Paper short abstract:

I focus on North Cyprus as a border situation exploring be/longing through creative tactical forms. I elaborate on the tactics of everyday resistance within the contested nature of the polity where identities, borders and “culture” are entwined in histories of political violence and displacement.

Paper long abstract:

In this paper, I focus on North Cyprus as a border situation, as a site of performative cultural production and ask how current locality and temporality produce creative tactical forms to collage be/longing particularly in the period post 2003, semi-opening of crossing points which were closed since 1974 inter-communal violent conflict. 20th century witnessed the mass displacement of many communities who were on the margins of the modern nation which was followed by a process of gathering. North Cyprus has become one of those places where diverse groups of people forcibly fled from and also gathered at. I attempt to explore the dynamics of this process of gathering asking how the communities of North Cyprus collage homes, resist the precarity of political non-recognition and be/long to this divided locality characterised with a long period of limbo. de-Certeau (1988) draws our attention to the role tactical forms of everyday life and creativity play to resist social norms entangled in disciplinary mechanisms. In this context, I elaborate on how be/longing is (co)-created through the everyday where, tongues, crossing regulations, identity cards and foreign currencies come into dialogue with embarrassment, fantasies, songs and nostalgia. On this line, I ask: how can creative tactical forms of everyday resist the contested nature of the polity? Can eating and drinking practises and colourful paintings over gunshots become trajectories of hope? How are identities, borders and “culture” entwined in histories of political violence and displacement?