"Space Assertion" and "Place Assertion" as Discursive Resistance: Siunik in Armenia’s Geographical Imaginations after the Second Karabakh War

The Department of Near Eastern Languages & Civilizations presents the New Directions in Armenian Studies Lecture Series

Nareg Seferian, Visiting Assistant Professor of Government and Foreign Affairs, Hampden-Sydney College

After the cease-fire of 1994, the unrecognised Nagorno-Karabakh Republic was largely secure in its position. It held not only the territory of the former Nagorno-Karabakh Autonomous Oblast, but also many surrounding regions, thereby having effective control over areas contiguous with the south-eastern borders of the Republic of Armenia. For decades, the province of Siunik in southern Armenia was likewise largely secure in its position, certainly on its eastern borders that were not borders at all in practice. A series of occurrences after the cease-fire of the Second Karabakh War of 2020 disrupted that arrangement: the withdrawal of Armenian forces and the appearance of Azerbaijani (and Russian) troops, incursions from the Azerbaijani side with subsequent fighting and the occupation of territory, the closure of a major highway, road signage welcoming passers-by to Azerbaijan, and so on. Siunik very suddenly lost its strategic depth and became one of the front-lines of a still-unresolved conflict.

How has the new physical geographical reality of Siunik affected the ideological geographical perceptions of the inhabitants of the province? This talk draws from the literature of geographical imaginations to explore that question, in particular the notions of space and place. It is informed by ethnographic fieldwork conducted in Siunik in the autumn of 2021 – timed to coincide with commemorations of the one-year anniversary of the Second Karabakh War and the thirtieth anniversary of independence of the Republic of Armenia – which revealed prevailing discursive tropes ranging from nationalist readings of history to larger-than-life military figures and a sense of Siunik’s national, regional, and indeed global significance. This place-making practiced by the people of Siunik serves as a means of discursive resistance in the face of a material security threat against which there seems to be little recourse.