Historical Analogy and Political Continuity as Technologies of Power. The Armenian Genocide and Nagorno-Karabakh Conflict Interrelation in the Contemporary Armenian Politics

Abstract

Analyses of the transformation and political change in Armenia pays noticeable attention to the dominant role of discourses of the Armenian Genocide and the conflict over Nagorno-Karabakh for nation and state-building processes. At the same time, the two issues usually are investigated separately. Attempts are rarely made to interpret the interrelation and connection between the two narratives. Nevertheless, the trauma-based discourse of memory is linking the two narratives as technology of power through discursive structures/mechanisms of analogy and continuity. Methods of discourse analysis combined with expert interviews, internet questionnaires and ethnographic field research aim to analyse the crucial discursive patterns and mechanisms. Hypothetically, instrumentalized and ideological usage of combined narratives are impacting the political changes, in Post-Soviet Armenia. The article touches upon only one aspect of the discursive interrelation between the Armenian Genocide and the Nagorno-Karabakh issue. Thus, the subject under the question is the impact of theusage of historical analogy and the idea of continuity understand as technologies on contemporary Armenian politics of memory.

Divided memory, postcolonialism and trauma in the South Caucasus

“…In the political narrative, its ‘liberation’ from Armenian occupation was a liberation not so much from the Armenians, but rather from the decision of a Russian demigod standing behind the backs of decision-makers in Yerevan. In the case of Armenia, the sense of loss and sacrifice is linked to the relation between the memory of the Armenian genocide and the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict (Cheterian, 2018; Krzysztan, 2021a). Within this narrative, the memory of loss resulting from the genocide is combined with the territorial loss associated with the Soviet nationality policies of the 1920s and with the sacrifice and loss suffered as a result of the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict against Azerbaijan.…”