Affective globalisation: On the politics and economies of emotions in the global era

Affective spaces, melancholic objects

Ruination and the production of anthropological knowledge

Yael Navaro-Yashin

Daniel Alegrett (1300822) CREOLE

Vienna, 13 January 2014

Affective spaces, melancholic objects Ruination and the production of anthropological knowledge

Yael Navaro-Yashin
Reader of Social Anthropology Newham College, University of Cambridge Born in Istanbul, Turkey, to Daniel and Leyda Navaro Married to Mehmet Yan, Nicosia-born writer B.A. Sociology, Brandeis University (USA) M.A. Anthropology, Brandeis University Ph.D. Princeton University Author of Faces of the State: Secularism and Public Life in Turkey The Make-Believe State: Affective Geography in a Postwar Polity Research interests include: Anthropology of politics, ethnography of the state, affect and subjectivity, postwar environment, remnants, ruins, materiality and tangibility, spatiality and geography, Middle East, Southeastern Europe, Turkey, Cyprus, post-Ottoman societies
Affective globalisation: On the politics and economies of emotions in the global era

Affective spaces, melancholic objects Ruination and the production of anthropological knowledge

Location of Cyprus within the Mediterranean Basin

Affective globalisation: On the politics and economies of emotions in the global era

Affective spaces, melancholic objects Ruination and the production of anthropological knowledge

Spatial distribution of Turkish-Cypriot and Greek Cypriot populations before and after the partition of Cyprus
The Republic of Cyprus (created in 1960) has de iure sovereignty over the whole island. It is internationally recognized. But in fact it does not control the British bases, the UN buffer zone, nor the northern section of the island
The entire island as the Republic of Cyprus is de iure a member of the European Union since 2006 and the Eurozone since 2008 The island was under Ottoman sovereignty from 1571 to 1914, but the British administered the island de facto between 1878 and 1960 Leased in exchange of protection against the Russian Empire, it was annexed by the British Crown in 1914 after the Ottomans became allies of Austria-Hungary, Germany and Bulgaria in WWI

De facto sovereignty for the North: Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus (created 1983, recognized only by Turkey. Turkish troops still present)

Affective globalisation: On the politics and economies of emotions in the global era

Density of the Turkish-Cypriot population between 1891 and 1973, it shows

Affective globalisation: On the politics and economies of emotions in the global era

the retreat into enclaves of the Turkish-Cypriot population

following terrorism against British rule iand ntercommunal violence (led by EOKA and the TMT) Affective spaces, melancholic objects Ruination and the production of anthropological knowledge

after independence (1960) and before partition (1974)

The shades indicate density of Turkish-Cypriot presence, from almost total (darkest) to none (white). Source: Wikipedia

Affective spaces, melancholic objects Ruination and the production of anthropological knowledge

Ethnography
Long-term fieldwork in 2001 and 2002 (several visits before and after) in Northern Cyprus among Turkish-Cypriot subjects and their relations to the remnants of former Greek-Cypriot objects, properties and spaces.

Research questions What does it feel to live among the ruined leftovers of the enemy community (Subjective question about inner feelings, emotions coded in language). Do objects and spaces transmit affective energies? (Non-subjective, non-linguistic question about the circulation of affect)
Alledged ethnographic bias: Hyperbolizing Left-wing Turkish-Cypriot remorseful and reconciliatory appeals to the Greek-Cypriots, polarized against the Right-wing Turkish Cypriot ethno-nationalistic claims of exclusive sovereignty for a precarious make-believe state. Privileges those born before 1974. Ethnographic present: 2001-2002: NavaroYashin says her impressions hold even after 2008 (opening of border) Ethical and political agenda or implications: Appeal for spaces of inclusion instead of spaces of exclusion (sovereignty). This article would seem pessimistic about it
Affective globalisation: On the politics and economies of emotions in the global era

Affective spaces, melancholic objects Ruination and the production of anthropological knowledge

Theoretical framework
Intends to be anti-, trans-, and multi-paradigmatic Embraces both. A and B [and yet C] approach instead of either A or B approach (which ruins paradigms) Ethnographic research allows it and demands it for knowledge production

THEORIES OF AFFECT AND SUBJECTIVITY AND THEORIES OF LANGUAGE AND MATERIALITY for an anthropological theory of affect
Some background anthropological influences:
Marilyn Strathern and post-modern anthropology, post-feminism, collapse of nature/culture divide (senior collegue at the University of Cambridge) Begoa Eretxaga, psychological anthropology of nationalism and political violence, state repression and terror: Northern Ireland and the Basque Country, queer theory, post-Marxism, etc. Eretxaga was Navaro-Yashins close friend, visited her in Cyprus during fieldwork. Navaro-Yashin acted as one of her literary executors when Eretxaga died of cancer in 2002.

