By Henry Theriault / The Armenian Weekly April 2013 Magazine
The metaphysics of the relationship between the unit and
the multitude have long been contested in scientific, political,
historiographic, and other contexts. Even the terms we use to refer to
different tensions often unavoidably commit us to favor one or the other term:
the atom and the molecule, the part and the whole, the one and the many, the
individual and the masses, the subject and the state, and so on.
Still, there is often some kind of material support for
one side or the other: It is the atom that is the fundamental unit of matter,
not the molecule or compound (nor the proton, quark, or any other subatomic
particle). In the social realm, however, even such objective physical features,
though they might exist, do not hold sway. True, human beings are physically
discrete relative to one another. Yet, the individual human being appears
dependent on other human beings not only for basic survival, but for emotional
and intellectual development. If linguistic rationalists such as Noam Chomsky
are correct, then our minds are fundamentally social, in that (the fundamental
social mechanism of) language is embedded naturally in them and is the form of
thought itself. The more we consider such issues, the more ambiguous such a
relationship appears. Think also of the deep political conflicts, not to
mention the oppressions and perverted extremisms, generated by adherents to one
side or the other on whether the citizen or nation/state, individual member or
race, etc., is primary.
This conceptual tension becomes even more fundamental
when we engage historical issues, and interpretation overwhelms materiality.
The data of history are indeterminate, and any set allows a range of cohesive
accounts to be proposed. At the same time, material factors, such as statements
by genocide perpetrators of the intent to destroy, or consistent patterns of
exterminatory actions that cannot be coincidental, or even consistencies in
structural situations, such as different groups in the Ottoman Empire occupying
similar positions within the millet system and experiencing similar fates
during the Ottoman genocidal process against minorities. What is more, the
parsing of a unitary event in space and time is, ultimately, arbitrary, in the
sense of allowing more than one parsing, not any parsing. Did the Armenian
Genocide comprise the events of the 1890’s, 1909, 1914, and 1915? Did it end in
1918, 1923, or much later? Was the French Revolution a series of specific
events or one overarching event? Both at once? Local- and meso-level variations
fragment the event to the point at which what appears to be an internally
complex single event can just as easily be regarded as a series of distinct
events and moments that are not linearly causally connected (in a causal
chain), but which at any point were the function of a variety of forces such
that the next situation was not entirely determined by the previous one in the
sequence of events retroactively understood as the French Revolution. But the
push is just as much in the other direction. Did the killing of returning
Armenians after the fall of the Young Turk regime constitute the beginning of a
new set of violent acts, or was it a continuity of the genocide? As we reflect,
it seems that the previous violence and entrenchment of the ideology behind it
made possible and largely determined the later killings, suggesting that the
bulk of the genocide is inseparable from the later killing of Armenians.
Or does interpretative framework always trump material
possibilities if we decide it does? Is all “unity” the function of
consciousness, and so whatever we want it to be (as proposed by postmodernist
relativists) or whatever our prejudices and conceptual limitations determine it
to be (as maintained by superscholars placing themselves beyond such
limitations due to their ability to transcend “nationalism” or some other
putatively limited perspective)?
There are many ways we might try to dig ourselves out of
this mire of ambiguity, not just regarding what the right interpretation of
events is but what the right framework for interpretation is. We could say that
both drives, one toward unification and the other toward fragmentation, are
primary and related, with the focus on elements making possible appreciation of
composites or superindividual wholes, and the focus on the overarching unity of
historical processes giving context and meaning to discrete events. Choosing
one or the other perspective as correct means losing the essential
contributions of the other or the one as part of a comprehensive approach to
historical events that allows us to see them in both their detailed
specificities and their overarching patterns and causal trajectories. We can go
even further than this simple binary, as explained by such genocide scholars as
Scott Strauss and Ugur Ungor, to recognize multiple levels of genocidal
activity, typically referred to as the familiar macro (overarching), micro
(local, individual), and meso (regional) levels. All levels affect the other
levels and all are essential to comprehensive understanding of a case of
genocide. This approach allows us to recognize that each level of analysis has
a function and a value. What is more, dialectically (or trialectically), the
more we attempt to approach a case exclusively at one of the levels, the more
our findings and interpretative needs push us to consider and even depend on
the other levels—indeed, the more we must take account of the other levels even
to produce any findings at one of the levels. The more we push one perspective,
the more essential the other perspective(s) become.
