Memory of the Armenian genocide

Montreal Life Stories would like to congratulate team member Hourig Attarian who was awarded an FQRSC Post-Doctoral Fellowship to work on a research project related to the memory of the Armenian genocide. Congratulations Hourig!

"My program of research aims to explore the intergenerational life stories of Armenian women who, as a direct consequence of the 1915 genocide perpetrated by the Ottoman Turkish Empire against its Armenian subjects, were absorbed into Turkish, Kurdish and Arab Bedouin households and led "hidden" double lives in many cases throughout their lifetimes. Their stories have been buried deep into folds of personal memories through decades of silences burdened by secrets, stigma, and shame.

The recent surfacing of select stories of descendants of "hidden" Armenians disrupts the taboos on both sides of the Turkish-Armenian divide. One excellent example is the publication in Turkey of well-known human rights lawyer Fethiye Çetin's book My grandmother (2004 in Turkish, 2008 in translation) detailing the story of the Armenian origins and ordeal of her survivor grandmother. When asked how she identifies herself after her discovery about her grandmother, Çetin responds "Melez" meaning hybrid, not pure in Turkish.

Stories like Çetin's offer an opportunity to explore critically these hybridized spaces of identity along a very sensitive divide between perpetrator and victim, executioner and survivor, "pure" and "impure" national identities, all written on the boundaries of women's bodies."