Nation, narrative and commemoration: political ritual in divided Cyprus

Abstract

This article examines the issue of political commemoration, focusing on the commemorations organized by different political parties in the two sides of divided Cyprus. It suggests a new analytical framework for the study of ritual in contemporary nation-states that moves beyond the usual examination of any single ritual on its own terms. The use of comparison, both within each side and between the two sides, reveals how political actors stage commemorations of different historical events in order to propose contesting historical narratives. Hence, the meaning of any commemorative ritual can be understood only as part of the broader story that each narrative proposes. The historical narratives proposed by different political actors share certain common characteristics by virtue of all employing the narrative form: a beginning, a plot, certain categories of actors, the spatial location where history unfolds, the moral centre through which events are to be evaluated and the end. However, each narrative suggests a different story through which issues of identity and "otherness", self-justification and blame are negotiated in order to define the "imagined community" of the nation, its enemies and its pertinent history.

Youth in (times of) crisis: Migration, precarity, and shifting identities in the Southern borders of Europe

“…Such ideological articulations underpinned the inter-ethnic conflict in Cyprus and the division of the island in 1974. Although "ethnic proximity" to Greece has been historically connected to polarized political identities in Cyprus, with the Left putting emphasis on a Cypriot identity and the Right claiming a shared "Greekness" (Papadakis, 2003;Chatzipanagiotidou, 2012), everyday performances and narratives of such cultural formations are more diverse, diffused and fluid. Discourses of crisis, however, have impacted the ways, in which Greece has been imagined even by those who adopt "Hellenocentric" identities, and a new distinction is constructed in public discourses, contrasting the effectiveness of "austerity measures" in Cyprus with the failure of Greece to reform its economy.…”

The afterlives of Hugo Chávez as political symbol

“…The afterlives of Hugo Chávez as political symbol change such as regime transitions (Bryan 2000;Papadakis 2003). Symbols become central for the mobilization and demarcation of allegiances and for the simplification of the political stakes.…”

To "1974" ως πολιτισμικό τραύμα

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