Between homeLand and hostLand: Lebanese Armenians and the Republic of Armenia

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Between (home)Land and (host)Land Lebanese
Armenians and the Republic of Armenia

• Asbed Kotchikian, 2005

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Todays Presentation

• Why this topic?
• Diasporas and inbetweenness
• Armenians of Lebanon
• Future prospects

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Some Key Terms

• Diasporas
• (Home)land vs. (host)land
• Inbetweenness

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Previous Scholarship

• Yossi Shain, The Role of Diasporas in Conflict
  Perpetuation or Resolution, SAIS Review 22, no.
  2 (SummerFall 2002).
  
• Razmik Panossian, Between Ambivalence and
  Intrusion Politics and Identity in
  Armenia-Diaspora Relations, Diaspora 7, no. 2
  (Fall 1998).
• Nikola Schahgaldian, The Political Integration of
  an Immigrant Community into a Composite Society
  The Armenians in Lebanon, 1920-1974. PhD thesis
  Columbia University, 1979.
• Khachig Tölölyan, Elites and Institutions in the
  Armenian Transnation, Diaspora 9, no. 1 (Spring
  2000).

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Diasporas

• Dispersed from an original home
• Maintain a memory of the original homeland
• View ancestral home as a place of eventual
  return
  
• The groups consciousness defined by the
  continuing relationship with the homeland

A Diaspora is a social-political formation,
created as a result of either voluntary or forced
migration, whose members regard themselves as of
the same ethno-national origin and who
permanently reside as minorities in one or
several host countries. Gabriel Sheffer
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Inbetweenness

• A modern phenomenon (colonialism)
• The exiled cannot find comfort in any entity
• Double vision leads to struggle between the self
  and the society
  
• No fixed identity undermines the notion of pure
  identity

Pure national or cultural identity can only be
achieved through the death, literal and
figurative, of the complex interweaving of
history, and the culturally contingent
borderlines of modern nationhood. Homi Bhabah
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Armenian Dispersions

• Supra-identity based on trauma
• Sub-identities based on hostland
• Distinction between homeland (hayrenik) and
  Armenia (hayastan).
  
• Usage of symbols and events to connect with
  homeland

suffering in common unifies more than joy does.
Where national memories are concerned, griefs are
of more value than triumphs, for they impose
duties, and require a common effort.
Ernest Renan, 1882
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Symbols of Homeland?
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Armenians in Lebanon

• Fragmented sub-identities
• By 1950s a stable and fixed identity
• Superimposition of symbols and events
• Dual identity (multiple vision)

Most people are principally aware of one culture,
one setting, one home exiles are aware of at
least two, and this plurality of vision gives
rise to an awareness of simultaneous dimensions,
and awareness thatto borrow a phrase from
musicis contrapuntal. . Thus both the new and
the old environments are vivid, actual, occurring
together contrapuntally. Edward Said
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Managing Dual Identities

• Lebanese civil war and positive neutrality
• Geographical proximity to Armenia reinforcing
  dual identities

And the raison dêtre for the continuation of
this community during these difficult Lebanese
civil war days goes beyond the here and now.
This community survives not for its own sake nor
for the sake of the Diaspora as a whole but for
the sake of eternal and everlasting Armenia. This
raison dêtre is the driving force that keeps us
attached to this homeland close to the other
homeland (hayrenamerdz ays hayrenikin) and it
does not allow us to abandon our national in
Lebanon structures and leave.
Zartonk Editorial, 1986
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Challenges to Dual Identity

• The war in Nagorno-Karabakh
• Territory
• Superimposition of symbols
• Armenias Independence
• The imagined homeland became real
• Reconcile hayrenik and hayastan

for the diaspora, the territorys identity
function is often paramount. Its practical value
is not directly relevant to the diasporas daily
experience. Yossi Shain
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Superimposing Symbols

• Nororya Avarayri, Artsakhi Pahpanoume The
  Defense of Modern Day Avarayr Artsakh, Zartonk
  Editorial, 1993
  
• Jardararin Hatootzoome Hayastani Amboghjatzoomn
  Eh, The reparation of the Genocide perpetrator
  is Armenias unification, Aztag Editorial, 1988.

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(in)Dependence

• Stereotypes between homelanders and hostlanders
• Diasporan malaise
• Negotiation of identities complete?

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Are We There Yet?

• The time has come to reassess the issues and
  policies of the past decades, to understand
  history and act in a way that makes real
  participation and real change possible the time
  has come to distinguish between the real and the
  ritualistic
• We must change even if change means having to
  rethink the compromises we have made with history
  by force of events, by force of diasporization.
  We must not, we can no longer afford to allow the
  Genocide and diasporization to dictate our
  thinking and agenda. We must rethink not only for
  the sake of Armenia but also for a healthy
  Diaspora.
• Libaridian, 1991

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Identity Negotiation
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We also call upon our valiant brethren in
Armenia and Karabakh to forgo such acts as work
stoppages, student strikes and some radical calls
and expressions that unsettle law and order in
public life in the homeland that harm seriously
the good standing of our nation in the relations
with the higher Soviet bodies and other Soviet
Republics. Joint statement by the three Diaspor
ic Armenian political organizations, 1988
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Back-up Slides
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Further Reading

• Homi K. Bhabha, The Location of Culture (London
  Routhledge, 1994).
  
• Geoff Eley and Ronald Grigor Suny, eds. Becoming
  National A Reader, eds. (New York and Oxford
  Oxford University Press, 1996).
  
• Gerard J. Libaridian. Modern Armenia People,
  Nation State, (New Brunswick, NJ Transaction
  Publishers, 2004).
  
• Razmik Panossian, Between Ambivalence and
  Intrusion Politics and Identity in
  Armenia-Diaspora Relations, Diaspora 7, no. 2
  (Fall 1998).
• William Safran, Diasporas in Modern Societies
  Myths of Homeland and Return, Diaspora 1, no. 1
  (Spring 1991) 83-84.
  
• Yossi Shain, The Role of Diasporas in Conflict
  Perpetuation or Resolution, SAIS Review XXII,
  no. 2 (SummerFall 2002) 115-144.
  
• Gabriel Sheffer, Diaspora Politics At Home
  Abroad (Cambridge Cambridge University Press,
  2003).
  
• Khachig Tölölyan, Elites and Institutions in the
  Armenian Transnation, Diaspora 9, no. 1 (Spring
  2000).