Armenians Beyond Diaspora
Author | : Tsolin Nalbantian |
Publisher | : Edinburgh University Press |
Total Pages | : 240 |
Release | : 2019-12-05 |
ISBN-10 | : 9781474458580 |
ISBN-13 | : 1474458580 |
Rating | : 4/5 (80 Downloads) |
Book excerpt: This book argues that Armenians around the world - in the face of the Genocide, and despite the absence of an independent nation-state after World War I - developed dynamic socio-political, cultural, ideological and ecclesiastical centres. And it focuses on one such centre, Beirut, in the postcolonial 1940s and 1950s. Tsolin Nalbantian explores Armenians' discursive re-positioning within the newly independent Lebanese nation-state; the political-cultural impact (in Lebanon as well as Syria) of the 1946-8 repatriation initiative to Soviet Armenia; the 1956 Catholicos election; and the 1957 Lebanese elections and 1958 mini-civil war. What emerges is a post-Genocide Armenian history of - principally - power, renewal and presence, rather than one of loss and absence.