Table Of ContentPALGRAVE MACMILLAN MEMORY STUDIES
Memories of Asia Minor
in Contemporary
Greek Culture
An Itinerary
Kristina Gedgaudaitė
Palgrave Macmillan Memory Studies
Series Editors
Andrew Hoskins
University of Glasgow
Glasgow, UK
John Sutton
Department of Cognitive Science
Macquarie University
Macquarie, Australia
The nascent field of Memory Studies emerges from contemporary trends
that include a shift from concern with historical knowledge of events to
that of memory, from ‘what we know’ to ‘how we remember it’; changes
in generational memory; the rapid advance of technologies of memory;
panics over declining powers of memory, which mirror our fascination
with the possibilities of memory enhancement; and the development of
trauma narratives in reshaping the past. These factors have contributed to
an intensification of public discourses on our past over the last thirty years.
Technological, political, interpersonal, social and cultural shifts affect
what, how and why people and societies remember and forget. This
groundbreaking series tackles questions such as: What is ‘memory’ under
these conditions? What are its prospects, and also the prospects for its
interdisciplinary and systematic study? What are the conceptual, theoreti-
cal and methodological tools for its investigation and illumination?
More information about this series at
http://www.palgrave.com/gp/series/14682
Kristina Gedgaudaite
Memories of Asia
Minor in
Contemporary Greek
Culture
An Itinerary
Kristina Gedgaudaite
The Seeger Center for Hellenic Studies
Princeton University
Princeton, NJ, USA
ISSN 2634-6257 ISSN 2634-6265 (electronic)
Palgrave Macmillan Memory Studies
ISBN 978-3-030-83935-2 ISBN 978-3-030-83936-9 (eBook)
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-83936-9
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Cover illustration: Digital cartoon. Special mention in the First KYM International Cartoon
Contest, 2016. © Oleksiy Kustovsky.
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In loving memory of my grandmother Maria
A
cknowledgements
In my dreamlike early childhood recollections, the wheel of my grand-
mother’s sewing machine buzzes through the night to finish my winter
princess costume in time for the morning carnival in Karaganda, then part
of the Soviet Union. Many years later, we would be sitting in the kitchen
in Vilnius, now in independent Lithuania, where, with the help of a differ-
ent sewing machine and a pair of scissors, she would help me shred my
otherwise perfectly fine pair of jeans to fit my rebellious teenage soul. Yet,
despite the multiple analogies we find in literature between sewing and
storytelling, she never talked of how she, as a young girl, once made the
journey from Ukraine to Kazakhstan to reunite with her family, who had
been deported there during the 1940s.
It was not until 2014, when I first embarked on the project researching
memories of the Greco-Turkish War (1919–1922) in Asia Minor and read
about the intergenerational transmission of memories, that I came to
realise that not only stories, but also gestures, silences and worldviews can
traverse distances and shape who we are and how we relate to the world.
Perhaps it was the experiences of my grandmother, recollected from the
shards of the Soviet Union, that drew me closer to the ruins of a different
empire nearly a hundred years after its dissolution?
Several scholars whose theoretical insights form the backbone of this
book are representatives of the generation of postmemory, to use Marianne
Hirsch’s term, having grown up among the recollections of catastrophes—
they had not lived through these catastrophes, but they have long lived
with them, as memories of these times keep finding ways into the everyday
lives of their families, while also providing them with affiliations to other
vii
viii ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
such events around the globe. This book, then, one might say, was written
as just such an affiliation link. However, it is an affiliation that I recognised
as such only when I started building the methodological framework and
working with conceptual tools that would enable me to see it in those terms.
Over the years, as this project grew and developed, it also brought
together a large community, people who have supported me and infused
the project with new energy and ideas when most needed. Antonis
Nikolopoulos-Soloup, Mimi Denisi and Maria Repousi met with me dur-
ing my research visits to Athens and generously shared views on their own
work and memories of Asia Minor. Kostas Skordyles, Guido Bonsaver,
Eleftheria Ioannidou, Gonda van Steen, Penelope Papailias, Emilie Pine,
Enrique del Rey Cabero, William Drummond, Alexander Kazamias, Effie
Voutira, Olga Demetriou and Pavlos Moulios, enthusiastically engaged
with this project in its various forms, providing constructive comments,
criticism and advice. Anouska Wilkinson, Richard Harber, Patrick Murphy,
Tatiana Faia and Nina Macaraig read and proof-read my drafts at various
stages with great care and patience. Exchanges with Giorgos Tsimouris,
late Libby Tata Arcel, Renee Hirschon, Emilia Salvanou, Vangelis
Karamanolakis, Antonis Liakos, Angela Melitopoulos, Will Stroebel and
Carl Mauzy helped answer certain questions. Kristina Svarevicǐūte, Eleni
Bampasaki, Frances Restuccia and Claudia Koonz, each in their different
ways, led me to this book. Jean Ha, Mary Sarandari, Anna Papaeti, Fiona
Antonelaki, Neringa Barmute, Kostas Psathas, Rovena Papa, Pinelopi
Flaouna, Rahul Santhaman, Tatiana Markaki, Salomej a Marcǎ uskaite,
Karolis Butkevicǐus, Anna Sandretti and Emanuele D’Osualdo and Nilüfer
Hatemi supported me in various forms in different corners of the world.
