Essays on Kurds

Amir Hassanpour

Essays on Kurds

Historiography, Orality,
and Nationalism

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Contents

It is important to note that European languages no longer dominate the proliferation of Kurdish knowledge production. In spite of cultural and linguistic suppression on the part of dominant nation-states, written materials in both Sorani and Kurmanji, the dialects of the Kurdish language, are also thriving. This includes, for example, the rising number of papers by Kurdish students on university campuses in Rojhalat (the Kurdish region of Iran) and the increasing number of journals, magazines, and publishing houses both there and in Başûr (the Kurdish region of Iraq).

The acceptance of the editorial role coincided with a huge loss in my life. Professor Amir Hassanpour, my life partner, colleague, and comrade suddenly succumbed to his illness. Amir’s absence is deeply personal for me, and his intellectual absence is widely felt and shared by many. Thus, I took this role to follow Amir’s dialectical path of continuity and discontinuity in knowledge production—that is, to historicize, materialize, and be methodical in producing knowledge, but then to revisit and renew theoretical and conceptual scaffoldings through the lens of Marx’s “ruthless criticism.” He passionately, consistently, and politically adhered to this frame of analysis. Therefore, I was delighted when the editorial board of Peter Lang Publishing accepted my proposal to inaugurate the series with a collection of Amir’s writings, writings that he was planning on publishing in order to make his influential pieces widely available in an anthology format. Rereading, formatting, and editing the chapters that are included in this anthology was a sorrowful joy of coming to know again about the life of a renowned Kurdish scholar who had an unwavering commitment to understanding and explaining the troubled life of the Kurdish people and their history, culture, and politics. Below, I quote at length Amir’s affable words in a proposal he wrote entitled “The Protection of the Kurdish Cultural Heritage” for an archival project which never got off the ground due to budgetary and political constraints. He wrote:

Over the past 100 years, most nations have taken steps to recognize and protect their national cultural heritage. These measures include the development and support of relevant research and teaching and, in particular, the establishment of facilitates to collect, preserve, restore, study, teach, and otherwise make accessible their national heritage in the domains of the traditional arts, crafts, oral literature, music, and dance. These expressions of a people’s identity are highly valued but are always threatened in their existence because they depend on knowledgeable and willing individuals (performers) for realization and transmission.…For the Kurdish nation, the case is particularly important and urgent.…There is now no central institution that could serve to collect, preserve, restore, study, and make accessible the national heritage of all Kurds in the domain of the traditional arts, in particular, oral literature, music, and dance.…It is imperative that the comprehensive collection and maintenance of the Kurdish national cultural heritage be centralized and put into professional hands.…The establishment of such a central institution is urgent because, due to the effects of linguicidal and ethnocidal policies, and violence in some countries where Kurds live, the living practice of the national Kurdish cultural heritage is seriously threatened.…

The collection of Amir’s writings in this book directly address and theorize the themes articulated in this unachieved project, such as historiography, orality, linguicide, cultural rights, cultural survival, dispersal and diaspora, and the making of Kurdish identity. He always reminds us that nation and nationalism are political, historical, and cultural theoretical categories and praxes. Therefore, they are not free from or independent of social relations of gender, class, race, sexuality, and all the other social fragments constituting the social whole.

This Book

The book consists of previously published and unpublished writings of Professor Hassanpour. They were written over a span of decades as a “living archive” of the Kurdish people, their history, culture, and struggle. In this book they are organized thematically: “Historiography and Orality: Theory and Method;” “Language and Cultural Rights;” and “Gender and Cultural Relations.” Here again I resort to one of Amir’s unpublished notes as he reflects on the status of Kurdish historiography that is not “conscious of class and gender and other internal contradictions of Kurdish society.” He states: