Stateless: The Politics of the Armenian Language in Exile

by Talar Chahinian

In Stateless, Chahinian offers a rich exploration of Western Armenian literary history in the wake of the 1915 genocide that led to the dispersion of Armenians across Europe, North America, and beyond. Chahinian highlights two specific time periods--post-WWI Paris and post-WWII Beirut--to trace the ways in which literature developed in each diaspora community. In Paris, a literary movement known as Menk addressed the horrors Armenians experienced and focused on creating a new literary aesthetic centered on belonging while in exile. In Beirut, Chahinian shows how the literature was nationalized in the absence of state institutions. Over time, Armenian intellectuals constructed a unified and coherent narrative of the diaspora that returned to the pre-1915 literary tradition and excluded the Menk generation. Chahinian argues that the adoption of "national" as the literature's organizing logic ultimately limited its vitality and longevity as it ignored the diverse composition of diaspora communities.

296 pages, Paperback

First published February 20, 2023

Reviews

[Madison Y.]

Excellent literary consideration of the Armenian diaspora, validating the ways in which new creative models can thrive in conditions such as diaspora rather than seeing diaspora as a death sentence. This is especially pronounced in the treatment of the Մենք group out of France, whose way of representing the trauma of surviving and living beyond the genocide has long been neglected because it is not a direct representation of the event itself. I found the last section—on the tensions between Eastern Armenian and Western Armenian writers as manifest in literary organizations and conferences—to be especially fascinating. Overall, one of my favorite reads of 2023 and incredibly accessible for an academic text!

[Hayk]

Great dive into the literary history and general history of the diaspora. Although I agree that Armenians in the diaspora should 'embrace' their individual situations as diasporans, I think to detach themselves from any notion of an ancestral homeland would put them at risk of assimilation.

[Nara]

Truly amazing book! I’m honored to have been one of Tamar Chahinian’s students. This book grapples with the //state// of the endangered language of Western Armenian, and question what it means for it to represent a post-Genocide diaspora. Loved it