Soffrire per non dimenticare: Agency, nostalgia e lutto nella sinistra in Turchia

Based on an ethnography conducted in Istanbul, this article analyses nostalgia and the perpetuation of mourning among former leftist militants of revolutionary organizations, who were the main targets of the political repression following the 1980-1983 coup in Turkey. It shows how these feelings do not isolate individuals, but are emotional practices with a degree of agency. These emotional practices are performed not on the basis of their effectiveness in the public arena, but rather because they able to regenerate the values of Marxist martyrdom, strengthen generational ties and make community. The analysis of funeral commemorations, anniversaries and gatherings illustrates how nostalgic attachment and perpetuation of mourning involve both the level of political tactics and the inner self of former militants. In this perspective, the concept of agency questions both the ability to act and the ability to construct subjectivities. It also demonstrates how ethnography in politically repressive contexts entails an analysis of agency that draws on domination and unequal power relations as well as symbolic grammars of everyday experience.Sulla base di un’etnografia condotta a Istanbul, questo articolo esplora la diffusione dello struggimento nostalgico e della perpetuazione di una condizione di lutto tra gli ex-militanti delle organizzazioni studentesche e rivoluzionare che in Turchia sono stati vittime del colpo di stato del 1980-1983. Il contributo mostra come questi sentimenti non costituiscano un isolamento del soggetto, ma siano pratiche emozionali attraverso cui gli ex-militanti si riconnettono con una storia collettiva, elaborano profili morali del dolore, tracciano una memoria di combattimento e articolano rivendicazioni politiche. La disamina delle critiche a questi sentimenti da parte di alcuni ex-combattenti mette in luce come le forme ritualizzate di resistenza della sinistra turca ricadano in una eroicità passiva, in cui il campo di azione si costruisce principalmente attorno a quello che le persone hanno sofferto. In questa prospettiva, il testo evidenzia, da un lato, come analizzare la capacità di agire significhi prendere in esame anche la formazione del soggetto e dei suoi spazi interiori e, dall’altro, come la comprensione dell’agency non possa ridursi, anche in un contesto repressivo, a una constatazione delle relazioni di dominio, ma implichi l’analisi delle grammatiche simboliche e dei codici pubblici su cui si fonda la lettura dell’esperienza quotidiana dei soggetti

What is a rite? Émile Durkheim, a hundred years later

This paper is focused on the anthropological concept of ritual, starting from Emile Durkheim's approach in Les formes élémentaires de la vie religieuse (1912). We discuss three different aspects of the Durkheimian perspective on religion and rituals: a) the sacred/profane dichotomy; b) the concept of collective representations - which establishes a substantial continuity between religious and scientific thought; c) a ‟practical” and performative interpretation of rites as the basis of social bond. During the twentieth century, these aspects have influenced different and sometimes opposing theoretical approaches (including ‟symbolist” and ‟neo-intellectualist” theories and Victor Turner's ‟anthropology of experience”). We briefly review each of them, arguing for the importance of reconsidering them into a unitary perspective, centred on religious phenomena as basically moral experiences and as the language of social relations. In the conclusions, we will show how such unitary approach helps us understand the transformations as well as the continuities of rituality in the individualized and secularized societies of what we call nowadays the Western world