: 249). Within this “remembrance, forgetting and representation” of memory discourse the “traditional monument as heroic celebration and figure of triumph” has been questioned by Huyssen (258). In Cyprus mainly concrete monuments have been erected in busy roundabouts or in newly created parks. These are dedicated to men who are deemed to be heroes who have suffered in our name for the existence of our nation. More than ninety-nine per cent of these monuments are indeed dedicated to men and are almost always symbolized with a phallic structure. The imagery of “protection of the land”—similar to the clichés of “blood and soil” and “Country, my life is an offering to you”, rhetoric of the nationalist discourse—is heavily used (Daily Direniş n.pag). Despite this, most of these sites, although intended as constant reminders, are not interacted with, outside the official