2nd Global Conference
Wednesday 3rd September - Saturday 6th September
2008
Mansfield College, Oxford
Conference Programme, Abstracts and Papers
Session 11: Conflict, Identity and History
Chair: Tuuli Lähdesmäki
Identity and Alterity of the Turkish Cypriots Living in the Northern Part of Cyprus
Pelin Aksoy
Bilgi University, Istanbul, Turkey
The longstanding social conflict, characterized by a continuing tension and mistrust between two ethnic communities (Greek Cypriots and Turkish Cypriots) protecting their own collective identities and communal interests, has been present in Cyprus way before the island’s established independence from Britain in 1960. Existing tensions were brought to a new height via division of the island in 1974 and challenged by new dynamics via the Turkish Cypriot Community’s declaration of independence as a separate country in 1983, the latter only recognized as official by Turkey.
A wealth research has been done about the Cyprus Conflict concerning the two ethnic communities, Greek Cypriots and Turkish Cypriots as two different opposing ethnic groups in relation to one an other, or to the various players in the international scene. However, investigation concerning the different group formations within one of these groups in terms of identity is sorely lacking. This study is merely an attempt to go beyond the first curtain of the conflict scene in the island, where the main actors are the Turkish Cypriots and Greek Cypriots, and to look more closely at the identity formation within the Turkish society in the northern Cyprus via the introduction of the Turkish nationals as new actors.
Do Turkish Cypriots and Turkish Nationals living in the island share the overarching identity of being Turkish? Do the Turkish Cypriots feel themselves belonging to the formerly constructed ‘Turkish Self’ or the ‘Cypriot Other’, merely the Greek Cypriots? How can the process of ‘othering’ towards the Turkish nationals in the island by the Turkish Cypriots be explained? In light of these questions, this study looks at the political production of ‘alter’ Turkish identities within the nation-building process in the Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus. Using the qualitative data generated during my field work in Cyprus, this paper offers a unique and original opportunity to enhance our understanding of identity formations and boundary change.
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Alice Walker's "Everyday Use": Conflict of Identities
Atousa Ebrahimi
Department of English Language and Literature, Islamic Azad University of Ghaemshahr, Iran
Alice Walker's "Everyday Use", from the collection "In Love and Trouble", was written during the time when the Black Power reached its peak and when African-Americans were trying to gain racial rights and equality and called for self-determination and racial dignity. African-American writers such as Alice Walker often dealt with the crucial issues like freedom, independence, separation, integration and redefinition of the African-American history. Blacks were seeking their cultural roots in Africa and their true identity in a new world, America.
Born in, Georgia but educated in the north, Walker has been able to analyze the rural south, the focus of most of her writing. In her works, she has drawn inspiration from her own life experiences, including an abortion and a visit to Africa while she was attending Sarah Lawrence College. Walker also participated actively in the Civil Rights movements during which she met Civil Rights lawyer Mel Leventhal whom she married and together, they fought discrimination against their interracial relationship. As a professor at Wellesley College, Walker taught one of the first women's' studies courses in the nations and could skillfully weave folk materials into her narratives.
Walker's story "Everyday Use" is a tightly structured tale that includes many elements to reinforce the idea that black Americans are trapped in a double consciousness between their African heritage and their American citizenship. This confusion is presented in a conflict between a mother and a daughter, between the mother's desire for a daughter she wishes to have and the daughter she has (Dee); and between two definitions of African Heritage. The conflict is between two identities; or two cultures battling for one identity. Beyond the obvious identity confusion in the character of Dee/Wangero, Walker applies effective symbols that point to the general confusion of identity inherent in the African experience
Mediterranean Identities in the Ancient World
Leone Porciani
Università di Pavia, Dipart. di Scienze musicologiche e paleografico-filologiche corso Garibaldi, Cremona, Italy
Some recent approaches to the relationship between ancient cultures in the frame of the Mediterranean aim at recalibrating the notion of identity for the early stages of historical development. Archaic Greece is a case in point: a traditional view highlights the role of early Greek ‘colonization’ (8th-7th centuries B.C.) in forging a sense of Greek identity, that would have been elicited by contacts/contrasts with other Mediterranean populations (the inhabitants of the places where the Greeks established their colonies). Today, new perspectives emphasize phenomena like “hybridity” (the emergence of new identities in colonial contexts) and peaceful interactions, so that Hellenic identity per se does not hold as a historical category any longer. This paper explores the possibility to refresh this notion and to exploit it in the study of archaeological evidence for ancient town planning (Megara Hyblaia, Sicily, 8th century B.C.).