The past in pieces : belonging in the new Cyprus / Rebecca Bryant.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Bryant, Rebecca (Professor of anthropology)

Series:

Contemporary ethnography.

Contemporary Ethnography

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Nationalism--Cyprus.

Nationalism.

Turks--Cyprus--Ethnic identity.

Turks.

Greeks--Cyprus--Ethnic identity.

Greeks.

Cyprus--History.

Cyprus.

Cyprus--Ethnic relations.

Physical Description:

1 online resource (218 p.)

Edition:

1st ed.

Place of Publication:

Philadelphia : University of Pennsylvania Press, c2010.

Language Note:

English

Summary:

On April 23, 2003, to the surprise of much of the world, the ceasefire line that divides Cyprus opened. The line had partitioned the island since 1974, and so international media heralded the opening of the checkpoints as a historic event that echoed the fall of the Berlin Wall. As in the moment of the Wall's collapse, cameras captured the rush of Cypriots across the border to visit homes unwillingly abandoned three decades earlier. It was a euphoric moment, and one that led to expectations of reunification. But within a year Greek Cypriots overwhelmingly rejected at referendum a United Nations plan to reunite the island, despite their Turkish compatriots' support for the plan. In The Past in Pieces, anthropologist Rebecca Bryant explores why the momentous event of the opening has not led Cyprus any closer to reunification, and indeed in many ways has driven the two communities of the island further apart. This chronicle of the "new Cyprus" tells the story of the opening through the voices and lives of the people of one town that has experienced conflict. Over the course of two years, Bryant studied a formerly mixed town in northern Cyprus in order to understand both experiences of life together before conflict and the ways in which the dissolution of that shared life is remembered today. Tales of violation and loss return from the past to shape meanings of the opening in daily life, redefining the ways in which Cypriots describe their own senses of belonging and expectations of the political future. By examining the ways the past is rewritten in the present, Bryant shows how even a momentous opening may lead not to reconciliation but instead to the discovery of new borders that may, in fact, be the real ones.

Contents:

Front matter

Contents

The Sorrow of Unanswered Questions

Introduction. A Prelude to Mourning

One: Paths of No Return

Two: The Anxieties of an Opening

Three: A Needle and a Handkerchief

Four: Geographies of Loss

Five: In the Ruins of Memory

Six: The Spoils of History

Seven: The Pieces of Peace

Eight: Betrayals of the Past

Reading the Future (In Lieu of a Conclusion)

Notes

Main Sources and Suggestions for Further Reading

Acknowledgments

Notes:

Bibliographic Level Mode of Issuance: Monograph

Includes bibliographical references (p. [199]-205).

ISBN:

9781283896597

1283896591

9780812206661

0812206665

OCLC:

794700702