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Dance and Difference: Toward an Individualization of the Pontian Self

2011; Taylor & Francis; Volume: 34; Issue: 3 Linguagem: Inglês

10.1080/01472526.2011.615235

1532-4257

Magda Zografou, Stavroula Pipyrou,

Balkans: History, Politics, Society

Abstract This article is concerned with Pontic dance, particularly as part of the celebrations of Panayía Soumelá, as a marker of identity for the Pontians in Greece. Adopting a historical perspective, we explore how markers of identity are intimately related to the systemic overvaluation of the Pontian Self. We argue that a strong Pontian referential system is based on the cultivation of clear markers of identity. Drawing on the concept of “the narcissism of minor differences,” we conclude that it is major differences that may promote individualization and cultural tolerance, enabling the Pontian Self to reflexively engage with the difference of the Other. Notes The Pontians are a population that originate from the historical area of Pontus in Anatolia, originally located around the southern and eastern coasts of the Black Sea. Along with other Orthodox Christian populations, Pontians were exchanged between Turkey and Greece as a result of the Lausanne treaty in 1923. In this essay, we refer to Turkish- and Greek-speaking Pontians and not to the Pontian subjects of the former U.S.S.R. In employing the terms Pontic/Pontian in this article, we follow the practices of David Bruce Kilpatrick in “Function and Style in Pontic Dance Music” (Ph.D. dissertation, University of California, Los Angeles, 1975). Magda Zografou has been conducting fieldwork on Greek Pontian communities since the mid-1980s, Stavroula Pipyrou since 2004. Here we refer to “genealogy” in the Foucauldian sense. Thus, we do not seek to uncover linear developments in the history of the Pontian communities; rather, we are interested in contradictory developments that uncover the workings of power in shaping Pontian identities. The majority of Pontians were fervent supporters of Eleftherios Venizelos, a prominent Greek politician who served multiple terms as Prime Minister. Nevertheless, among the leaders of the newly founded (1918) Communist Party of Greece (KKE) were many of Anatolian origin. Inevitably, those among the refugees who had any background connected to Communism, such as the Pontians who had moved into the region of the Caucasus, were stigmatized as leftists. See Richard Clogg, A Concise History of Greece (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1992), 106. The Macedonian Movement for Balkan Prosperity (MAKIBE) was founded in 1991. The political party Rainbow, which succeeded MAKIBE, was founded in 1994. See Ioannis Manos, “To Dance or Not to Dance: Dancing Dilemmas in a Border Region in Northern Greece,” Focaal: European Journal of Anthropology, no. 41 (2003): 21–32. This feast commemorates the death of the Virgin Mary and her assumption into heaven. According to the Turkish newspaper Hürriyet (March 17, 2010), the Turkish authorities granted that the Orthodox Patriarch in Istanbul could perform the religious celebration of the Dormition in the historic monastery of Panayía Soumelá in Trabzon in 2010. The celebration, on August 15, 2010, was a glorious event broadcast live in both Greece and Russia. The monastery reopened after eighty-eight years, having been closed since the exchange of Christian and Muslim populations between Greece and Turkey. This may have been a strategic move by the Turkish government to conform to human rights demands in order to accelerate accession to the European Union. The location in Veria was carefully chosen to recreate the ambience of the church's initial site on the mountain of Melá in Trabzon. The procession that followed the transfer of the icon to the newly constructed monastery in Veria was elaborate, with the inclusion of the Greek national army highlighting the political significance of the event. The Panayía was given back her agency in an apotheosis of religious, political, and popular fervor. On the concept of agency and political ritual as used here, see Marc Abélès, “Modern Political Ritual: Ethnography of an Inauguration and a Pilgrimage by President Mitterrand,” Current Anthropology, vol. 29, no. 3 (1988): 391–404. Prevalent ideologies in this context were structured around alterities. The political right wing contrasted the national-minded (Ethnikofrones) with “traitors” to the nation, while the left wing projected concepts of patriots versus collaborators-reactionaries. See Nikos Marantzidis and Giorgos Antoniou, “The Axis Occupation and Civil War Bibliography: Changing Trends in Greek Historiography: 1941–2002,” Journal of Peace Research, vol. 41, no. 2 (2004): 224. During the 1950s and 1960s a massive rural-urban migration swept through Greece and other European countries. Pontians who relocated to nearby cities and to Athens were considered “second-class” citizens, a trend echoed in other parts of Europe regarding rural populations that migrated to cities. See Kalliopi Panopoulou, “The Dance Identity of the Vlachs of Lailias Village and Its Transformations over Three Generations,” Yearbook for Traditional Music, vol. 41 (2009): 166–86, especially p. 170; Keith Brown, “Anamesa sto kratos kai tin ypaithro,” in Taftotites sti Makedonia, ed. Basil K. Gounaris, Iakovos D. Michailidis, and Giorgos V. Agelopoulos (Athens: Papazizi Publications, 1997), 171–95; and Stavroula Pipyrou, “Urbanities: Grecanici Migration to the City of Reggio Calabria, South Italy,” in History and Anthropology, vol. 21, no. 1 (2010): 19–36. This term relates to identity formation as a fluid and open-ended process. Despite the fact that a considerable number of Pontian collectivities voted against the socialist party, the new government, especially under the leadership of the late Andreas Papandreou, was indeed favored by the majority of Pontians. See Nikos Marantzidis, Yiasasin Millet/Zito to Ethnos: Prosfigia, Katoxi kai Emfilios, ethnotiki tautotita kai politici simperifora stous Tourkofonous ellinorthodoxous tou Ditikou Pontou (Irakleio: Panepistimiakes Ekdoseis Krētis, 2001). The Panpontian Federation of Greece, founded in 2004, is the official representative body of 340 Pontian associations. The other central representative body, with 170 member associations, is the Panhellenic Federation of Pontic Associations, founded in 1972. There are also the Federation of Pontian Associations of Southern Greece and the Federation of Pontian Associations of Northern Greece. 1. See Anton Blok, “The Narcissism of Minor Differences,” European Journal of Social Theory, vol. 1, no. 1 (1998): 33–56; Sigmund Freud, Group Psychology and the Analysis of the Ego (London: Hogarth Press, 1921); Sigmund Freud, Civilization and Its Discontents (London: Hogarth Press, 1930); Michael Ignatieff, The Warrior's Honor: Ethnic War and the Modern Conscience (New York: Owl Books, 1997); Pål Kolstø, “The Narcissism of Minor Differences-Theory: Can It Explain Ethnic Conflict?,” Filosofija i Drustvo, vol. 33, no. 2 (2007): 153–172; Paul Sant Cassia, “Guarding Each Other's Dead, Mourning One's Own: The Problem of Missing Persons and Missing Parts in Cyprus,” in When Greeks Think about Turks: The View from Anthropology, ed. Dimitrios Theodossopoulos (London: Routledge, 2007). 2. Jane Cowan, Dance and the Body Politic in Northern Greece (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1990); Elisabeth Kirtsoglou, For the Love of Women: Gender, Identity and Same-Sex Relationships in a Greek Provincial Town (London: Routledge, 2004); Ioannis Manos, “To Dance or Not to Dance: Dancing Dilemmas in a Border Region in Northern Greece,” Focaal: European Journal of Anthropology, no. 41 (2003): 21–32; Kalliopi Panopoulou, “The Dance Identity of the Vlachs of Lailias Village and Its Transformations over Three Generations,” Yearbook for Traditional Music, vol. 41 (2009): 166–86; Stavroula Pipyrou, “To lipothimise to tsamiko: H diapragmateusi tis emfilis tautotitas, tis somatopiimenis mnimis kai tis istorias mesa apo khoreutikes epitelesis stin Kalloni Grevenon,” Proceedings of the Third International Conference of Culture and Civilisation, University of Serres, Greece (Serres: Afoi Charalambidi 2006); Magda Zografou, “The Politics of Dance: The Incorporation of the Pontic Refugees in Modern Greek Culture through the Manipulation of Dancing Practices in a Northern Greek Village,” The Journal of Mediterranean Studies, vol. 17, no. 1 (2007): 1–22; Magda Zografou and Stavroula Pipyrou, “Dancing in History: Socio-Political Aspects of Dance Identity of Two Distinctive Groups in Greece,” Studia Choreologica, vol. 10 (2008): 25–41. 3. Jill Dubisch, In a Different Place: Pilgrimage, Gender and Politics at a Greek Island Shrine (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1995), 65. 