If we hold that concept has primacy over empirical fact
in some kind of Kantian sense, then concept itself is conditioned and
necessary. We have to see unities and multiplicities in history not because
they exist in the events we regard, but because that is how our minds organize
the world for us. The problem, of course, is that rational people can disagree
about precisely how to organize their perceptions of reality, so we need a
deeper principle to decide which parsing of historical events is correct. The
view that the simplest explanation that fits all data is best is often proposed
for scientific theorization. But it, too, is incomplete. How do we define
“simple”? What is a “best fit”? And, which data do we exclude, because any
theory that goes beyond a mere restatement of the data never fits the data
perfectly and thus requires discounting some data.
Quine’s solution is the “web of belief.” According to
this model, no single belief about the world exists independently of other
beliefs; rather all beliefs an individual holds are related to one another in a
complex network. If one belief is falsified, this affects other dependent or
related beliefs as well. The most reasonable interpretation of new historical
data is the one most consistent with the set of beliefs about the world a
person already holds, that is, the one that disrupts that person’s web of
beliefs the least. The obvious problem is that socially inculcated ideologies
and manipulative propaganda work precisely by warping a person’s web of beliefs
away from what others not subject to this propaganda would find most
reasonable. It is precisely the web of preexisting beliefs about the world—that
“our” society is inherently good and could not commit horrific acts of
genocide, that extreme views tend to be biased so the truth in a case of
conflicting views lies somewhere in the middle, etc.—that deniers exploit.
Does this mean we are stuck with a postmodernist
relativism? Here ethical commitments as well as practical concerns can have a
decisive role. That the evaluative principles we employ might be ultimately
arbitrary does not mean that those committed to human rights cannot choose to
agree to the basic Utilitarian principle that “suffering is bad” and its
implication that “the intentional or neglectful infliction of human suffering
is bad.” If the latter is true, then we can choose to organize historical data
in such a way as to maximize our recognition of suffering. Thus, the best interpretation
of a set of historical data is the one that least downplays or hides dimensions
of suffering. Similarly, an obvious practical concern is capturing as much
detail within a “unity” as possible. In neo-Hegelian terms, it is precisely
unification that preserves internal complexity that is optimal, so that the
drives toward unification and fragmentation themselves are misleading, as true
unification is a unification of complexity such that if that complexity is
superseded or obscured the unification becomes less interesting or trivial.
Reduc tion by suppression of complexity is not unification but misleading
simplification. The question is no longer which drive we emphasize, but how to
follow each in a manner that maintains as much as possible appreciation of the
other feature of reality. We want to look at details in all their complexity in
such a way that we do not thereby lose sight of overarching connections.
But how do these ontological abstractions relate to the
Ottoman-Turkish treatment of minorities? In recent years, there has emerged a
new way of looking at what had long been studied as “the Armenian Genocide.”
Broadening attention to the fates of Assyrians and Greeks under the Young Turk
and Kemalist regimes has led to a recasting of “the Armenian Genocide” as the
Ottoman-Turkish Genocide of (Christian) Minorities. Although earlier work had
increased this attention, David Gaunt’s work [1] is arguably the first to
present more than one victim group as the targets of an integrated genocidal process.
Through this framework we can appreciate the conceptual interfusion of the
three groups (because of the territorial focus of Gaunt’s work, Greeks are not
a focal element, but an extension of his approach can easily be made to include
them) in a single genocidal process, even as historical sources are typically
precise in the local fates of the groups [2] and thus help preserve a precise
understanding of the complexity of the overarching process. In the same period,
some Armenian studies scholars began a similar push. For instance, in the 2005
conference on the Armenian Genocide he hosted at UCLA, as well as the
subsequent book of papers delivered at the conference, Professor Richard
Hovannisian included papers on both Assyrian and Greek victimization. [3] The
shift quickly fostered explicit analysis of a unified genocidal process, in the
work, for instance, of Hannibal Travis [4] and Panayiotis Diamadis.[5] What is
more, this attention on the unified process has also been coupled with
groundbreaking work on the heretofore neglected Assyrian and Greek aspects,
most notably in recent anthologies. [6]
As comparative genocide studies showed that consideration
of diverse cases of genocide was not simply a matter of logging analogical
comparisons and contrasts, but of recognizing historical relationships and
common contextual factors across often apparently disparate instances of
genocide, the new works on the Ottoman-Turkish genocidal process are not simply
developing parallel histories of three target groups. On the contrary, the more
analysis of the particular groups that is done, the more the inevitability of
consideration of the treatment of the other groups becomes apparent.
