Kovács: The Imagined Homeland: The Armenian Capital Ani as ’Lieu de Mémoire’ Cover Image

Az elképzelt őshaza. Az örmény főváros, Ani mint emlékezeti hely
Kovács: The Imagined Homeland: The Armenian Capital Ani as ’Lieu de Mémoire’

Author(s): Bálint Kovács
Subject(s): Cultural history
Published by: Magyar Tudományos Akadémia Bölcsészettudományi Kutatóközpont Történettudományi Intézet
Keywords: Ani; mass exodus; Armenian people

Summary/Abstract: In the Armenian history the memory of the capital Ani, the centralized medieval Bagratuni government has become a symbol for the missing Armenian state entity. The demise of statehood was traced back to the decline of Bagratuni power, followed by alien occupation, which led to mass exodus. Most emigration waves of the Armenians traditionally professed themselves to be from Ani, while the emigrants carried with themselves the memory of Ani and the notion that the one-time capital had been extremely developed economically, politically, and culturally. The text does not focus on the history of the capital Ani, but aims to show how Ani became a mythical concept for the Armenian people, and how Ani as a peculiar space of memory has affected the self-consciousness of the large Armenian diaspora. The study explores the way memory of Ani developed from a real place to the remembrance of imagined places, becoming nostalgia for a lost “golden age,”: a clearly imagined and reconceived imagine of the past.

  • Issue Year: 2014
  • Issue No: 3
  • Page Range: 509-518
  • Page Count: 10
  • Language: Hungarian