Enduring Erasures - (Religion, Culture, and Public Life) by Hakem Amer Al-Rustom

About the Book

Enduring Erasures is a historical ethnography of survival in the aftermath of catastrophe, examining how the specter of the Armenian genocide still looms over the lives of the survivors' descendants and the social fabric of Turkey.

Book Synopsis

During World War I, the Ottoman Armenian population was subjected to genocidal violence. The survivors largely fled Anatolia, forming diasporic communities around the world. Some Armenians, however, remained in what became the Republic of Turkey, and descendants of survivors still live there today as citizens of the state that once sought their annihilation. Despite their continued presence, Armenians in Turkey face ongoing exclusion and erasure from public life and collective memory.

Enduring Erasures is a historical ethnography of survival in the aftermath of catastrophe, examining how the specter of genocide still looms over the lives of the survivors' descendants and the social fabric of Turkey. Drawing on fieldwork conducted in Istanbul and Paris, Hakem Amer Al-Rustom offers a nuanced account of the daily existence of Armenians in Turkey and the broader Armenian experience in the diaspora. He develops the concept of "denativization" to analyze how Armenians were rendered into foreigners in their ancestral lands before, during, and after the genocide, showing how the erasure of Armenian presence and identity continues to this day both in Turkey and among the diaspora in France. Interdisciplinary and meticulously researched, Enduring Erasures challenges deeply ingrained nationalist histories and provides a powerful testament to the indelible mark that dispossession has left on Armenian lives. Emphasizing the human stories and personal narratives that anchor its historical analysis, this book is an essential read for those interested in the intersections of memory, identity, and political violence.

Review Quotes

Engagingly addressing Armenian displacement and diasporic forging of identity across multiple sites, Al-Rustom's ethnographic study illuminates the complexities of belonging amid erasure and the impossibility of return. Challenging nationalist paradigms, Enduring Erasures is a superb contribution to the transnationalizing of Middle Eastern Studies.--Ella Shohat, author of Taboo Memories, Diasporic Voices

This investigative ethnography of Anatolian Armenians' collective life reveals the labor, the stakes, and the strategies of surviving not only violence and displacement but also the loss of their history and their stories. Al-Rustom addresses one of the most compelling questions of our times--how to live through and beyond bodily and literary erasures--with spirited criticism, engagement, and care.--Audra Simpson, author of Mohawk Interruptus: Political Life Across the Borders of Settler States

Enduring Erasures breathes life into Armenian survivance--not merely survival or survivors, but survivance as it has been used in Native American studies: an ongoing, collective life in the face of catastrophe, where life means more and less than any nation could bear. Al-Rustom evades the well-worn roads of nationalism, both diasporic and statist, to wander like the flâneur away from what Walter Benjamin called "the great reminiscences, the historical frissons...all so much junk," and toward the sometimes terrible beauty of the everyday. Brilliantly combining history, ethnography, critical theory, and close reading, Al-Rustom reveals how those who would be thrown away endure, asserting their presence against the tide of erasure. The Armenity revealed in these afterlives of genocide might not appeal to the defenders of old orders--which is precisely why we have long needed this book.--David Kazanjian, author of The Brink of Freedom: Improvising Life in the Nineteenth-Century Atlantic World

In this groundbreaking ethnographic study, Al-Rustom demonstrates how the major crime perpetrated against the Armenians during World War I cannot be understood solely from the prism of genocidal violence and its rippling effects; instead, it requires an understanding of the overarching structure that contributes to the continuous erasure of Armenians from the Armenian lands, monuments, cities and villages through the process of denativization.--Bedross Der Matossian, author of The Horrors of Adana: Revolution and Violence in the Early Twentieth Century

Enduring Erasures offers a compelling ethnographic and historical exploration of how Armenians who survived the genocide navigate life in its aftermath in Turkey and France. Challenging the notion of genocide as an 'end, ' the book reveals the unplanned and ongoing genocidal structure in which survivors live within. Its comparative potential makes it essential reading on post-genocide and post-conflict communities.--Esra Özyürek, author of Subcontractors of Guilt: Holocaust Memory and Muslim Belonging in Postwar Germany

About the Author

Hakem Amer Al-Rustom is the Alex Manoogian Professor of Modern Armenian History, assistant professor of history, and assistant professor of anthropology at the University of Michigan. He is coeditor of Edward Said: A Legacy of Emancipation and Representation (2010).