These works show that it is not simply a matter of adding
two cases to a set of Ottoman-Turkish genocides, but taking an integrative
approach. As already suggested, that approach arises organically through the
sustained treatment of any of the particular victim groups. As I have explained
to students regarding Gaunt’s Massacres, Resistance, Protectors, and George
Shirinian has commented about editing The Asia Minor Catastrophe, study of the
fate of Ottoman Assyrians and Greeks, respectively, has taught us a great deal
about the fate of Armenians. In fact, I contend here that it is no longer
possible to study the latter in isolation. As the opening ontological
considerations imply, a truly comprehensive understanding of the genocide of
Armenians depends on attention to the broader genocidal process in the Ottoman
Empire.
This is not, of course, to suggest that there are no
differences between these fates. Because of territorial distributions and sizes
of the different groups, nuances in perpetrator ideology, opportunities (the
defense of Van, for instance), considerations regarding statehood (the Greeks
were understood to have a state already, though one seen as a threat to Turkish
territory, the Armenians were perceived as a large enough group to make a claim
on their historical homeland areas, while the Assyrians were not perceived as a
large or concentrated enough group to pose an immediate territorial threat),
and other factors, the timing, methods, extent, and even stated rationales
varied among the groups. Yet, the same is true of differences within each of
these groups, albeit to a lesser extent. For example, while Armenian
Protestants were targeted for genocide, the trajectory of decision-making and
implementation was different from that of Apostolic Armenians. Similarly,
gender was a very significant factor in the specific ways members of each group
were treated, though, for instance, Greek labor battalions included both men
and women (yet the women were subjected to sexual violence). [7] But it is
precisely the appreciation of these variations that allows a precise and
unified analysis of the complex genocidal process that occurred in the Ottoman
Empire, spanning war and peace, three governments, and a wide range of
locations.
ENDNOTES
[1] David Gaunt, Massacres, Resistance, Protectors:
Muslim-Christian Relations in Eastern Anatolia during World War I (Piscataway,
NJ: Gorgias Press, 2006).
[2] Comments by Roupen Adalian in reference to the
documents on the Ottoman genocidal process contained in the U.S. National
Archives, “The Study of the Armenian Genocide Sources: Where and What to Look
for?”, “Armenian Genocide: Challenges on the Eve of the Centenary”
International Conference, Yerevan, Armenia, March 22–23, 2013, on March 22.
[3] See Anahit Khosroeva, “The Assyrian Genocide inthe
Ottoman Empire and Adjacent Territories,” and Speros Vryonis, Jr., “Greek Labor
Battalions Asia Minor,” pp. 275–90, in The Armenian Genocide: Cultural and
Ethical Legacies, ed. Richard G. Hovannisian (New Brunswick, NJ: Transaction
Publishers, 2007).
[4] Hannibal Travis, Genocide in the Middle East: The
Ottoman Empire, Iraq, and Sudan (Durham: Carolina Academic Press, 2010).
[5] Panayiotis Diamadis, “Children and Genocide,” in
Genocide Perspectives IV: Essays on Holocaust and Genocide, ed. Colin Tatz
(Sydney: The Australian Institute for Holocaust and Genocide Studies/
UTSePress, 2012), pp. 312–52.
[6] Tessa Hofmann, Matthias Bjornlund, and Vasileios
Meichanetsidis, eds., The Genocide of the Ottoman Greeks: Studies on the
State-Sponsored Campaign of Extermination of the Christians of Asia Minor
(1912-1922) and Its Aftermath: History, Law, Memory (Aristide D. Caratzas,
2012), and George Shirinian, ed., The Asia Minor Catastrophe and the Ottoman
Greek Genocide (Toronto: Zoryan Institute, 2012).
[7] See Vryonis.
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