Parkhàr Studies: Or, Towards an Anarchic History of South-western Asia

Yıl 2015, Cilt 3 - Sayı 4, 140 - 155, 05.01.2016

Akis Gavrıılıdıs

Öz

From the late 80s – early 90s on, a new genocide was invented and started being talked about in Greece (and among the Greek diaspora): the "genocide of the Greeks of Pontus". This was accompanied by a more general revival of a particular ethnic Pontic identity.

This revival is often seen by many, including its protagonists, as one more variation of Greek nationalism and irredentism. However, in this paper I propose instead that we read these public identity performances as expressions of “anti-state nationalism”.

The Pontians manifest a particularity which, although presented as quintessentially and primordially Greek, in practice differentiates them from standard Modern Greekness. In my paper, I examine some examples of such manifestations in the field of legislative lobbying, establishment of public rituals, selecting names and nicknames for persons, places, institutions or football teams, translation activities, and political propaganda through typography and the cyberspace. I analyze these expressions of ponticity through the lens of political anthropology and philosophy and try to see to what extent these can be considered as an effort by the respective populations to escape the state, to become at least partly invisible to it and its bureaucracy.

Kaynakça

• Deleuze G, and Félix G (1987). A Thousand Plateaus. Capitalism and Schizophrenia, translation and foreword by Brian Massumi, Minneapolis and London: University of Minnesota Press
• Gavriilidis A (2014). Emeìs oi époikoi. O nomadismòs tôn onomàtôn kai to psevdokràtos tou Pòndou [We settlers. The nomadism of names and the pseudo-state of Pontus], Yànnina: Isnafi
• - (2015a). “On the Second Life of Institutions: The Ghost-State of Pontus in Macedonia”, in: Jim Hlavac & Victor Friedman (eds.), On Macedonian Matters: from the Partition and Annexation of Macedonia in 1913 to the Present, Munich: Kubon & Sagner, pp. 87-102
• - (2015b). "The desire for the non-state: De-territorialization as an alternative lens to read late and post-Ottoman becomings", paper presented at the Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari: Refrains of Freedom Conference, Athens 2015, possibly to be published in the proceedings of the conference in 2016
• Herzfeld M (2004). Cultural Intimacy: Social Poetics in the Nation-State, New York and London: Routledge
• Kosofsky Sedgwick E (1990). Epistemology of the Closet, Oakland: University of California Press
• Mazower M (2001). «The G-Word», London Review of Books, Vol. 23 No. 3, 8 February 2001.
• Moro MR (1998). Psychothérapie transculturelle des enfants de migrants, Paris: Dunod
• Papadopoulos D, Niamh S and Vassilis T (2008). Escape Routes. Control and Subversion in the Twenty-first Century, London/ Ann Arbor: Pluto Press
• Sakai N (2006). «Translation», Theory, Culture & Society t. 23 (2–3)
• - (2013). «The Microphysics of Comparison. Towards the Dislocation of the West», http://eipcp.net/transversal/0613/sakai1/en
• Savvidis AGK (2009). Ιστορία της αυτοκρατορίας των Μεγάλων Κομνηνών της Τραπεζούντας (1204-1461) [History of the empire of the Grand Komnenoi of Trebizond (1204-1461)], Thessaloniki: Kyriakidis Bros
• Searle JR (1969). Speech Acts, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press
• Scott James C (2009). The Art of Not Being Governed. An Anarchist History of Upland Southeast Asia, Yale University Press, New Haven & London
• Uderzo A (2003). Σπαθία και τραντάφυλλα, Σα ποντιακά έκλωσεν ατο τοι Σαββάντων ο Γέργον [Swords and Roses, translated into Pontian by Savvàndôn Yérgon], Athens: Μαμουθκομιξ