What is Left Behind: Remnants of Past Inhabitants and their Place in Turkey’s Present

Conference organized by Dr. Yael Navaro-Yashin and Dr. Zerrin Ozlem Biner, held in Istanbul on 1-2 September, 2010.

Click here to download the conference programme.

Abstract:

In contemporary Turkey, we are witnessing a proliferation of memory talks. Concepts such as identity, violence, nationalisms, cosmopolitanism lace together current academic and popular discourses which have gradually emerged as public responses to repressive state practices and discourses. Tensions can be observed between the official imagination of national identities and emergent counter-imaginations of   political  subjectivities in Turkey. Produced in various forms, memory talks have functioned to open up spaces to confront with the past experiences of the absent, invisible or forgotten communities of Turkey.  This workshop aims to contribute to the on-going effort of  ‘confronting with the past’  by tracing the remnants left behind by the communities who were displaced, deported, exiled or ethnically cleansed and  by ethnographically studying the place of such remainders in Turkey’s present.

In doing this,  our aim is not only to focus on cases that show how remnants are used as forms of evidence to construct political identities, as modes of memory to evoke nostalgia for past attachments and belongings, or  to assert the political and moral claims to justice, right to return or recognition for historical atrocities. Notwithstanding the significance of these convictions,  we would like to invite the participants to capture the effects of the past on the present by focusing on the practices of living in remnants, capturing the feelings, imaginaries, and experiences  of  everyday survival in the shadow of remnants, which might take the form of  deliberate silencing of uncomfortable events (such as abductions, lootings, conversions) or reluctance to reveal the relationships of complicity and collaboration.

The synonyms for ‘remnants’ are in the multiple: the notions of ‘ruin,’ ‘remainder,’ ‘trace,’ ‘leftover,’ and ‘residue’ all capture aspects of the remnants we aim to site and explore. Such remnants, once owned and associated with people or communities now long gone, may be different species of phenomena.  Remnants might be material, such as the ruins of sacred sites or domestic homes. They may be linguistic, as in words or expressions which uncannily make an appearance in modern Turkish. They may be musical, as in tunes or hymns chanted out of place in the aftermath of major transfers of population. In their various sorts and species of phenomena, both tangible and intangible, remnants get entangled in new social practices and relations. We focus on these experiences of living in remnants without assuming that remnants evoke any frozen perceptions of the past or lead to constructions of fixed identities. As material, linguistic or embodied traces, remnants might produce affects and imaginaries which are conducive to the emergence of new political subjectivities. Highlighting the potential in a theoretical and ethnographic exploration of remnants, we invite the participants to analyze the  dialectical relationship between remnants and subjectivities of past and present inhabitants by exploring the ways  in  which residual traces are either silenced and erased or surprisingly referenced in daily lives, making unlikely appearances in Turkey’s present. In sum, the workshop will ethnographically provide evidence for what happened to what was left behind, bringing remnants to the fore, out of the disarray.

We ask participants to provide ethnographic evidence for the following questions:

● How are remnants from the past communities of Turkey inhabited and experienced today? How are they invoked? What sorts of relations do Turkey’s contemporary subjects forge with remnants left behind by communities long gone?

● How do past and present inhabitants of remnants relate to each other?  What are the forms of relationships, connections and networks mediated through the experience, imaginary and memory of remnants?

● What are the moral, political and historical discourses produced in relation to the use, appropriation and representation of tangible and intangible, material and embodied remnants?

● What are the regimes of knowledge production in the ethnographic, historical and aesthetic understanding of remnants?

● What is the place of remnants in the making of new political subjectivities in contemporary Turkey?

●  What is the legal status of remnants and how do remnants get invoked in the making of new legal cases and subjectivities? How are remnants legally being contested in Turkey today?

● What sorts of policies are being actively implemented vis-à-vis remnants in Turkey today on the part of city municipalities and other state institutions, as well as on the part of NGOs?

We have invited ethnographic / anthropological studies of ruined materialities and their after-life in Turkey’s present.

Participants:
Yael Navaro-Yashin  (Cambridge University)
Ozlem Biner (Max Planck Institute for Social Anthropology)
Umut Yildirim  (Cambridge University)
Ozge Biner (Strasbourg University)
Alice Von Bierberstein  (Cambridge University)
Hakem Rustom (London School of Economics)
Ilay Ors (Bilgi University)
Silvia Der-Meguerdtichian  ( artist )
Seda Altug (Utrech University)
Asli Igsiz (Arizona University)
Osman Koker (Bir Zamanlar Publication House)
Marlene Schaffers (Cambridge University)

Discussants:
Leyla Neyzi  ( Sabanci University)
Aysegul Altinay (Sabanci University)
Ayfer Bartu Candan (Bogazici University)