Enduring Erasures

Reviews / Votes

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 <i>The Horrors of Adana: Revolution and Violence in the Early Twentieth Century</i> 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 fla?neur 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 <i>The Brink of Freedom: Improvising Life in the Nineteenth-Century Atlantic World</i> 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 OEzyuerek, author of <i>Subcontractors of Guilt: Holocaust Memory and Muslim Belonging in Postwar Germany</i> 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 <i>Taboo Memories, Diasporic Voices</i> 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 <i>Mohawk Interruptus: Political Life Across the Borders of Settler States</i>