Genealogy, history, nation

Abstract

This article uses Central Asian examples to challenge theories of ethnic nationalism that locate its origins in intellectual activism (Hroch), state modernization processes (Gellner), or the rise of mass media (Anderson). Modern Uyghur cultural politics and traditional Central Asian dynastic genealogies reveal related processes used in constructing modern nationalist symbols and pre-modern ideologies of descent. Modern territorial states with ideals of social unification and bureaucratic organization rely upon nationalist discourses to elaborate and rework cultural forms into evidence for the ethnic nation. The state links citizens to institutions through nationalist content used in political discourse, schooling, and public performances. Because such content is presented as authentic but used instrumentally, its contingency and fabrication have to be concealed from view: the culturally intimate spaces of bureaucratic production of culture and narratives are separated from public performances. The creation of genealogies used to legitimate pre-modern states are similar: compositional processes and goals are kept offstage, and little is disclosed in the public historical narratives and performances.

Keywords:

• Central Asia
• nationalism
• narrative
• genealogy

Acknowledgements

I would like to thank participants at my presentations at Ohio State University, Boğazıcı University, and Max Planck Institute for Social Anthropology, as well as Richard Bauman, Ildikó Bellér-Hann, Judith Beyer, Devin DeWeese, Chris Hann, Ilana Harlow, Patrick Heady, Michael Herzfeld, Svetlana Jacquesson, Agnieszka Pasieka, Sophie Roche, Paolo Sartori, Vladislava Vladimirova, and Lale Yalçin-Heckmann for helpful discussions and suggestions.

Notes

In the terms of Anthony Smith and others, I am drawing on both “recurrent perennialist” and instrumentalist theories of nationalism: there is a long history of communities being constructed and organized around symbolic forms that are not given by history, but shaped by public discourse. I accept that the modern nation-state is historically specific but argue that nationalist rhetoric is not fundamentally different.

I am drawing on Dean MacCannell's influential analysis of the staging of authentic events for tourist-consumers. Similarly performers of political narratives and symbols claim authenticity to spectators. However, this differs from the authenticity offered tourists: one can compare staging the nation to performance of authoritative, historical, and preserved traditions for participants who are persuaded to participate also in the national community. This authenticity involves being included in the community that shares these symbols as national possessions.

A fourth mode of cultural intimacy for Uyghurs includes the ways interpretations of the cultural past are adopted as charters for practice and thought: I found people relying on ideas about historical change and intercultural contamination to regulate their own cultural conduct, such as language use (Light, Intimate Heritage 11–14). I use the concept of cultural intimacy to describe the shaping of personal practices based on received cultural ideologies, but this relates more to the effects of national narratives than their origins and so I leave it out of this discussion.

Although there are debates and challenges to such narratives, evidence shows that rather than producing public tensions, people are usually willing to negotiate or when necessary resist in subtle ways (Roberts; Light “Cultural Politics”). Although Uyghurs shared a goal of a stable muqam canon, the hybridity (Gladney) of the material being reworked, the disparate historical sources and the conflicting goals made editing interminable and the muqams and stories about them continued to be unstable. My perspective here differs from that of Verdery because I did not find intellectual factions competing for state resources, but different institutions managing discourses and performances for citizens.

There is valuable recent work on the contemporary history and meaning of the complex border regimes between Kyrgyzstan, Uzbekistan, and Tajikistan (Megoran; Reeves). But these studies of contemporary configurations make limited reference to pre-socialist, pre-national border regimes.

E.P. Thompson famously analyzed the imposition of industrial work-time onto the labor forces of nineteenth-century Britain. Although I do not have the space to develop this comparison, one could argue that state territories and time discipline are analogous in using new boundaries and precise measurements to discipline people.

See my discussion in Light “Cultural Politics” for a broader description of offstage flexibility in Uyghur practices. I suggest that the debates explored by Askew; Brubaker; Finley; Herzfeld; Shryock, Nationalism; or Verdery, are part of efforts to shape public staged performances, but take place in more intimate contexts separate from the public sphere.

Katherine Verdery uses the term “genealogical appropriation” for the ways intellectuals incorporate well-known figures from the past to promote claims to cultural authority. But the genealogies she describes are more metaphorical.

Much of DeWeese's valuable analysis of Central Asian manuscript sources explores the relationships among communal identities, spiritual genealogies, sanctity, authority and power. He attempts to understand the local use of narratives to negotiate social organization (DeWeese, Islamization 17–50, 516–32).

He also names Qïpchaq, Qagharlïgh, and Qalach, all of which are both ethnonyms and personal titles for the leader of the group.

I am not arguing that Abū’l Ghāzī describes a real scene. Such scenes of composition, or aspects of intimate life as in Bābur's autobiography, have effects of realism regardless of what the actual events were. Likewise, the simpler Turkic verbal style evokes particular social contexts for audiences, and fits the text to their experience.

Gellner reproduced elite cultural values (as do many scholars) in claiming objective value for educated skills. Generally I would argue linguistic and other cultural performances vary independently along the twin axes of rationality and of perspicuity. These do not have a necessary relationship to social (public – private), historical (modern – pre-modern), nor political (nationalist – non-nationalist) axes of variation.

As author Säypidin Äzizi seems to create what might be called moments of political intimacy, in which he asks his Uyghur readers to commiserate with and support him in his attempts to survive under Chinese rule (Light, Intimate Heritage 173; Bovingdon).

Bregel (“Introduction” [edition, 1988] 23) points out that Mūnis describes the Mongol Alanqoa as the contemporary of the Caliph Abu Muslim. This suggests a basic goal of differentiating groups by descent: Iranians were separate, but Turks and Mongols were combined through shared cultural, political and genealogical materials.