Lullabies and the memory of pain: Armenian women’s remembrance of the past in Turkey

Bilal, Melissa

doi:10.1007/s10624-018-9515-8

Cited by 19 publications

(2 citation statements)

References 29 publications

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“…It sometimes means transmitting memories of these collectively encountered thresholds through ‘alternative family making processes and non-normative formations of time’ (Çalışkan, 2019b: 262). It includes re-making your friend’s tombstone with her own name not to let her ‘really die’, and creating practical, material and affective ‘repertoires of mourning’ together – as Armenian women do through lullabies in remembrance of the Armenian Genocide and other painful experiences of the past in Turkey (Bilal, 2019: 199). It meant overcoming the paralysing pain of grief for Mother Sema, which she made possible by re-membering grief as a constitutive part of her life and activism, by continuing to thrive while affectively and militantly assembling with others.…”

Section: Unlearning and Re-membering Griefmentioning

confidence: 99%

Little prayer: Ambiguous grief in the LGBTQIA+ movement in Turkey

2022

European Journal of Women's Studies

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Inspired by a Danez Smith poem, this essay is a ‘little prayer’ for LGBTQIA+ people and organizers to be able to collectively grieve the family and friends they have lost, the relations they had to end, the social privileges they never had, or lost before and after sharing their queerness. It argues for the militant force of this slow-paced, ghostly, and ambiguous grief in queer lives, and in the LGBTQIA+ movements in Turkey and elsewhere. The author draws on 4 years of organizing at Boysan’ s House – a living memory space, and community hub in Istanbul – and the 12-hour oral history conducted with Mother Sema, who has been mobilizing her motherhood and her grief as a pro-LGBTQIA+ organizer since 2006. The essay suggests that ambiguous grief can be relearned and re-membered as a radically transformative force that is already constitutive of queer communities. It situates the histories and presents of Mother Sema and Boysan’s House amid diverse experiences of resilience and resistance through motherhood, queer kin making, and mourning. In so doing, the essay builds on the militant activisms of the Saturday Mothers/People, the Peace Mothers, the organized family members of LGBTQIA+ people, and the trans communities in Turkey. It is thus an inquiry into ways of housing and transforming ambiguous grief in the LGBTQIA+ movement, in the post-July 2016 coup attempt Turkey.

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Section: Unlearning and Re-membering Griefmentioning

confidence: 99%

Little prayer: Ambiguous grief in the LGBTQIA+ movement in Turkey

2022

European Journal of Women's Studies

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“…10. Apart from the political efforts of the diaspora, Armenian citizens of Turkey have also developed ways to resist epistemically (see Medina 2013, 48-9) to the denial executed by the Turkish Republic (see Bilal 2019;Cheterian 2015, 15). 11.…”

Section: Notesmentioning

confidence: 99%

Epistemic Injusticefrom Afar: Rethinking the Denial of Armenian Genocide

Oranli

2020

Social Epistemology

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Genocide denialism is an understudied topic in the epistemic injustice scholarship; so are epistemic relations outside of the Euro-American context. This article proposes to bring the literature into contact with an underexplored topic in a 'distant' setting: Turkey. Here, I explore the ethical and epistemological implications of the Turkish denial of the Armenian genocide as a pervasive and systematic epistemic harm. Using an interdisciplinary methodology, I argue that a philosophical exploration of genocide denialism requires examining the role of institutions and ideology in relation to the epistemic harm done by individual perpetrators. More specifically, I suggest that the individual, ideological, and institutional roots of genocide denialism constitute a regime of epistemic injustice in Turkey.

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Hopes and Loss of Democratization Under AKP Government: From 2002 Onward

Galip

2020

Modernity, Memory and Identity in South-East Europe

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Lullabies and the memory of pain: Armenian women’s remembrance of the past in Turkey

Cited by 19 publications

References 29 publications

Little prayer: Ambiguous grief in the LGBTQIA+ movement in Turkey

Little prayer: Ambiguous grief in the LGBTQIA+ movement in Turkey

Epistemic Injusticefrom Afar: Rethinking the Denial of Armenian Genocide

Hopes and Loss of Democratization Under AKP Government: From 2002 Onward

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