Origins of nationalism and archaeology as an invention of modernity. February 16, 2010 Arch 1810....

Origins of nationalism and archaeology as an invention of modernity. February 16, 2010

Arch 1810. Under the Tower of Babel: Archaeology, Politics, and Identity in the Modern Middle EastSpring 2010

Liberty, Equality, Fraternity: constructing nationalism in the Late Ottoman Empire

Turkish post card from 1895 about the Kanûn-ı Esâsî of November 23, 1876, with the Sultan Abdülhamid II, the Grand Vizier, the millets and Turkey receiving freedom; the flying angel show the motto: Liberty, Equality, Fraternity.

Ottoman Imperial Museum and Osman Hamdi Bey

today:

1. nationalism as an official ideologythat intends to construct a nation-stateon the grounds ofethno-linguistic and religious homogeneization

of society

2. modernity/modernizationas a utopian projectfor cutting one’s ties with the immediate pastand transforming the entire society

for all to benefit comforts and technologiesof modern life

3. institutionalisation of archaeology as modern science andin service of the state

Bounded nation states ofthe Middle East

Material culture of nationalism: the barbed wire

Partitioning the Ottoman territories: the Treaty of Sevres (1920)

Treaty of LausanneJuly 24, 1923

1. Actual border line 2. Border marker or boundary stone 3. Border column 4. Outer strip (East German territory) 5. Outer anti-vehicle ditch (dug-up road) 6. Expanded-metal mesh fence (single layer) 7. Access gate 8. Double fence (for high security areas) with minefield in between fences 9. Concrete-faced anti-vehicle ditch 10. Control strip 11. Guard patrol road 12. Floodlights 13. BT-11 observation tower 14. Observation bunker 15. Führungstelle command tower 16. BT-9 observation tower 17. Dog run 18. Signal fence floodlights 19. Concrete wall adjoining built-up area 20. Signal fence 21. Signal fence gate 22. Entry gate to the security zone

HALT HIER GRENZE" ("STOP HERE BORDER"):Diagram of the German border fortification system circa 1984.

Nation state as homogeneous society: population exchange between Greece and Turkey

Greek refugees from Symrna arriving at Thessaloniki, 1923

Greek-Turkish populations transfer after 1923

1914 document showing the official figures from the 1914 population census of the Ottoman Empire. The total population (sum of all the millets) was given at 20,975,345, and the Greek population was given at 1,792,206.

Greek refugees 1923

“ an imagined political community, imagined as both inherently limited and sovereign”

(Benedict Anderson)

cultural artifact of some kind, a product of 18th-20th c. historical forces

“Nationalism is not the awakening of nations to self-consciousness: it invents nations where they do not exist”

(Ernest Gellner)

Nation

Paradoxes of nationalism

1. Objective modernity of nations in the eye of historiansvs. their subjective antiquity in the eye of nationalists

2. The formal universality of nationality as a socio-cultural concept (in the modern world everyoneshould/will have a ‘nationality’

vs. the irremediable particularity of its concrete manifestations

3. The ‘political’ power of nationalismvs. their philosophical poverty and even incoherence

Inheriting the past: James Henry Breasted’s tympanum at the Oriental Institute Chicago (1931)

Ankara: Sihhiye monument

An Early Bronze age ritual standard,Alacahoyuk, Turkey

Hittite biscuits

The monument: archaeology as inspiration for nationalist imagination and commemorations of the ancient past

M.K. Ataturk, founder of the Turkish Republicinspecting archaeological finds from Alacahoyuk (1935) and visiting Ahlatlibel (5 May 1933)

ancient past as national identity

modernity: an incomplete project, a social utopia

• quarrel of ancients and modernsstudy of antiquity as a subject of modern science,the idea of material remains of the ancient past can be studiesthrough objective science, field observation, documentation...

• infinite progress of knowledge and technological progress

• an abstract opposition between the “traditional” and the “modern”also a break with the immediate past, a new idealist understandingof a revolutionized present: an aggressive avant-garde, cult of innovation

• it is a secular, cultural project: the improvement of everyday life, and democratization of technologies in everyday life, enrichmentof everyday life.

• conceptualization of space and time, which are both considered asabstract concepts that can be measured, objectified, controlled, designed,made efficient (architecture and city planning now under the aegis ofthe state and professionals in its service)- conquest of nature

• universalism of modernity: annihilating places, globalizing a culture of modernity

• industrialism: changing notions of the body and individuality. Developmentof the state technologies of surveillance.

Fritz Lang, Metropolis (1927)

Walid Raad and Akram Zaatari, Mapping Sitting: on Portraiture and Photography 2002

Walid Raad and Akram Zaatari, Mapping Sitting: on Portraiture and Photography 2002

disciplining of the body: militarism of 20th century

Le CorbuiserVilla Savoie, Poissy, north west of Paris, 1929

Frank Lloyd Wright Johnson Wax Building, 1950, Racine, Winsconsin.

Modernism in architecture: new technologies, new conceptions of space, abandonment of ornament

Ringstraße

"la forme d'une ville Change plus vite, hélas! que le coeur d'un mortel“

Baudelaire

Modernity and the urban space Ringstraße in Vienna, in 1872

Planning of Ankara

“His majesty the pick”:Mussolini at the Imperial Forum in Rome

Image courtesy: University of Pennsylvania Fisher Fine Arts Image Collection

“His majesty the pick”:Baron Haussmann

Image courtesy: Google image searchhttp://icar.poliba.it/

today:

1. nationalism as an official ideologythat intends to construct a nation-stateon the grounds ofethno-linguistic and religious homogeneization

of society

2. modernity/modernizationas a utopian projectfor cutting one’s ties with the immediate pastand transforming the entire society

for all to benefit comforts and technologiesof modern life

3. institutionalisation of archaeology as modern science andin service of the state

Museum as world-picture: “If the cabinet of curiosities had been the materialization of a cosmologystructured around meaning and significance, the subsequent development of museums demonstrates the attempt to make the classificatory table manifest” (Thomas 2004: 26-27)