About

“Armenia” names a contemporary predicament faced by many communities and fields: Where is it? East, West, West Asia, or the Middle East? Though geographically landlocked, Armenia is often considered part of the Mediterranean. Is Armenia a nation or a stateless diaspora? A postimperial or a postcolonial space? Armenians hail from Anatolia and the Caucasus, are perceived as white in the West, Middle Eastern in Europe, and black in Russia. In 1994, postcolonial and feminist critic Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak responded to a question posed by two young Armenian critics—“Why is there no Armenian postcolonialism?”—with a prescient answer:“‘Armenia’ cannot lean toward existing theories [and] cannot be comfortably located in the generally recognized lineaments of contemporary imperialism and received postcolonialism. It has been too much in the interstices to fit such a location. Its history is diversified, with many loyalties crosshatching so small a place, if indeed it is more a place than a state of mind over the centuries. One may call [Armenia] the new non-alignment . . .” 

In recent years scholars, artists, and activists have fleshed out this new understanding of “Armenia” and “Armenian”as much more than a great ancient culture, a community victimized by genocide, a homogeneous national identity, or a replica of other postcolonial displaced communities around the globe. Alongside these intellectual and political shifts, diasporic artists have embraced diverse visual practices to render what the 2015 Venice Biennale curators called “Armenity” from the French Arménite:  a state of flux, an open-ended self-definition animated by diverse, global social relations that echo the past.

The Critical Armenian Studies Collective (CASC) is a collective of scholars, artists, and activists that works through critical theories of power and difference to open the putative identity “Armenian” to a wide and non-prescriptive field of critical, reflective study and learning. It was co-founded in 2019 by Veronika Zablotsky, David Kazanjian, and Deanna Cachoian-Schanz, with the purpose of creating a space of non-institutional collaboration without hierarchies of any kind, operating across continents. This critical gesture emanated from our desire to take stock of emerging scholarship in the field of Armenian Studies that could resonate with the queer, feminist, and postcolonial perspectives that the three of us foreground in our own work. As scholars and activist thinkers, we seek to inject the field with critical theories of power and difference and deconstructive methodologies to unsettle its boundaries, disrupt static and stagnant hierarchies, and envision an alternative dialogue. We invite others to join us in open-ended reflection, study, and learning about “Armenian” – our shared agon that draws us together, yet pulls us apart.  

Manifesto

**Placeholder TEXT for Now*** 

The field of Armenian Studies is on the verge of a sea change. After many decades devoted principally to research on the Armenian Genocide of the early twentieth century or to hagiographies of the Medieval/Byzantine era, in the last ten years scholars and artists have shifted the field’s focus to a broader range of interdisciplinary and transnational topics. Armenian Studies now has a new set of current, global concerns. The field of Armenian Studies now confronts an international generation of young intellectuals in fields like literature, anthropology, critical area studies, political science, gender and sexuality studies, visual arts and design, who are decentering the presumptive importance of heteronormativity, nationalism, and identity re/production both in the diaspora and in Armenia itself. In addition, after a period of tension between burgeoning queer communities in Armenia (marked by the publication of Queering Yerevan in 2011) and homophobic violence (typified by the infamous 2012 firebombing of the DIY bar and cultural space in Yerevan), the state of Armenia has seen youth-centered social movements challenge the patriarchal power of authoritarian rule. These transnational movements extend across the Americas, the Middle East, eastern and western Europe, and West Asia. Alongside these intellectual and political shifts, diasporic artists have embraced diverse visual practices to render what the 2015 Venice Biennale curators called “Armenity,” from the French Arménité: a state of flux, open-ended self-definition, and diversely global social relations that echo the past. 

Team