Abstract
As photography theorist Susan Sontag has written, ‘the Western memory museum is mostly a visual one’.3 But how do we visually articulate the memory of an event that has such a complicated and traumatic imprint even 100 years after its occurrence?
I would like to thank Kathryn Babayan, director of the Armenian Studies program at the University of Michigan, who invited me, as a Manoogian visiting scholar, to participate in the second semester of the academic year 2013–14. This chapter is largely based on the Berj H. Haidostian Annual Distinguished Lecture. And my thanks go also to The Manoogian Simone Foundation and The Alex and Marie Manoogian Foundation, as well as the Haidostian family for facilitating my stay in Ann Arbor, Michigan.
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Notes
S. Sontag, ‘Regarding the Torture of Others’, The New York Times, 23 May 2004.
J. M. Carzou (1975) Un génocide exemplaire (Paris: Flammarion).
See M. A. Baronian (2013b) Mémoire et Image. Regards sur la Catastrophe arménienne ( Lausanne: L’Age d’Homme).
G. Didi-Huberman (2008) Images in Spite of All: Four Photographs from Auschwitz ( Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press).
On German Armin T. Wegner’s photographic collection, see T. Hofmann and G. Koutcharian (1992) ‘Images that Horrify and Indict: Pictorial Documents on the Persecution and Extermination of Armenians from 1877 to 1922’, Armenian Review, Vol. 45 (1–2): 53–184. In recent years, we have witnessed an acceleration of the disclosure and production of images by, for example, contemporary artists. A significant example is the early American film Ravished Armenia/Auction of Souls (1919, Oscar Apfel) based on the book and the true story of Aurora Mardiganian’s Ravished Armenia (1918). It is the first feature film that deals with genocidal violence but it has only been recently rediscovered and partially restored. Genocide survivor Mardiganian’s testimony has been of great inspiration for Atom Egoyan’s video installation Auroras (2007 and 2015).
See M. A. Baronian (2013a) Cinéma et Mémoire. Sur Atom Egoyan ( Brussels: Editions Académie Royale Belgique).
My point here is largely inspired by the work of French-Armenian philosopher Marc Nichanian. See M. Nichanian (2009) The Historiographic Perversion ( New York: Columbia University Press).
See D. Kouymjian (1984) ‘Destruction des monuments historiques comme poursuite de la politique du génocide’, in G. Chaliand and P. Vidal-Naquet (eds) Le Crime du silence ( Paris: Flammarion ), pp. 295–313.
M. Hoolboom (2001) Inside the Pleasure Dome: Fringe Film in Canada ( Toronto, ON: Couch House Books ), p. 149.
S. Hall (1997) ‘Cultural Identity and Diaspora’, in K. Woodward (ed.) Identity and Difference ( New York: Routledge ), pp. 52–3.
M. Hirsch (1997) Family Frames: Photography, Narrative and Postmemory ( Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press ), p. 244.
J. Clifford (1999) ‘Diasporas’, in R. Cohen and S. Vertovec (eds) Migration, Diasporas and Transnationalism ( Cheltenham: Edward Elgar Publishing ), p. 310.
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© 2016 Marie-Aude Baronian
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Baronian, MA. (2016). Missing Images: Textures of Memory in Diaspora. In: Demirdjian, A. (eds) The Armenian Genocide Legacy. Palgrave Studies in the History of Genocide. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-137-56163-3_20
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