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This article discusses how Armenians have collected, displayed and exchanged the bones of their murdered ancestors in formal and informal ceremonies of remembrance in Dayr al-Zur, Syria – the final destination for hundreds of thousands of Armenians during the deportations of 1915. These pilgrimages – replete with overlapping secular and nationalist motifs – are a modern variant of historical pilgrimage practices; yet these bones are more than relics. Bone rituals, displays and vernacular memorials are enacted in spaces of memory that lie outside of official state memorials, making unmarked sites of atrocity more legible. Vernacular memorial practices are of particular interest as we consider new archives for the history of the Armenian Genocide. The rehabilitation of this historical site into public consciousness is particularly urgent, since the Armenian Genocide Memorial Museum and Martyr’s Church at the centre of the pilgrimage site were both destroyed by ISIS (Islamic State in Syria) in 2014.
-modern social phenomena, from ISIS to the Tea Party to the Hindu nationalist movement associated with the Bharatiya Janata Party ( Mishra, 2017 ). And latterly, with considerable contribution from contemporary technologies of mass communication and voter manipulation, it has been institutionalised through the ballot box. The election (or near-election) of demagogic, right-wing nationalists in Europe in recent years seems indicative of a growing preference for illiberal democracy in the cultural home of liberalism. In opposition to liberal
counter by well-rehearsed claims of cultural relativism. Like John Rawls before him, Steven Pinker has nothing meaningful to say about structural or racial violence. To accept difference is not to accept the existence of ISIS or compromise with a paedophile. There is no ethics of difference from another who has no respect for difference 8 . What we do know is that the ineradicability of difference is often invoked to destroy difference in the name of universality, to murder in the name of peace, to show utter disregard in the name of tolerance. Violence is a Sign
Helps ISIS ’, Daily Beast , 2 September, http://goo.gl/OaBvmr (accessed 28 June 2019) . Dreazen , Y. and Jakes , L. ( 2015 ), ‘ Hostage Review Will Make It Easier for Families to Pay Ransoms ’, Foreign Policy , 22 June, https://foreignpolicy.com/2015/06/22/hostage
. ( 2018 ), ‘Injury and Death during the ISIS Occupation of Mosul and Its Liberation: Results from a 40-Cluster Household Survey’ , Lafta Riyadh , Al-Nuaimi Maha A. , Burnham Gilbert , PLOS Medicine , 15 : 5 , doi: 10.1371/journal.pmed.1002567 . Moynier
: It appears Médecins Sans Frontières are in Syria without the approval of the Syrian government. Similar to ISIS, they entered the country without our approval. Médecins Sans Frontières are similar to smugglers without borders, criminals without borders, opposers without borders, agents without borders, aggression without borders, and terrorists without borders. 9
hold a silencing desensitisation with respect to displaced people. As seen previously, these two elements operate as imaginary frames that help to build a certain vision of the world, of politics, and one’s own suffering. However, as Isis Giraldo (2020 : 11) correctly states when speaking of the pedagogies of cruelty and the normalisation of ‘false positives’ 8 in Colombia, these techniques can be understood as ‘crucial elements in the propaganda machine of states, capitalism, and the global modern-colonial project’. First, because the displaced are incorporated
-government-controlled Syria, makeshift field hospitals developed into organised secondary and tertiary care centres and then grass-roots health governance structures. Changes in the political landscape, demonstrated by the appearance of ISIS, meant that Kurdish-controlled Syria and Turkish-controlled Syria introduced independent and unique healthcare systems, regulations and structures which added to the mosaic of roles healthcare workers had to take during the conflict ( Bdaiwi, forthcoming ). Loose networks of local healthcare workers developed into local health directorates to fill
Research on the far right is on the rise in dominant academia yet it remains securely anchored in the West. By this I mean that most of this research – be it theoretical or empirical – is concerned with either countries of the global North or heavyweights of the global South such as India or Brazil. Such a focus has had important epistemological, ethical, and political implications. In this chapter, I aim to expound on these implications by enacting a ‘decolonising’ movement of far right studies that involves carrying out certain geographical and theoretical displacements. In order to do this, I will recentre a case from the global South, Colombia, which despite constituting the exemplary success story with regard to making ‘far-right’ ideology hegemonic – to the point that it has become transparent – has been consistently ignored from within this body of research. Starting from this geographical displacement, I claim that it is the mainstream theoretical framework to address the ‘far right’ which has helped obscure the realities that make the Colombian case a paradigmatic example for understanding the issues at stake. Otherwise put: the specificities of the Colombian case reveal the limitations of the concepts – particularly of ‘populism’ and ‘far right’ itself – and the theoretical framework of the mainstream approach to studying the ‘far right’. I make a case for the ‘decolonial critique’ to be considered as a toolbox to address the issues at stake in what concerns the so-called ‘far right’. The displacements I propose – which involve an enunciation from within the underside of history – do not aim at a simple inclusion of marginalised cases and theoretical approaches, i.e., diversifying, but at, to put it in Walter Mignolo’s terms, ‘changing the terms of the conversation’, i.e., decolonising. The field and our fight against these forces might benefit greatly.
ISIS wanted. The tyrannical theatrics were intended not to make me reevaluate my opinions but to entrench me in my prejudices. I was being provoked to smash back – the more outraged, the less free to exercise judgment. On rewatching the video, I recalled the Assyrian relief from Khorsabad. The uncanny resemblance called out for comparison. Curiosity