Reconstructing Loss: Jewish Spaces in the Middle East and Beyond

MESA 2021

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11/29/2021 | 2:00 PM to 4:00 PM

Most Jewish communities from the Middle East experienced a loss of their former homeland, the dissolution of community structures, and at times are even unable to return to their places of origin. This geographical and psychological separation lends memories and spaces of the past special significance. This panel proposes a framework for the experiences of remoteness that have shaped and are shaping Middle Eastern Jewish communities. While focusing on specific countries such as Egypt, Iran or the Italian diaspora, the panel will present how space–either its recollection or new formation–serves to constitute present identities and communities. Infrastructures that remained in the regions where Jews lived, that were built and inhabited by them, have not just material but also symbolic impact on how the former home is remembered. Spaces, buildings, and maps are representations of constantly morphing narratives of identity, in which different actors are involved with different objectives. Methodology The analysis is twofold: first, it focuses on former Jewish homes, graveyards or synagogues, and how they live on in the present. Secondly, it presents the discursive spaces that evolve when these spaces are visited from or recreated in the diaspora. Spatial structures formerly or newly assigned as “Jewish” are imbued with changing meanings over time. The discussion includes a historical background of the places under consideration, the circumstances of leaving and return, as well as interviews with individuals regarding their memories of and relation to particular spaces. The results point to multiple ways of how space is part of creating meaning from a distance, or a meaningful present in the diaspora. This will enable a better understanding of how communities of Middle Eastern Jews locate themselves in their new homelands, how and what they remember, including tensions arising from competing forms of remembrance and identification. The panel introduces a new approach to the historiography of Middle Eastern Jewish communities by looking at the strategies of dealing with loss as a form of agency in the process of coming to terms with the old and new homelands. In order to understand contemporary Middle Eastern Jewish identities, different sites should be included: besides the individuals who left, the socio-political dynamics in their former and new homelands are involved in inscribing different meanings to the sites under consideration, providing a bigger picture of the issues at stake in the process of identity and community formation across time and space.

Michele Baussant

CEFRES

Displaced memories without traces and traces of the past without memories: the legacies of Egyptian Jews in and out of Egypt We often assume that history begins with material traces and that these traces are the basis for asserting that something has happened. What occurs, however, when a population …Read More

Monica Mereu

University of Cagliari

Oudlājān Memories: from a Communitarian Neighbourhood to a Placeless City My contribution aspires to give a narrative form to the history of the internal migration of the Tehrani Jews, who used to live in the old Jewish quarter of Tehran (Oudlājān)  …Read More

Ariane Sadjed

Austrian Academy of Sciences

The Meaning of Space: Contested Histories of Jewish neighborhoods in Iran This paper deals with the meaning of space in constituting Iranian-Jewish history. I will approach it from two aspects: first, from the place of origin, that is where Jewish c …Read More

Piera Rossetto

University of Graz

Mind the Map: Locating Invisible Jewish Migrations

Staged Otherness

https://stagedotherness.eu

Late nineteenth century staging culture and the promise of thrilling strangeness.

The cultural phenomenon of exhibiting non-European people in front of European audiences in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries occurred mainly in the metropolises of the western part of the continent. Nevertheless, travelling ethnic troupes and temporary exhibitions of non-European people could also be seen in Central and Eastern Europe.

The exhibition offers a variety of representations related to the public practice of ethnographic shows within the Russian, German and Austro-Hungarian Empires – today’s Russia, Germany, Austria, Hungary, Poland, Czechia, Slovenia – and presents the reactions of local audiences.

Curators:  
Dagnosław Demski @
Dominika Czarnecka

The exhibition is one of the results of the Inscenizowana inność. Ludzkie odmienności w Europie Środkowej, 1850–1939 (Staged Otherness: Human Oddities in Central Europe, 1850–1939) research project, funded by the National Science Centre, Grant No. UMO-2015/19/B/HS3/02143.

The project, led by Dagnosław Demski from the Institute of Archaeology and Ethnology, Polish Academy of Sciences in Warsaw, was conducted between 2016 and 2021. In addition to the exhibition, the project also yielded a book—Demski Dagnosław, Dominika Czarnecka eds. 2021. Staged Otherness: Ethnic Shows in Central and Eastern Europe, 1850–1939. Budapest–Vienna–New York: CEU Press;more and two English-language special issues in academic periodicals, East Central Europe, vol.47/2020, nos. 2–3, thematic issue edited by Dagnosław Demski, Dominika Czarnecka, Kamila Baraniecka-Olszewska; more and Acta Ethnographica Hungarica, vol. 64/2019, no. 1, thematic issue edited by Izabela Kopania; more

© 2021
Copyright for use of the illustrations presented in the exhibition, which has been granted to the Institute of Archaeology and Ethnology, Polish Academy of Sciences on the basis of single use for scientific and educational non-commercial use, belongs to the institutions from which the collections come.

