Origins of nationalism and archaeology as an invention of modernity. February 16, 2010

1. Arch 1810. Under the Tower of Babel: Archaeology, Politics, and Identity in the Modern Middle East Spring 2010 Origins of nationalism and archaeology as an invention of modernity. February 16, 2010

2. Liberty, Equality, Fraternity: constructing nationalism in the Late Ottoman Empire Turkish post card from 1895 about the Kanûn-ı Esâsî of November 23, 1876, with the Sultan Abdülhamid II, the Grand Vizier, the millets and Turkey receiving freedom; the flying angel show the motto: Liberty, Equality, Fraternity.

3. Ottoman Imperial Museum and Osman Hamdi Bey

4. today: 1. nationalism as an official ideology that intends to construct a nation-state on the grounds of ethno-linguistic and religious homogeneization of society 2. modernity/modernization as a utopian project for cutting one’s ties with the immediate past and transforming the entire society for all to benefit comforts and technologies of modern life 3. institutionalisation of archaeology as modern science and in service of the state

5. Bounded nation states of the Middle East

6. Material culture of nationalism: the barbed wire

7. Partitioning the Ottoman territories: the Treaty of Sevres (1920)

8. Treaty of Lausanne July 24, 1923

9. 1. Actual border line 2. Border marker or boundary stone 3. Border column 4. Outer strip (East German territory) 5. Outer anti-vehicle ditch (dug-up road) 6. Expanded-metal mesh fence (single layer) 7. Access gate 8. Double fence (for high security areas) with minefield in between fences 9. Concrete-faced anti-vehicle ditch 10. Control strip 11. Guard patrol road 12. Floodlights 13. BT-11 observation tower 14. Observation bunker 15. Führungstelle command tower 16. BT-9 observation tower 17. Dog run 18. Signal fence floodlights 19. Concrete wall adjoining built-up area 20. Signal fence 21. Signal fence gate 22. Entry gate to the security zone HALT HIER GRENZE" ("STOP HERE BORDER"): Diagram of the German border fortification system circa 1984.

10. Nation state as homogeneous society: population exchange between Greece and Turkey Greek refugees from Symrna arriving at Thessaloniki, 1923

11. Greek-Turkish populations transfer after 1923

12. 1914 document showing the official figures from the 1914 population census of the Ottoman Empire. The total population (sum of all the millets) was given at 20,975,345, and the Greek population was given at 1,792,206.

13. Greek refugees 1923

14. Nation “ an imagined political community, imagined as both inherently limited and sovereign” (Benedict Anderson) cultural artifact of some kind, a product of 18th-20th c. historical forces “Nationalism is not the awakening of nations to self-consciousness: it invents nations where they do not exist” (Ernest Gellner)

15. Paradoxes of nationalism • 1. Objective modernity of nations in the eye of historians • vs. • their subjective antiquity in the eye of nationalists 2. The formal universality of nationality as a socio-cultural concept (in the modern world everyone should/will have a ‘nationality’ vs. the irremediable particularity of its concrete manifestations 3. The ‘political’ power of nationalism vs. their philosophical poverty and even incoherence

16. Inheriting the past: James Henry Breasted’s tympanum at the Oriental Institute Chicago (1931)

17. The monument: archaeology as inspiration for nationalist imagination and commemorations of the ancient past Hittite biscuits An Early Bronze age ritual standard, Alacahoyuk, Turkey Ankara: Sihhiye monument

18. M.K. Ataturk, founder of the Turkish Republic inspecting archaeological finds from Alacahoyuk (1935) and visiting Ahlatlibel (5 May 1933)

19. ancient past as national identity

20. modernity: an incomplete project, a social utopia • quarrel of ancients and moderns • study of antiquity as a subject of modern science, • the idea of material remains of the ancient past can be studies • through objective science, field observation, documentation... • infinite progress of knowledge and technological progress • an abstract opposition between the “traditional” and the “modern” • also a break with the immediate past, a new idealist understanding • of a revolutionized present: an aggressive avant-garde, cult of innovation • it is a secular, cultural project: the improvement of everyday life, • and democratization of technologies in everyday life, enrichment • of everyday life. • conceptualization of space and time, which are both considered as • abstract concepts that can be measured, objectified, controlled, designed, • made efficient (architecture and city planning now under the aegis of • the state and professionals in its service)- conquest of nature • universalism of modernity: annihilating places, globalizing a culture of modernity • industrialism: changing notions of the body and individuality. Development • of the state technologies of surveillance.

21. Fritz Lang, Metropolis (1927)

22. Walid Raad and Akram Zaatari, Mapping Sitting: on Portraiture and Photography 2002

23. Walid Raad and Akram Zaatari, Mapping Sitting: on Portraiture and Photography 2002

24. disciplining of the body: militarism of 20th century

25. Modernism in architecture: new technologies, new conceptions of space, abandonment of ornament Le Corbuiser Villa Savoie, Poissy, north west of Paris, 1929 Frank Lloyd Wright Johnson Wax Building, 1950, Racine, Winsconsin.

26. "la forme d'une ville Change plus vite, hélas! que le coeur d'un mortel“ Baudelaire Ringstraße

27. Modernity and the urban space Ringstraße in Vienna, in 1872

28. Planning of Ankara

29. “His majesty the pick”: Mussolini at the Imperial Forum in Rome Image courtesy: University of Pennsylvania Fisher Fine Arts Image Collection “His majesty the pick”: Baron Haussmann Image courtesy: Google image search http://icar.poliba.it/

31. today: 1. nationalism as an official ideology that intends to construct a nation-state on the grounds of ethno-linguistic and religious homogeneization of society 2. modernity/modernization as a utopian project for cutting one’s ties with the immediate past and transforming the entire society for all to benefit comforts and technologies of modern life 3. institutionalisation of archaeology as modern science and in service of the state

32. Museum as world-picture: “If the cabinet of curiosities had been the materialization of a cosmology structured around meaning and significance, the subsequent development of museums demonstrates the attempt to make the classificatory table manifest” (Thomas 2004: 26-27)