Faces of genocide: Violence, identity and memory An anthropological study on the Armenian genocide

This study examines the Armenian genocide in a comparative perspective and the way the act of violence itself has transgenerational consequences for the victims. The main aim of this dissertation is to study the importance of identity making and identity destruction within the nucleus of the genocidal process, and its consequences for the victimized group. By placing identity at the center of genocide, this study shows how the fear of an imagined existential threat by the Ottoman perpetrators translated itself into a process of redefining and reconceptualizing Turkish identity through reinterpreting history, tradition and mirroring themselves against an essentialized Other. This newly conceptualized identity, however, was considered to be under existential threat, a feeling leading to ideas of purity and impurity which became solidified by laws, destroying cultural elements of the Other, and through modes of violence which are sacrilege in nature. Conceptualizing identity at the core of genocide, gives the author a new analytical tool to study violence and the transmittal of violence throughout different generations. This study is therefore both diachronic and synchronic in nature. It focuses on Armenian Diaspora communities within different countries and second, third and fourth generations survivors and how they conceptualize their history and identity. It painfully shows how the imagined existential threat of the perpetrators is transferred, internalized and embodied by the victimized group. The Armenian identity, as it is conceptualized, is directly linked with the genocidal violence of 1915-1917.