Paper short abstract:

The 2015 centennial of the Armenian Genocide gave birth to an unprecedented traffic in commemorative cultural forms between Yerevan and the Los Angeles diaspora. This paper analyzes the event as a shift in recognition politics from legal declaration to image circulation.

Paper long abstract:

The 2015 centennial of the Armenian Genocide gave birth to an unprecedented commemorative culture, both in the post-Soviet country and in the nation's global diaspora. This paper traces the transnational circulation during the 2015 events to explore the dialectical interplay between two contradictory forces in the Armenian world: a struggle for justice, most visibly articulated by the Los Angeles diaspora, and an aspiration towards unity, rooted in the publicity campaign from the post-Soviet government in Yerevan. The mostly grassroots cultural production in the diaspora gave a new spin on the exilic institutions' treatment of genocide recognition as a 'thing-like' good to be obtained, counted, accumulated and exhibited to propel further recognition, while drawing inspiration on horizontal ties in the LA cityscape. The post-Soviet government's forget-me-not campaign, by contrast, reworked resonances of the Soviet semicentennial of 1965, at the time proclaimed to win the sympathies of the 'reactionary bourgeois' forces of the diaspora, into new forms that make Armenia appear as the center of the global struggle for genocide recognition. The interplay between the two campaigns reveals a shift in the moral epistemology and affective geography of genocide recognition. As legal declarations and statements by politicians are increasingly seen as instrumentally driven, recognition is today produced as popular awareness afforded by circulating objects, hashtags and digital images.