Enduring Erasures: Afterlives of the Armenian Genocide

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.

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 the coeditor of Edward Said: A Legacy of Emancipation and Representation (2010).