Towards an understanding of Kurdistani Memory Culture: apostrophic and phantomic approaches to a violent past

Abstract

This thesis explores the memory culture of the Kurdistan Region of Iraq (KRI). More specifically, it considers representations of traumatic events in the recent history of this region in the context of Saddam Hussein’s counter-insurgency campaign, code-named Anfal, and the chemical attacks on Halabja, which both targeted the Kurdistani population. Embedded in the field of Memory Studies, the thesis mainly analyzes how these events are remembered, commemorated, imagined and represented in the present, with the word “present” referring to the era that roughly spans the last twenty years, beginning with the US-led invasion of Iraq, which resulted in the fall of Saddam Hussein in 2003.

To analyze the KRI’s memory culture, the thesis develops interpretations of four very different objects of study. Two of these are museums in the region: Amna Suraka: In Order Not to Forget, in the city of Sulaymaniyah, and the Halabja Monument and Peace Museum. Thirdly, the thesis focuses on textbooks used at Kurdistani primary and secondary schools, produced by the Kurdish Regional Government (KRG) with help of UNESCO. Fourthly, the thesis develops close-readings of Kurdistani writer Bachtyar Ali’s 2010 novella My Uncle Jamshid Khan whom the Wind always Carried with Itself and his 2005 novel The City of White Musicians, which are embedded in critical analyses of approaches to Kurdistani literature and of the relationship between literature and memory culture.

The thesis combines analyses of these four very different objects and in that way presents a unique multi-faceted, multi-disciplinary, and hitherto undeveloped perspective on the region’s memory culture. This perspective also results in the introduction of interpretations that contribute more generally to the fields of Memory Studies, Museum Studies and Trauma Studies. The concepts are introduced in this thesis to describe the specific way in which representations of the KRI’s past (1) apostrophically address a non-existing independent and national Kurdistan and (2) are haunted by traumatic memories of victims who, under Saddam’s regime, disappeared and have never been found.

Following a concise summary of what has been argued in the four chapters, the brief conclusion embeds the thesis in the field of Peace Studies by reflecting on Aleida Assmann and Linda Shortt’s claim that memory can be an agent of change. This thesis, it is concluded, can be understood as a humble attempt at designing such exploration for a specific area in this region.