Numerous multigenerational memorial strategies have been deployed by the global Armenian community as a direct response to the destruction of the Armenian genocide and contemporary denials of its occurrence. These myriad memorial schemas include archival efforts, the advancement of socio-religious traditions, and public memorial constructs. In this paper, these strands of public and communal memory are analyzed and unpacked through several conceptual frames employed during the creation of the term 'genocide' – a term originally coined by human rights lawyer Raphael Lemkin in 1943. Lemkin based the term 'genocide' and its various layered definitions on his in-depth research of the Armenian Genocide; he was in search of a legal term to prosecute perpetrators of genocides - both individuals and governments such as Nazi Germany. While this paper probes oft-overlooked concepts, qualifiers, and legal definitions which Raphael Lemkin conceived of as essential components of the term 'genocide,' it's main focus is on the use of memory as a response to 'Cultural Genocide' – Lemkin's legal term to describe the planned destruction of religion and culture. It will do so by unpacking and analyzing the efforts of Armenian artists, designers, poets, architects, activists, and philanthropists, who have created sites of memory, or 'lieux de memoire.'
Specific examples of museums, memorials, churches and archives – those built in Armenia under Soviet rule, and constructs built around the globe in various socio-political contexts - are cited as evidence of this construction and preservation of communal memory. These memories straddle the very culture that the Ottoman forces attempted to erase during the Genocide, an event that the Turkish government actively denies, and an and ethno-religious culture that it forcefully attempts to erase, to this day. These communal efforts continue to be an important counterforce and counter-memory to the denial of the Armenian Genocide. I will enumerate how this collective memory work is directly continuing Lemkin's project of recognizing, defining and combating violent erasures of nations, culture and memory.
Keywords:
Material Memory, Cultural Genocide, Trauma, Counter-Memory, Monuments, Transnational Memory
