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Abstract
This article is an attempt to explore the territoriality of languages in the context of ethno-national mobilizations. It maps the transnational interplay between linguistic spaces that overlap national frameworks. This makes it possible to scrutinize the horizontal and vertical differentiation processes that contribute to the definition of a distinctive literary field. In order to study these processes, we favor a strong empirical anchorage by referring to the notion of transnational historical space, defined as a configuration which covers both spatial and temporal dimensions, bringing territories into contact and linking various temporalities. Our case presents a large geographic space formed by Turkey, the Republic of Azerbaijan, and Iranian Azerbaijan. This unusual scale of analysis helps in understanding how ethnic entrepreneurs can capitalize symbolic resources in their strategies to make their ethnic idiom into a national language and to invest the political field with ethnonational claims.
Notes
There is an exception: his short article on the Belgian literature, “Existe-t-il une littérature belge?”
The horizontal differentiation process contributes to distinguishing literatures between national spaces while vertical differentiation discriminates between what is considered legitimate literature and illegitimate cultural productions. Due to its lack of institutionalization, it is difficult to refer to our case study as a literary field in its full meaning. In this paper, we will consider the processes leading to a progressive autonomization of the field, especially in its horizontal dimension.
Under the imperial regime, which defended a Persian-centered conception of the Iranian identity, it was almost impossible to publish in languages other than Persian. The Islamic Revolution introduced a rupture in the state approach to ethnic languages: according to the Iranian Constitution, the official language is Persian, but “the use of regional and tribal languages in the press and mass media, as well as for teaching of their literature in schools, is allowed in addition to Persian (Iranian Const. Art. 15).” But the cultural rights promised by the Constitution are not fully implemented: publishing books and journals is authorized without regard to language (if they respect Islamist criteria), but schooling and access to mass media in languages other than Persian have never been allowed in Iran. The opportunities to publish in languages other than Persian are also connected to the general level of censorship in the country.
But it may become an elite literature if the nationalist movement leads to an independent state.
The sample of ethnic entrepreneurs has been selected from the data collected for my doctoral dissertation on Azerbaijani nationalism in Iran, which explores the genesis of the Azerbaijani cause (Riaux, Construction identitaire).
Transnationalism, a collection published by Routledge, endeavors to study the “multiple ties and interactions linking people or institutions across the borders of nation-states” (Webster).
Pioneering works on Iran support such a principle of extraversion in the making of nations (Vaziri; Kashani-Sabet) and also of tribal groups whose emergence coincides with their intermediation functions that exist only within their borders (Tapper).
The transnational historical space we are interested in has been briefly identified by Swietochowski. He suggested the reemergence of an articulated space formed around Russia, Turkey, and Iran in the aftermath of the fall of the Soviet Union (Swietochowski 118–135).
In this paper, I will not enter into the very Byzantine debate about which term – Azeri, Azerbaijani, or Turkish – is the most appropriate.
To confirm this integration process, the odyssey of the British personnel of the Anglo-Persian Oil Company is worthy of note. In travelling from the Persian Gulf to Teheran, they had to go around the Arabic peninsula, cross the Suez canal, travel up to the Black Sea, take the Transcaucasian Railway, travel the coast from Baku to Bandar-e Anzali on the Iranian Caspian shore, and finally reach Tehran. This long journey was still quicker and safer than the direct track through the Iranian plateau.
The tactic the Soviets relied on in Iranian Azerbaijan had some similarities to the one they used in Eastern European countries at that time.
Biriya became involved in charitable activities in Baku, especially taking care of youngsters away from their homes. But he was arrested on a charge of pederasty and sentenced to five years of imprisonment, but served seven years in jail (Atabaki 123).
Mollah Nasreddin was a satirical journal published in Tiflis from 1906 to 1917 and read across the Middle East.
He wrote approximately 100 articles and 50 poems for Varliq (Shafaieh).
According to his autobiographical accounts, “My serious research into the philology of language in general goes back to the years I lived in Abadan [the biggest oil town in Iran at that time]. I read all the books I could find in the library about philology for a while. Then, gradually, I began working on Turkish language” (Hey'at 54–55).
Mohammad Hosseyn Shahriar (1906–1988) is the most acclaimed literary figure in twentieth-century Iranian-Azerbaijani literature.
Issue 2 of Varliq (Notghi 7–14) gives the text of a speech delivered in Tehran in 1979, at the “Seminar on the Needs of the Iranian Nation from the Constitution.” At this meeting, Hamid Notghi, as an expert and scholar in law, delivered a speech regarding the needs of the various ethnic groups in Iran and the expectations they had from the future Constitution of Iran, for the equal protection for all the peoples of Iran, and their basic human rights to freedoms such as the right to publish and broadcast, as well as to be schooled in reading, writing, and the teaching and learning of the regional languages.