4. See Michalis Meraklis, O sigxronos Ellinikos laikos politismos (Athens: Kallitehniko kai Pneumatiko kentro “Ora,” 1983), 51; Dimitrios Pentzopoulos, The Balkan Exchange of Minorities and Its Impact upon Greece (Paris: Mouton & Co., 1962); Eleutheria Voutira, “Population Transfers and Resettlement Policies in Inter-war Europe: The Case of Asia Minor Refugees in Macedonia from an International and National Perspective,” in Ourselves and Others: The Development of a Greek Macedonian Cultural Identity since 1912, ed. Peter Mackridge and Eleni Yannakakis (Oxford, U.K.: Berg, 1997). 5. Renee Hirschon, Heirs of the Greek Catastrophe: The Social Life of Asia Minor Refugees in Piraeus (Oxford, UK: Clarendon Press, 1989), 30–31; Anastasia Karakasidou, Fields of Wheat, Hills of Blood: Passages to Nationhood in Greek Macedonia, 1870–1990 (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1997), 157, 159, 160–61; Elisabeth Kirtsoglou and Lina Sistani, “The Other Then, the Other Now, and the Other Within: Stereotypical Images and Narrative Captions of the Turk in Northern and Central Greece,” The Journal of Mediterranean Studies, vol. 13, no. 2 (2003): 189–213, especially 203–4; Stephen D. Salamone, In the Shadow of the Holy Mountain: The Genesis of a Rural Greek Community and Its Refugee Heritage (New York: Columbia University Press, 1987), 101; Voutira, “Population Transfers,” 120. 6. Hirschon, Heirs of the Greek Catastrophe, 15–17, 30–33; Renee Hirschon, “Mnimi kai taftotita: Oi Mikrasiates prosfyges tis Kokkinias,” in Anthropologia kai parelthon: symvoles stin koinoniki istoria tis neoteris Elladas, ed. Euthimios Papataxiarchis and Theodoros Paradellis (Athens: Ekdoseis Alexandria, 1993), 327–30; Elisabeth Kirtsoglou and Dimitrios Theodossopoulos, “Fading Memories, Flexible Identities: The Rhetoric about the Self and the Other in a Community of ‘Christian’ Refugees from Anatolia,” The Journal of Mediterranean Studies, vol. 11, no. 2 (2001): 406–8; Dimitrios Pentzopoulos, The Balkan Exchange of Minorities and Its Impact Upon Greece (Paris: Mouton & Co., 1962), 205; Stephen D. Salamone, and Jill B. Stanton, “Introducing the Nikokyra: Identity and Reality in Social Process,” in Gender and Power in Rural Greece, ed. Jill Dubisch (Princeton, N.J.; Princeton University Press, 1986), 101; Voutira, “Population Transfers,” 120; Zografou, “The Politics of Dance;” and Zografou and Pipyrou “Dancing in History.” 7. Zografou, “The Politics of Dance;” Theodoros Paradellis, “Anthropologia tis mnimis,” in Diadromes kai topoi tis mnimis: Istorikes kai anthropologikes prosegiseis, ed. Rika Benveniste, and Theodoros Paradellis (Athens: Ekdoseis Alexandria, 1999); Kirtsoglou and Theodossopoulos, “Fading Memories, Flexible Identities.” 8. Patricia Fann, “The Pontic Myth of Homeland: Cultural Expressions of Nationalism and Ethnicism in Pontos and Greece, 1870–1990,” Journal of Refugee Studies, vol. 4, no. 4, Special Issue: The Odyssey of the Pontic Greeks (1991): 340–56; Hirschon, Heirs of the Greek Catastrophe; Hirschon, “Mnimi kai taftotita”; Karakasidou, Fields of Wheat, Hills of Blood, 150–51; Peter Loizos, The Heart Grown Bitter: A Chronicle of Cypriot War Refugees (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1981). 9. Marc Augé, Non-places: Introduction to an Anthropology of Supermodernity (London: Verso, 1995), 25. 10. Zografou and Pipyrou, “Dancing in History.” On historical constructivism, see James Faubion, Modern Greek Lessons: A Primer in Historical Constructivism (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1993). 11. Fredrik Barth, ed., Ethnic Groups and Boundaries: The Social Organization of Culture Difference (London: Allen and Unwin, 1969), 13. 12. Zografou and Pipyrou, “Dancing in History.” 13. Kolstø, “The Narcissism of Minor Differences-Theory.” 14. Freud, Group Psychology, 101. 15. Ibid. 16. Ignatieff, The Warrior's Honor, 7. 17. Sant Cassia, “Guarding Each Other's Dead,” 114. 18. Manos, “To Dance or Not to Dance.” 19. Ibid., 30, n. 2. 20. Ibid., 21. 21. Sant Cassia, “Guarding Each Other's Dead,” 114. 22. William Christian, Person and God in a Spanish Village (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1972); Dubisch, In a Different Place; Carmelo Lisón-Tolosana, Belmonte de los Caballeros: A Sociological Study of a Spanish Town (Oxford, U.K.: Clarendon Press, 1966); Stavroula Pipyrou, Power, Governance and Representation: An Anthropological Analysis of Kinship, the ‘Ndrangheta and Dance within the Greek Linguistic Minority of Reggio Calabria, South Italy (doctoral dissertation, Durham University, UK, 2010); Eric Wolf, ed. Religion, Power and Protest in Local Communities: The Northern Shore of the Mediterranean (Berlin: Mouton, 1984). 