The uses of oral history in Cyprus: ethics, memory and identity

Abstract

The paper discusses an Oral History project undertaken from 2009 to 2012 in Cyprus. As Cyprus is a politically volatile and geographically divided country with a Turkish-Cypriot north and a Greek-Cypriot-dominated south, this project attempted to show ways in which the two sides might be able to re-approach each other by claiming a common past. It also attempted to find a common intercultural and ethical language in which individuals were able to talk about their past, and especially about the good times they shared in their daily lives and how these memories might be utilised to build a common future.

Bu makale, Kıbrıs'ta 2009–12 arası yürütülen Sözlü Tarih projesini tartışmaktadır. Kıbrıs, politik olarak tehlikeye açık ve kuzey'de Kıbrıslı Türkler, güney'de de Kıbrıslı Rumlar olmak üzere de coğrafi olarak da bölünmüş bir ülkedir. Bu projenin çabası da ortak bir geçmiş üzerinden iki toplumun birbirne yeniden yaklaşma olasılığının yollarını göstermektir. Proje, ayni zamanda da bu kişilerin geçmişleri hakkında, özellikle de günlük yaşantılarında paylaştıkları güzel zamanlardan bahsederken, ortak bir gelecek yaratılmasında da faydalanılabilecek ortak kültürler-arası ve etik bir dil bulmaya çalışmaktadır.

Keywords:

• oral history
• intercultural dialogue
• memory
• identity
• new media usage

Notes

1. The description of the full project can be found at http://www.sharpnetwork.eu

2. This shared authority is of course already well known in cultural production. One might think of the Ècriture automatique that Dada employed, that is, the blind co-creating of a text with others; various initiatives in Eastern bloc countries, such as the Bitterfelder Weg in the East Germany of the early 1960s, where industrial workers were asked to collaborate on the writing of literature, or, closer to home, digital literature projects or, indeed, collaborative blogging (cf. for the latter Briel, 2012). All of these projects have the following in common: a narrative is co-created, disseminated and received by a hybrid audience. This is certainly also the case for OH projects.

3. www.oralhistory.org

4. http://wwwsharpnetwork.eu

5. http://www.worldinternetproject.net/_files/_Published/_oldis/CyprusWIPsemiFINAL.pdf

6. Thus, in the Philippines, stories of selfhood as such do not exist as much as in the West and individual accounts oftentimes privilege community over individual. Cf. Abrams (2010, p. 33).

7. The interviews can be accessed at: http://www.sharpnetwork.eu

8. Alev Adil, performing on 5 March 2012 at ARTos Foundation, Nicosia.

9. For a discussion on this for the region, cf. Briel (2008), Brown (2003), Butler (2009), Canefe (2007), Leventis (2002), Leventis, Murata, and Hazama (2008), Makdidi (2006), Papadakis (2005, 2006), Scott (2002) and Troebst (2001).

10. Recently, much has been written on memory and its relationship to identity and history in the region. The reader might want to consider the following: Canefe (2006), Goody (2007), Hamilton and Shopes (2008), Haugbolle (2005), Hodgkin and Radstone (2003), Kaufman (2004), Makdidi (2006), Öztürkmen (2006), Sa'di and Abu-Lughod (2007), and Schacter (1996).

11. The Memory Bank: http://www.thememorybank.co.uk

12. For an excellent explication of how this can be done, cf. Mazower (2006) and his retelling of the story of Thessaloniki.

13. Also consider the internet project, linking stories across the world (Heinich, Molenda, Russell, & Smaldino, 1999); http://www.library.yale.edu/testimonies/homepage.html

14. http://library.mcneese.edu/depts/archive/mediterr108.htm

15. http://www.med-voices.org/pages/index.aspx

16. In March 2005, the workshop ‘Constructions of Mediterranean Nostalgia’ was held at the University of Athens, reaffirming the constructedness of Mediterranean memories. And in May of the same year, the conference ‘Inscriptions’ was held at Eastern Mediterranean University. It included several panels on revisionist histories, memory and forgetting. In May 2007, the conference ‘Armenian Memory’ was held in Lyon, dealing largely with Armenian Diasporas and the function of memory within them. And, lastly, in November 2008 PRIO Cyprus hosted a conference entitled ‘One Island, Many Histories: Rethinking the Politics of the Past in Cyprus’. While its focus was of course Cyprus, many approaches to the (re-)framing of memories in the light of contested memory territories are also applicable to the wider Eastern Mediterranean.

17. As an example, consider Landolf Scherzer's 2005 Der Grenzgänger (The Border Rambler). In his reportage, the author wanders the length of the stretch of land that until 1989 used to be the German–German border. Through his low-key and conversational narrative, he is able to understand and portray people living along this once impenetrable border. And he readily acknowledges that the willingness of his respondents was mostly due to the fact that they felt he was one of them.