Alevi Pasts Contested: Call for Papers to workshop on Alevi Historiography (original) (raw)
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Can the Alevis Speak? The Politics of Representation in Early Writings on Alevism
Islam and Christian-Muslim Relations
This study historicizes and contextualizes the contrasting representations of Alevism in the early writings of Stephen van Rensselaer Trowbridge, a Protestant missionary, and Baha Said Bey, a Turkish activist and researcher. Both Trowbridge and Baha Said undertook extensive research on Alevi culture in the early twentieth century. Though their works appear to be “benevolent” endeavors, giving voice to the Alevi subaltern, by first studying the political and cultural backgrounds of Trowbridge and Baha Said, this article exposes the cultural and ideological motivations that influenced their studies. It then focuses on how these political concerns are expressed in representations of Alevism. Given the dearth of postcolonial and critical perspectives on Alevism, investigating the praxis of representation can help trace overtly political concerns beyond their scholarly treatments. Based on Gayatri Spivak’s theorization in her essay “Can the Subaltern Speak?,” this paper scrutinizes how these writings negate the agency of Alevis and portray them as waiting for salvation by external proxies – be they Western missionaries or the Turkish government.
SEMPOZYUM TANITIMI, 2018
ASMEA held its 11th Annual Conference on November 1-3, 2018, and this year’s conference featured: KEYNOTE PRESENTATION: Iraqi parliamentarian, the Honorable Mithal Al-Alusi, delivered the keynote address at the Annual Conference. Roundtable discussions such as The Enduring Legacy of Prof. Bernard Lewis. Workshop on Alevi Society. Panel presentations on scholarly topics from Middle Eastern and African studies, and related disciplines. Banquet luncheon and professional networking reception. Film screenings. Publishers’ displays of the latest academic titles. Within the conference, where scholars from different countries presented their papers, an Alevi Workshop was held for two days, and consisted of two sessions and featured six scientific papers. Prof. Nergis Canefe, from York University, coordinated the Alevi Workshop.
Literary Foundations of the Alevi Tradition
This paper interrogates whether common concepts of canonisation are applicable to the literary foundations of the Kızılbaş-Alevi tradition. It argues that there are severe methodological problems in determining whether a certain text may be affiliated with the Alevis. On the one hand, such problems are also caused by the heterogeneity of the Kızılbaş-Alevi tradition itself, in which no central authority emerged that would be legitimately capable of defining such canonical scriptures. On the other hand, there are indeed a number of texts circulating among Alevis that do possess both horizontal width and vertical historical depth within the community and can be regarded as quasi-canonical scriptures. This paper follows the historical trajectories in which these texts emerged and analyses the conditions under which they gained a central status within the Kızılbaş-Alevi faith.
Mesopotamian Agency, 2022
The main problems that the Turkish nation-state is obliged to face, but persistently postpone, are growing like a "snowball" day by day. The Kurdish issue, the Armenian Genocide, the Alevi question are among these kind of problems. The only method used by the nation-state in 100 years was "indoctrination". This policy almost created a "conglomeration". Turkish state has ignored the fact that these lands are multi-coloured. One of these colors is undoubtedly Alevis. They were deemed “worthy” of many adjectives such as faithless, denier, sinner by the hegemony, and were subjected to plenty of massacres. However, they never took a step back from the struggle for equal citizenship. They are now waiting for a new paradigm to be built and a democratic system to be established. History, practices and theological structure of Alevism undoubtedly have drawn the attention of many researchers from abroad. One of these researchers, Assoc. Dr. Daria Zhigulskaya has been conducting her scholarly studies in the Institute of Asian and African Countries at Moscow State University in Russia. She also wrote the book entitled “The Alevis of Turkey”. I talked to Daria Zhigulskaya about Alevism.
The emergence of Alevism as an ethno-religious identity
National Identities, 2017
Alevism has been regarded as a contested identity which is difficult to define because of its 'syncretic' character. Attempts at definition have been overwhelmed by essentialist approaches as well as different political agendas since the fifteenth-century Ottoman period. This paper aims to trace the history of Alevism with a particular focus on historical sources such as the Velāyetnāmes and the organization of ocaks and dergahs. The paper argues that we shall see Alevism as an ethno-religious identity which is formed under different social conditions and emerged through the complexities of the organization of ocaks in a vast territory encompassing different ethnic groups.
The Looming Shadow of Violence and Loss: Alevi Responses to Persecution and Discrimination
Balkan and Near Eastern Studies, 2016
In the collective memories of the Alevis, three ‘acts of violence‘ mark the period spanning the 1960s to 1980s: the consequences of the rapid urbanization of the 1960s, the massacres of the 1970s and the state-induced persecution and oppression of the left-wing political movements in the aftermath of the 1980 coup. These ‘acts of violence‘ have left the imprints of two losses in the collective memories of the Alevis: the loss of the feelings of social and economic security, and the loss of political trust in the state. Recently, the Alevi community’s response to the AKP’s coming to power was that of a cautious ambivalence. This ambiguity did not last long, and, with the so-called Alevi opening of the AKP, governments ended up in a deadlock, and also with the outbreak of the civil war in Syria in 2011 and the Gezi protests in 2013, the looming shadow of violence and loss once again fell on the collective memories of the Alevi community. This article analyses this process from the 1960s onwards.