23. In accordance with the “Ethical Guidelines for Good Research Practice” of the Association of Social Anthropologists of the United Kingdom and Commonwealth, the authors have chosen to protect the identity of informants quoted in this article. See http://www.nomadit.net/asatest/ethics/guidelines.htm (accessed March 15, 2011). 24. Michael Herzfeld, “Icons and Identity: Religious Orthodoxy and Social Practice in Rural Crete,” Anthropology Quarterly, vol. 63 (1990): 109–21. 25. For a detailed historical account of Pontic Greeks before the exchange of populations between Turkey and Greece, see Anthony Bryer, “The Pontic Greeks before the Diaspora,” Journal of Refugee Studies, vol. 4, no. 4, (1991): 315–34. 26. Filon Ktenidis, “H prosfix Panayía,” Pontiaki Estia, vol. 7–8 (1950); Giorgos Vozikas, “‘Prosfix Panayía’: Sinifanseis stin Anasistasi tou Proskinimatos tis Panayía Soumelá sto Vermio,” in Manolis Sergis, ed., Pontos: Themata Laografias tou Pontiakou Ellinismou (Athens: Alitheia, 2008), 115–32. 27. For comparative accounts see also Jon Mitchell, Ambivalent Europeans: Ritual, Memory and the Public Sphere in Malta (London: Routledge, 2002); and Pipyrou, Power, Governance and Representation. 28. Pamela Ballinger, History in Exile: Memory and Identity at the Borders of the Balkans (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 2003). 29. Émile Durkheim, The Elementary Forms of the Religious Life, trans. Joseph Swain, 1915 (London: George Allen and Unwin, 1915), 206–14. 30. Maurice Bloch, Ritual, History and Power: Selected Papers in Anthropology (London: Athlone Press, 1989), 21. Italics in the original. 31. Marc Abélès, “Modern Political Ritual: Ethnography of an Inauguration and a Pilgrimage by President Mitterrand,” Current Anthropology, vol. 29, no. 3 (1988): 391–404. 32. Dubisch, In a Different Place, 166. 33. Nikos Marantzidis, Yiasasin Millet/Zito to Ethnos: Prosfigia, Katoxi kai Emfilios, ethnotiki tautotita kai politici simperifora stous Tourkofonous ellinorthodoxous tou Ditikou Pontou (Irakleio: Panepistimiakais Ekdoseis Kritis, 2001), 49. 34. Dubisch, In a Different Place, 172; Paul Sant Cassia and Constantina Bada, The Making of the Modern Greek Family: Marriage and Exchange in Nineteenth-Century Athens (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1992), 4. 35. Magda Zografou, “Anamesa stin ensomatosi kai ti diaforopoiisi: Diadikasies sigrotisis kai diapragmateusis tis pontiakis tautotitas kai i dynami tou xorou,” in Sergis, Pontos: Themata Laografias tou Pontiakou Ellinismou, 170. 36. David Kertzer, Ritual, Politics and Power (London: Yale University Press, 1988). 37. Nikos Marantzidis and Giorgos Antoniou, “The Axis Occupation and Civil War Bibliography: Changing Trends in Greek Historiography: 1941–2002,” Journal of Peace Research, vol. 41, no. 2 (2004): 223–31. 38. Richard Clogg, A Concise History of Greece (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1992); Voutira, “Population Transfers and Resettlement Policies.” 39. Zografou, “The Politics of Dance.” 40. Ioannis Manos, “The Past as a Symbolic Capital in the Present: Practicing Politics of Dance Tradition in the Florina Region, Northwest Greek Macedonia,” in New Approaches to Balkan Studies, The IFPA–Kokkalis Series on Southeast European Policy, vol. 2, eds. Dimitris Keridis, Ellen Elias-Bursac, and Nicholas Yatromanolakis (Dulles, Va.: Brassey's Publishers, 2003), 35. 41. Ioannis Kaskamanidis, “Diapragmateusi me to parelthon gia ton kathorismo tou parondos kai to skhediasmo tou mellondos: H tautotita ton elladiton Pontion kata ton 20o aiona,” in Sergis, Pontos: Themata Laografias tou Pontiakou Ellinismou, 193. 42. Pierre Bourdieu, “The Forms of Capital,” in Handbook of Theory and Research for the Sociology of Education, ed. John G. Richardson (New York: Greenwood, 1985), 248. 43. Cowan, Dance and the Body Politic in Northern Greece, 63, 74. 44. Jane Cowan, “Idioms of Belonging: Polyglot Articulations of Local Identity in a Greek Macedonian Town,” in Ourselves and Others, ed. Peter Mackridge and Eleni Yannakakis, 164. 45. Clogg, A Concise History of Greece, 179. 46. Interview, Pontian dance teacher from Kars, Turkey. 47. Sant Cassia, “Guarding Each Other's Dead.”