History's remainders: On time and objects after conflict in Cyprus

Abstract

In the aftermath of war, those who remain must rebuild lives in spaces that bear the scars of conflict. This essay focuses on one such space, the unrecognized state in north Cyprus, which has experienced waves of displacement, ethnic cleansing, and the appropriation and redistribution of “enemy” property. Families raise children in plundered spaces; grandchildren play in gardens replanted after war; houses are furnished with the remains of others’ lives. In such contexts, the questions of what belongs to whom, and who belongs where, or with whom, are particularly contested, while the future of these places and objects remains uncertain. This essay asks what everyday historical work may be done with looted homes and objects, and it shows how practices with and stories about belongings may also be ways of helping us to “belong” in history. [temporality, materiality, history, memory, belonging, Cyprus]

The Ends of Anthropology: 2014 in U.S. Sociocultural Anthropology

“…Jennifer Ashley's (2014) piece provides a description of politics and parody in Chile, while Kristin Doughty (2014) and Rebecca Bryant (2014) each examine the afterlives of conflict, in Rwanda and Cyprus respectively. Similarly, the Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute's special issue entitled "Doubt, Conflict, Mediation" provides a robust analysis of modern time, making an overarching argument about its connections to capitalism and its roots in Christianity (Bear 2014).…”

On Critical Times: Return, Repetition, and the Uncanny Present

“…Their anxiety, I suggest, derived from a similar sense of the remnants of others' lives that people had found in the houses where they came to live after the conflict, the traumas of the past were something that had been put away without being reconciled. They represented a past without closure, one that had been foreclosed in the interest of particular futures but that in the opening many people began to recall in order to creates an intentionality that in my observation was often defiant (see also Bryant 2014). The refrains, 'We suffered, too', and 'Greek Cypriots know nothing of our suffering', were often repeated as ways of created intentional stances towards the return of a past that threatened the future.…”

Looking Forward, Looking Back

“…Casey (1983) revealingly explores some of the ambiguities of "keeping in mind": there is not a single entity for analysis despite what English terminology suggests. Both Ricoeur (2006), and Borges in his story about Funes Memorius the man who could not forget (1964), turn upside down the logic of the saying: "to forgive is to forget" (in which forgiving must proceed forgetting) for them, rather, in order to forgive we must first forget (Bienenstock 2010, 332, see also Bryant 2014). But individuals and societies have different trajectories for this.…”

“…People regularly re-assess the past and as a consequence, start thinking differently about the future" (1992, 78). As part of this work of reassessment archives, objects (belongings) and, architecture have important roles to play as Bryant (2014) has explored in contemporary Cyprus where civil war, partition and the partial lifting of the partition make memory and ownership (current and future) fragile, politically sensitive and disturbing (uncanny). Starting with familiar suburban landscapes in Northern England Edensor (2008) talks of "mundane hauntings" when discussing how evidence of other lives, past ways of occupying space, obtrude like palimpsests through the everyday.…”