Paper short abstract:

Although hegemonic group such as States may successfully manage uncertainty and certainty in complementarity, it presents a huge challenge for truly subaltern groups, as the identity politics of the Kurdish-speaking Yezidis in Iraq, Turkey Armenia and Europe show.

Paper long abstract:

Highly centralised states such as Turkey manage uncertainties and certainties within their narratives, in a complementary fashion. The notion of enemies of the state seeking to divide it is maintained in media discourse as a bar to concession to the Kurdish movement; yet the state itself was founded on 'certainties' about an identity founded on ethnicity, emanating from European social sciences. 'Turkishness' became identifiable,with an accompanying history; this impacted in turn on neighbouring Iranian and Arab states. Even now the counter-hegemony of the Kurdish movement seeks these certainties, constantly seeking authenticity and proof of 'who the Kurds are'.

But what of the uncertainties of smaller, truly marginal groups? I propose to examine the shifting identities of the Yezidis (a Kurdish-speaking religious minority) under Ba'athist Arabisation and Kurdish autonomy in Iraq, in post-Soviet Armenia, within Turkey, and in Europe, over the last 40 years or so. Faced with an uncertain future, with no scripture or archive, their quest for history is urgent, but differentiated across the generations. Meanwhile, with limited agency, they manage their uncertainty (political, economic and religious) with various strategies, outwardly defining their ethnicity according to their situation, which can cause bitter schisms, but simultaneously maintaining a tightly-knit social structure and collective memory. Sustaining the latter sometimes causes unbearable social tension for the young, with a rising suicide rate.

Like speech and silence, certainty and uncertainty seem to be complementary and co-referential, and their management is often linked to hegemony, or lack of it.