The Memory of Loss: Voices of Azeri Storytellers from Nagorno Karabakh

摘要

Between 1988 and 1992, nearly a quarter of a million refugees and displaced Azeris from Nagorno Karabakh poured into various parts of Azerbaijan abandoning their homes and properties, leaving them to the Armenians who committed massacres against them. The narratives of these refugees sanctify their lost land, recounting memories of how this seminal ethnic conflict was orchestrated and escalated by the Russian military, which provided the Armenian forces with high levels of military preparation and motivation, and overt and covert support. These narratives shed light, from within, on the broader geopolitical forces at work in Azerbaijan and beyond. Working from current theoretical perspectives on violence and memory, the authors of this paper uncover various meanings associated with memories of the lost land and examine how the physical landscape as a genre is linked with historical experiences of the Azeri massacre victims living in Azerbaijan. In their search to establish the poetic linkages between story, memory and landscape, the authors discover how the memories of these victims of Armenian massacres were transformed into hekaye, which adds to our knowledge of the role of the storyteller's artistic power to transform private memories and experiences into folkloric materials.View full textDownload full textRelated var addthis_config = { ui_cobrand: "Taylor & Francis Online", services_compact: "citeulike,netvibes,twitter,technorati,delicious,linkedin,facebook,stumbleupon,digg,google,more", pubid: "ra-4dff56cd6bb1830b" }; Add to shortlist Link Permalink http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/13602004.2012.694669