If there is one symptom of Armenia’s military defeat in the autumn of 2020, it is unquestionably this cognitive collapse: the revelation of a deep-seated crisis in political thinking characterised by an absence of a critical sense, an inability to decipher reality, or simply to accept it.
Strange as it may seem, the elites of Armenia, a country at war since its independence, have failed to develop an original military doctrine or to lay the foundations for strategic thinking capable of anticipating geopolitical changes in its direct and indirect regional environment.
Historiography is still strongly influenced by a national catechism which, while having the merit of galvanising the mind, does not meet the fundamental requirements of our troubled times. The same is true of the humanities and social sciences in general, and political sociology, political science, and international relations in particular, which are struggling to find their place in the midst of other academic disciplines.
However, some rooms for intellectual resistance do exist, such as the Institute of Ethnology in Yerevan, which produces high-quality work despite limited financial resources. The American University in Armenia is also opening up to the social sciences, recruiting renowned Armenian American academics such as Professors Stephan Astourian and Asbed Kochikian.
At a time when Armenology is struggling to renew itself against a dramatic backdrop, there is every reason to believe that English-language literature offers an ever-increasing range of new, high-quality publications. The creation of the Armenians in the Modern and Early Modern World collection, hosted by the prestigious London publishing house I. B. Tauris / Bloomsbury, whose new catalogue already includes seven books, including the excellent history of the Armenian Social Democrat Hnchakian party edited by historian Bedros Der Matossian, and above all The Armenian Diaspora and Stateless Power, Collective Identity in the Transnational 20 th Century. This book fills a gap in the social science literature on the Armenian diaspora. It is masterfully edited by three representatives of the younger generation of Armenian American academics: Talar Chahinian, Sossie Kasbarian and Tsolin Nalbantian. All three embody the renewal of diasporic Armenian research, as well as sharing common concerns, passions and aspirations.
A tribute to Professor Khachig Tölöyan, the father of Armenian diaspora research and prominent diaspora studies scholar, the book features a wide range of articles by historians, political scientists, sociologists, and specialists in Armenian diaspora literature. A welcome publication, it has the merit of not getting bogged down in a key moment in history, but of proposing a common thread linking the past and future, extreme fragmentation, and the quest for conceptual rigidity.
This transdisciplinary approach takes us on a long and hectic journey from Addis Ababa to Aleppo and Amsterdam, via Istanbul, Beirut, Detroit, Jerusalem, Paris, and Los Angeles. Or how collective identity is transformed and affirmed in a deterritorialized setting.
Let us hope that this generational handover within Armenology applied to the diasporic question will mitigate the clash of ignorance that hinders a better mutual understanding of the complexity of the Armenian world. And in a few years, research centres in Yerevan, Beirut, Paris, Boston, Montreal, and Los Angeles will be paving the way for a younger generation better equipped intellectually to face the existential challenges we face.
Tigran Yegavian is a journalist and professor of international relations at the Schiller International University, Paris.
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