アナトリアのチェルケスに見る記憶の政治と記憶の実践 : 旧貴族層出身者と奴隷子孫の対抗的記憶

抄録

Circassians(Cerkes) were forced to migrate to Anatolia in the mid-19th century, when Russia completed its military conquest of the North Caucasus. The Uzunyayla plateau (Kayseri, Turkey) is one of the principal locations of refugee re-settlement. Circassians there tend to compete for prestige, partly due to contradictions between status differences among groups in the past and the socioeconomic standing of these groups in the present. Among Circassians in Uzunyayla, contested memories are produced along the line dividing two social groups: descendants of nobles and descendants of slaves. Those families who are of noble descent eagerly tell a version of history that enhances their own honour. The ways in which nobles employ a discourse of memory (hatira/hatzr) to control the production of historic knowledge can be termed the "politics of memory." This politics serves by not letting slave descendants give their own account of history freely. On the other hand, descendants of slaves produce favourable meanings by appropriating the discourse of those of noble descent as their own. They narrate counter-memories that provide them with a positive experience and a claim to social legitimacy. The memory politics of nobles is skilfully undermined. This may be seen as an exemplary case of the "practice of memory," an idea discussed by de Certeau.