MESA Banner
Beyond Westphalia and after Foucault: Stateless Power in the Armenian Diaspora
Abstract
Beyond Westphalia and after Foucault: Stateless Power in the Armenian Diaspora In the century after the Lausanne Treaty of 1923, new Armenian diasporic communities emerged in the Arab world, France, the US, and Argentina. Like the already existing Iranian-Armenian diaspora, each evolved separately and locally. But over time, transnational contact between clergy, community leaders, intellectuals, philanthropic organizations and political groups led to the emergence of an elite discourse and practice, first of exilic nationalism and then diasporic transnationalism, evinced collective actions. This talk will explore the emergence of first Middle Eastern and then other Armenian diasporic communities as polities in which the advent of individual agency among survivors and refugees was later marshalled by elite discourse and practices into heterogeneous forms of collective power. Ultimately, these forms achieved critical mass and produced “stateless power” that operates within the interstices of sovereign state power. Crucially, diasporic stateless power does not suicidally challenge the sovereign state’s power and authority; the prohibitive, punitive, and coercive power of the State abides. Nevertheless, in all but the most totalitarian contexts, diasporic Armenian communities learned to self-organize and self-administer and began to elicit, regulate and direct certain commitments, practices and behaviors from their members, developing new discourses and practices of politics and wielding real if bounded powers. This talk will chart the emergence of the overlapping practices of diasporic stateless power. We note that depending on diasporic place and time, this kind of power is compatible with some and quite different from other categories and definitions of power as elaborated by Weber, Dahl, Polsby, Foucault, Gaventa, Lukes and others.
Discipline
Other
Geographic Area
All Middle East
Sub Area
None