+ Archive of the Naprstkovo museum, Prague
+ Archive of the Zoological Garden, Wrocław
+ Archive of the Zoological Garden, Poznań
+ Collection of the Russian State Library, Moscow
+ Collection of the Аleksey Shusev State Museum of Architecture, Moscow
+ Collection of the Leo Tolstoy State Museum, Moscow
+ Cyryl. The Virtual Museum of Poznań’s History. Roman Trojanowicz collection
+ Department of Manuscripts and Rare Books, University of Latvia Academic Library
+ Kraków Ethnographic Museum
+ Musée du quai Branly (picture modified by Ludomir Franczak)
+ National Archive of the Czech Republic
+ National Museum Prague
+ Private Collection of Natalya Germanova, Rostov-on-Don
+ Radauer Collection
+ The State Archive in Łódź

Contact details:  
Dagnosław Demski @
Dominika Czarnecka @

Links:
Institute of Archaeology and Ethnology,
Polish Academy of Sciences link
+
Zespół Etnografii Relacyjnej
(Relational Ethnography Team) link

Ces journées d’étude viennent couronner un programme de collaboration franco-chilien ECOS SUD/ANID (n° C17H01 2018-2021) portant surLa construction nationale à l’épreuve de l’ « Étranger » : Incarnation / incorporation, reproduction et déconstruction des traumatismes historiques à l’échelle de l’État, l’individu et la nation. Durant quatre années, réunions, séminaires, ateliers, et colloques ont jalonné le programme, faisant émerger des pistes d’investigation croisées et une analyse comparée des figures de l’Etranger en divers contextes de migration, de part et d’autre de l’Atlantique. Dans le même temps, ils ont aussi favorisé une mise en partage et un questionnement sur les manières de faire et penser la recherche aujourd’hui. Plus que jamais, le monde « académique » se trouve confronté à des processus de globalisation, à la fois des modalités de sa mise en œuvre, et de ses financements. Chercheurs et chercheuses ont chaque fois plus à répondre, en amont, pendant et après la recherche, de leurs objets, enjeux et stratégies de recherche, devant des comités de pairs et d’experts de tous bords –y compris en management– et, de manière fondamentale aujourd’hui, devant les personnes qui ont elles-même collaboré sous des formes variables aux différentes phases de la recherche.
Le partage d’expériences et de perspectives qui a jalonné ce programme ouvre ainsi sur une ultime mise en débat, celle d’une dimension méta-réflexive sur nos pratiques de recherche. Nous la mettons ici en partage non seulement entre les membres des deux équipes mais aussi des membres du Centre Norbert Elias et des invité-e-s extérieur-e-s, autour de tables rondes, format convivial par excellence.

Programme
17 novembre 2021

13h45-14h00 : Accueil des participant.e.s


14h00-14h15 : Mots de bienvenue et présentation Centre Norbert Elias (Axelle Brodiez-Dolino, CNRS-CNE)

14h15-14h30 : Introduction : présentations du programme Ecos-Anid + programme des Journées d’Études (Véronique Bénéï, CNRS-CNE et Maria Emilia Tijoux, Universidad de Chile)


14h30-15h15 : Keynote « Des migrations stigmatisées aux migrations privilégiées : un parcours de recherche à travers 150 ans de mobilité transnationale » (Mélissa Blanchard, CNRS-CNE)

15h15-16h10 : TABLE RONDE 1 – Cadres généraux de la Financement, « gouvernance », « management »
– María Emilia Tijoux (Universidad de Chile)
– Axelle Brodiez-Dolino (EHESS-CNE)
– Daniela Jacob (EHESS-CNE)
Modératrice : Carolina Kobelinsky (CNRS)
16h10-16h25 : Pause
recherche :
16h25-17h20 : TABLE RONDE 2 – Relations d’enquête, enjeux éthiques et modalités de consentement
– Constanza Ambiado (Universidad de Chile)
– Claudia Carillo (Universidad de Chile)
– Mélissa Blanchard (CNRS-CNE)
– Carolina Kobelinsky (CNRS – LESC) Modératrice : Maria Kokkinou (CEFRES)


17h20-17h35 : Pause


17h35-18h15 : Présentation du livre : Racismes, Corps, Attentes. Figures de la migration en contexte contemporain, coordonné par Véronique Beneï (CNRS- CNE) et Maria Emilia Tijoux (Universidad de Chile)


18h15-19h00 : Présentation du film de Morgana Planchais, Comment on va dire ? (22’) et débat avec la réalisatrice


18 novembre 2021

11h-12h30 : Balade patrimoniale (Association Guides 13)

14h00-14h45 : Keynote « Autour de la déconstruction des héritages coloniaux et raciaux. Une lutte entre des formes de visibilité ? » (Ivan Trujillo, Universidad de Valparaiso, chercheur Fondecyt)


14h45-15h40 : TABLE RONDE 3 – Colonialité en héritage(s)
– Iván Trujillo (Universidad de Valparaiso, chercheur Fondecyt)
– Vinicius Kauê Ferreira (Universidade do Estado do Rio de Janeiro) – Rachida Brahim (Université d’Aix-Marseille)
Modératrice : Charlotte Grégoreski (EHESS – Universidad de Chile)


15h40-15h55 : Pause


16h00-16h55 : TABLE RONDE 4 – Partages de la recherche, restitution, enjeux d’écriture


Intervenant.e.s :
– Ricardo Amigo (Universidad de Chile)
– Filippo Furri (Université de Montréal) – Camillo Léon-Quijano (CNE) Modératrice : Véronique Bénéï

17h05-17h20 : Pause 17h20-18h00 : Clôture