Affective globalisation: On the politics and economies of emotions in the global era

Affective spaces, melancholic objects Ruination and the production of anthropological knowledge

Theoretical-methodological framework
Affective turn in the human sciences, mainly inspired by philosopher Gilles
Deleuze and psychotehrapist Flix Guattari (Capitalism and Schizophrenia: Anti-Oedipus and A Thousand Plateaus). Affect (Logic of Sense), Root, Rhizome, Plateau Deleuze continues the anti-Cartesian, anti-Kantian critique of the subject in Spinoza, Freudian psychoanalysis, structuralism (Lvi-Strauss), and post-structuralism (Lacan: subject as nothingness, Foucault: subjectification processes) Navaro-Yashin reads Deleuze indirectly through commenters and secondary sources, e.g., human geographer Nigel Thrifts non-representational geography

(Anthropological) theories of language and symbolization: semiology (Julia Kristeva), semiotics, hermeneutics, social constructionism, etc. Theories of subjectivity (and emotion): psycho-cultural anthropology, some sections of psychoanalysis, feminism, etc. From Julia Kristevas The Powers of Horror: An essay on abjection, NavaroYashin picks the concept of the abject (=thrown away), a sickening horror that must be cast off from the self, as a negation of it. Perceived as horrific, repugnant filth or dirt. Bodily expression: nausea, vomit. Necessary for self-formation.
Affective globalisation: On the politics and economies of emotions in the global era

Affective spaces, melancholic objects Ruination and the production of anthropological knowledge

Theoretical-methodological framework
Post-linguistic theories of materiality Spatiality, cultural geography Non-representional theories in human geography: Nigel Thrifts readings of Deleuze Object-centred Actor-Network-Theory of Bruno Latour and colleagues. Nonhuman agency. Things as actants. After Spinoza, Tarde, Deleuze social studies of science, against Durkheim and social constructionism. Networks, symmetry (transand post-paradigmatic social sciences), society as assemblage of things and humans, collapse of nature-society divide Affect as emotive energies discharged in the environment. Draws without credit in the article (but discussed in Navaro-Yashins book) from Teresa Brennan, (like Sara Ahmed) Australian feminist cultural theorist interested in affects and emotions. The Transmission of Affect draws from Sigmund Freuds postneurological, pre-linguistic, proto-psychoanalytical scientific project of a metapsychology, inspired by thermodynamic models.

Affective globalisation: On the politics and economies of emotions in the global era

Affective spaces, melancholic objects Ruination and the production of anthropological knowledge

Theoretical framework
Walter Benjamins critique of violence and philosophy of history Theses on the Philosophy of History [On the Concept of History] (last completed work of Benjamin before his suicide in 1940) Pessimistic outlook on history in the face of Fascism Critique of reason and progress Inverts Marxist/Historical Materialist Hope principle about future revolution. The task now must be to save the past from ruination

Central analytical metaphor Ruination

Ruination is decay, destruction, despair, catastrophe, life and history in ruins Ruins for Navaro-Yashin: What remains after destruction and violation: Ruined artefacts and subjectivities. Residual affects lingering after conflict, war, or violence. Ruination is inside the self and out there, in the non-human environment

Affective globalisation: On the politics and economies of emotions in the global era

Affective spaces, melancholic objects Ruination and the production of anthropological knowledge

Paul Klee etched Angelus Novus in 1920. Jewish figure of the Angelus Novus: It is created only to chant the Glory of God, and then dissolves into nothingness Benjamin was fascinated by it and bought it 1921. It was one of his most valuable possessions. Fleeing the Nazis in France in 1940, he concealed it in his bag and gave it to Georges Bataille, before committing suicide while on the custody of Francos police in Spain, threatened to be delivered to the Nazis

Affective globalisation: On the politics and economies of emotions in the global era

Affective spaces, melancholic objects Ruination and the production of anthropological knowledge