In this large community, a special word of thanks must go to Dimitris
Papanikolaou for the energy, enthusiasm and care with which he sup-
ported this project from its beginning as a doctoral thesis to its publication
as a book. His intellectual guidance has shaped my own approach to con-
temporary Greek culture in profound ways. Our conversations on modern
Greek literature and culture have been going on for a decade now, and I
can only wish that they will continue with the same energy into the
next decade!
Much more recent, but no less cherished have been the conversations
and intellectual exchanges with Maria Boletsi: I am enormously grateful
for her attentive readings of my drafts, sound advice and precious time gen-
erously shared with me.
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS ix
For the past two years, both Dimitris and Maria were also my ‘partners
in crime’ in setting up the cultural analysis network Rethinking Modern
Greek Studies in the 21st Century/Greek Studies Now. This collaboration,
the conversations that it instigated and the people it brought together
hold many especially dear and enriching moments, important for both
rethinking the current project and embarking on new ones. I thank
Claudio Russello and Yiorgos-Evgenios Douliakas, the newest addition to
our editorial team, for all their help and support, as well as everyone who
took part in our network’s activities over the past two years and shared
fruitful ideas.
Several conferences also provided fruitful terrain for exchanging and
developing ideas over the years, including the Modern Greek Seminar,
Renegotiations of History in Light of the ‘Greek Crisis’, Crossings:
Negotiating Borders and Boundaries in the Eastern Mediterranean at the
University of Oxford, the symposium organised by the Historical and
Folklore Society in Rethymno, the Annual Postgraduate Colloquium of
the Society for Modern Greek Studies, the In Search of Transcultural
Memory in Europe Postgraduate Training School at the University of
Dublin, the Futures of Memory Workshop at the University of Leeds, the
Memory Studies Association Conference at the University of Copenhagen,
the Gate to the Eastern Mediterranean (GEM) seminar at the University
of Birmingham, the Research Seminar at the Department of Social
Anthropology of Panteion University, the Strategies of the Documentary
Conference at the University of Vienna and the Works in Progress: New
Approaches seminars at Princeton University.
The Taylor Institution Library, the Social Science Library and the Old
Bodleian Library at Oxford, the Gennadius Library, the Centre for Asia
Minor Studies, the Contemporary Social History Archives, the Library of
the Greek Parliament, the French School of Athens, the Scholarly
Communication and Information Centre at Vilnius University, the
Amsterdam University Library, the Calvia University Centre and Princeton
University’s Firestone Library, as well as their helpful staff, have been cru-
cial for honing my ideas in this book.
As the project moved through its various stages, the stimulating research
environment I found at the Sub-Faculty of Byzantine and Modern Greek
at Oxford, the Department of Modern Greek Studies at the University of
Amsterdam and the Seeger Center for Hellenic Studies at Princeton
University were invaluable. The Seeger Center has been the last home of
this project before it goes into publication and I am grateful for all the
x ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
staff, the community of postdoctoral fellows, especially Nathanael
A. Aschenbrenner and Yannis Stamos, and the Center director Dimitri
Gondicas for supporting me during the last stages of writing this book and
the unprecedented times of the COVID pandemic.
Over the years, the project was made possible and sustained by the
financial support I received through an Oxford-Aidan Jenkins Scholarship,
Sub-Faculty of Byzantine and Modern Greek, Merton College and Faculty
of Medieval and Modern Languages at the University of Oxford; the
Onassis Foundation; the Kostas and Eleni Ouranis Foundation; a Marilena
Laskaridis Postdoctoral Visiting Research Fellowship at the University of
Amsterdam and a Mary Seeger O’Boyle Postdoctoral Fellowship at
Princeton University.
I am also especially grateful to Oleksiy Kustovsky, Soloup, Lefteris
Partsalis, Michael Bakas, Mimi Denisi and Ioanna Tzetzoumi for allowing
me to reproduce their images in this book. The material discussed in
Chap. 4 has previously appeared in the Journal of Modern Greek Studies, as
article titled ‘Comics, Memory and Migration: Through the Mirror Maze
of Soloup’s Aivali’, while an abridged discussion of Leferis Partsalis’ pho-
tograph in Chap. 6 has been included in the collected volume (Un)timely
Crises: Chronotopes of Critique (Boletsi et al. 2021). I am grateful for being
able to include both as part of this book as well. The editorial team at
Palgrave Macmillan has supported me with great care and patience at each
stage of the publication process.
This project had many different homes and itineraries over the years.
From the beginning to its very end, I feel very fortunate to have had the
support of Robert Casado, whose reservoirs of encouragement, positive
attitude and epic music have sustained me day by day.
Finally, but most importantly, I would like to thank my parents, Galina
Gedgaudiene and Raimundas Gedgaudas, for their unconditional sup-
port—not only at this milestone, but at every single one. Without their
fresh apple juice at the most crucial stage of this project, it would probably
still be under construction.
