Past Lectures

Monday 30th January 2006, 7.30PM
The Myth & Reality of "Return" - Diasporans & the Homeland

The place of origin is central to the classical conception of Diaspora, described evocatively in the literature as Homeland, from which the Diaspora is tragically exiled. Homeland is not always a clear and fixed territory from which Diaspora can trace its roots, but can be a mixture of geographies, cultures and experiences, located in history, memory and the present. In the Armenian case, the post 1915 western Diaspora traces its origins to what is today eastern Turkey. The irreversible rupture of the genocide meant that those homelands are lost. As the genocide generation dies, memory of those lands and that life also goes with them, thus relegating the actual homeland of origin to history and narrative. Diasporans therefore have to negotiate the gap between a mythical homeland and a step-homeland in the shape of the Republic of Armenia.

The Diaspora ‘myth of return’ maintains that at some point in the future the Diaspora communities will repatriate to that homeland from which they were expelled. These myths form part of the Diaspora creed which it perpetuates in order to affirm its identity, legitimacy and orientation. The question of return is ambiguous for the Armenian Diaspora, as return to their ancestral homeland is impossible.

This presentation will look at the idea and reality of ‘return’ in the contemporary Armenian Diaspora, focusing on the experiences of individual Diasporans who have made the ‘return’ journey to the Republic of Armenia.

ABOUT THE SPEAKER: Sossie Kasparian is in the final stages of her PhD in the Department of Politics & International Studies at the School of Oriental & African Studies (SOAS), University of London. She teaches political theory and comparative politics at undergraduate level. She chairs the AI/SOAS Armenian Studies Group (ASG). She will be presenting an extract from her thesis "Rooted and Routed: the Contemporary Armenian Diaspora in Cyprus and Lebanon".

For more information about the above presentation or AGBULondon please email Louisa_Culleton@hotmail.com . You may also find information on AGBULondon activities on www.agbu.org.uk