Main descriptive affect

Melancholia
Turkish-Cypriot dialect: Maraz
Conflict, war, partition

Rum mal (Greek property) left behind

Maraz (Melancholia) Uneasiness, sadness, remorse, depression, regret,loss Ruined subjectivities Ganimet (Loot, plunder) Violently assumed property is abject Ruined objects Ruined appropriation

Affective globalisation: On the politics and economies of emotions in the global era

Affective spaces, melancholic objects Ruination and the production of anthropological knowledge

The non-linguistic transmission of affect as materiality

Non-human agency of objects: Ruins as actants, affective sources of melancholia

Ruined Rum mal as ganimet (Abject Greek-Cypriot objects) Assumed as remnants of a past, destroyed sociality Phantomic, lingering presence of the Greek-Cypriots

Post-war environment, misappropriated dwellings and spaces, landscape of ruins, rhizomatic spread of decomposition and decay, closed borders, exclusive and divided space (partition), isolation from the rest of the world

Melancholic objects

Spatial melancholia

Affective globalisation: On the politics and economies of emotions in the global era

Affective spaces, melancholic objects Ruination and the production of anthropological knowledge

Overcoming melancholia: Loss, Mourning, grieving

Melancholy is grief over the loss of an object of affection (human, non-human) Mourning is overcoming the loss of the object of affection, the loved one, the bond that has been ruined.

Turkish-Cypriot melancholia seems irredeemable

Who or what has been lost? The Greek-Cypriot. Who is the Greek-Cypriot? The enemy The bond to the Greek-Cypriot has undergone abjection Enmity has ruined the sociality and conviviality. No bond between enemies. The Greek-Cypriot is the enemy, not a beloved. No bond to be mourned The Greek-Cypriot is a non-object of affection (Null object) The loss of a non-object of affection is not a loss

Non-grievable melancholic affect Further Maraz

no resolution as long as interpersonal relations with the Greek-Cypriots are absent and borders are closed by claims of sovereignty. Reconciliation and open exchange would overcome the ruined affects

Affective globalisation: On the politics and economies of emotions in the global era

Questions
Are the theoretical choices of Navaro-Yashin the only and best ones? Is she ruining past approaches when she chooses more recent ones, fashionable to philosophers but miscomprehended by anthropologists, over more solid and still rich forms of psychoanalytic, psychological, social and cultural analysis? Does the proliferation of theoretical stances in a single research led to shallow ethnographic description or does it really fine-tune it to details? Do the ethnographic subject and the ethnographic encounter seem to disappear or become more salient? Are all theories of emotion and feelings really grounded in subjectivist approaches? Do studies of materiality actually exclude the social construction of meaning? Doesnt the affective agency of objects actually presuppose social constructions of values, morals, and emotions? Presenting the Turkish-Cypriots as remorseful diminishes the fact how they were atrociously victimized by the Greek-Cypriot majority? Arent their legitimate political aspirations of self-determination banalized, however forged their state seems to them? (Isnt this perpetuating the Orientalist narrative of European nationalisms against the Turkish, and geopolitical claims to the Mediterranean?). Do they identify closer with the Turkey homeland or with the island as a whole? Is melancholia just the other side of the coin of a proud ethnicity? What is the GreekCypriot relation to the Turkish-Cypriot ruins in the south? Are they also regretful and seeking reconciliation? Or does the emphasis on ruined material culture show future conflicts over land and property even after borders are open?

Questions
Can you think of any other examples of the affective discharge of objects or the environment that are central to a given sociality? How are economies of affect objectified in your collectivity? Does the circulation of these objectified affects construct your own identity? Can you think of how ruination offers another perspective and narrative to the monumental and official constructions of a national or ethnic identity? Dont you think that the affects behind nationalism, patriotism, national heroes, are those that ruined other claims to identity, space, and ethnic pride? Do struggles for recognition always end in divisionary conflicts? What are the stakes when the history of a population is constructed along the lines of events accounting for ruination or events proudly accounting for creation and birth? Is this related to the social organization of denial? Considering that abjection is an othering process, what do you discover to be the abject in your own collective belonging? How does the presence of this abject in your subjectivity and environment manifest in your sociality and your inter-group relations? What affects stem from this abjection? Can you think of examples of how different societies have overcome, dealt, grieved or failed to mourn their losses after ruination (natural disasters, catastrophes, colonization, segregation, conflicts, genocide)? Does the difficulty to mourn their loss among the Turkish-Cypriots convincly account for the political inaction of their leaders or grassroots movements?