CC BY
74
Rauf GARAGOZOV
Ph.D. (Psychol.), Senior Research Fellow, Center for Strategic Studies under the President of
the Azerbaijan Republic (Baku, Azerbaijan).
Rena KADYROVA
D.Sc. (Psychol.), Associate Professor, Department of Psychology, Baku State University
(Baku, Azerbaijan).
NARRATIVE AND RECONCILIATION: POSSIBLE STRATEGIES OF NARRATIVE INTERVENTION IN THE NAGORNO-KARABAKH CONFLICT
Abstract
The authors discuss narratives that can be constructed and used to achieve reconciliation in ethnic and national conflicts; they rely on empirical material (the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict between Armenia and Azerbaijan) to illustrate their theoretical deliberations.
They have also formulated certain principles to be applied to texts in order to transform "sealed off" and conflicting narratives into a "harmonized" narrative indispensable for reducing the sides' negative attitudes and for achieving lasting peace in the region.
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It is good for everyone to know how to forget.
Ernest Renan
...at the critical turning point of human existence he desired to amend many social conditions, the product of inequality and avarice and international animosity.
James Joyce
Introduction
We have written this article to demonstrate how narratives can be constructed and used to achieve reconciliation in ethnic and national conflicts; we will rely on empirical material of the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict between Armenia and Azerbaijan to specify our theoretical constructs. What is "narrative?" Interpretations may vary, yet on the whole "narratives (stories) in the human sciences should be defined provisionally as discourses with a clear sequential order that connect events in a meaningful way for a definite audience."1 To put it in a nutshell, it is an oral or written account of certain imaginary or real events. The importance of narratives is not limited to individuals who, according to psychologists and specialists in psychotherapy, rely on them to perceive and explain their lives. Large social groups and communities rely on narratives to mediate collective remembering, among other phenomena. In fact, the functions of the narrative as an instrument of social cognition are much wider than it was thought before: the new social epistemology that took shape at the end of the 20th century concentrates on various types of narratives as forms of cognition of social reality. In this article, we will discuss the peacekeeping function of narrative and its reconciliatory role and will try to answer the question: What makes narratives peacekeeping, assuming that such narratives are possible in principle?
For many reasons, we know less about the peacekeeping function of narratives than about other narrative types. Indeed, we know much more about "malignant" narratives that ignite conflicts, hatred, and wars. There is any number of speeches delivered by leaders of all hues kept in archives all over the world that have stirred up massive indignation and driven people to violence and conflicts. We, therefore, will start our analysis by re-formulating the question: What makes narratives "malignant" and driving people to violence? Texts must be very simple to be easily grasped even by the most primitive social groups; they must stir up the memory of past humiliations and injustice and remind people of their "glorious past" and "great future" worthy of sacrifices and crimes. Such narratives do not tolerate ambivalence or even the shadow of a doubt. A detailed discussion of these extreme forms brings the typical features of such narratives into bolder relief: all of them are self-contained; their logic is squeezed into pinching limits that seal them off from what the opposite side has to say; they are extremely one-sided, simplified, and mythological. Let us discuss the "sealed off" narratives about Nagorno-Karabakh used by Armenians and Azeris, the two opposing sides in the conflict.
The Armenian Narrative
In Armenia these narratives, ideas, and perceptions are of a multilayered and multilevel nature. On the surface, these narratives insist that "from time immemorial" Nagorno-Karabakh has been
1 L.P. Hinchman, S.K. Hinchman, "Introduction," in: Memory, Identity, Community. The Idea of Narrative in the Human Sciences, ed. by L.P. Hinchman, S.K. Hinchman, State University of New York, New York, 2001, p. xvi.
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Armenian territory. This makes the Azeris newcomers who have no right to interfere in the affairs of the Armenian population and explains why the very fact of Nagorno-Karabakh becoming an autonomous region of Azerbaijan is perceived as a hostile act carried out by Stalin and resulting from the pressure the neighboring Turkish Republic exerted on the still fairly weak Soviet state.
There is a deeper, metanarrative, layer—the "1915 genocide of Armenians" in the Ottoman Empire—through which Armenians perceive their own history.
The Azeri Narrative
The Azeri side has created the following narratives: the "inalienable" territorial, cultural, and historical ties between Karabakh and Azerbaijan, in which the large number of Armenian migrants from Turkey and Iran were nothing more than newcomers. It was Russia that largely encouraged migration and settled the new arrivals in Azeri lands. Contemporary Armenia appeared in the lands of the Erivan Khanate that Russia conquered in the 19th century and destroyed as a state. The Azeris perceive the appearance of the Armenian Nagorno-Karabakh Autonomous Region in Azerbaijan, when the Bolsheviks came to power, as evidence of Armenian influence on Moscow, on the one hand, and as a sign that Moscow had not abandoned the imperial "divide and rule" policy, on the other. In this connection, the desire of the Armenians of Nagorno-Karabakh to separate from Azerbaijan, which they articulated in 1988, was perceived by the Azeris as an Armenian attempt to destroy the territorial and state integrity of Azerbaijan and more evidence of the Armenians' "primordial" hatred of everything Turkic.
Here are two versions of the past events related to Karabakh that interpret the past, distant past, and even what happened in antiquity in two different ways.2 No mutually acceptable and sustainable peace can stand on such "sealed off' narratives. If the sides want to resolve the Karabakh conflict peacefully, another narrative must be introduced to "break the seals," to start a dialog, and to correlate or "harmonize" the narratives. This leads to the question of possible strategies of narrative intervention: How can the narratives be "retuned" to achieve more harmony?
On the "Legal" Nature of Narrative Intervention
If we agree with post-neoclassical social epistemology3 and with what Hayden White wrote about the narrative discourse of historical representation,4 which say that there is a multitude of "truths" and opinions (rather than one and only one historical truth) for the simple reason that they have a multitude of sources, then we have to admit that the Armenian and Azeri narratives described above can be changed. Broken seals will lead the sides to dialog, the most important condition of mutual trust of the conflicting sides. In this case, we can and should ask: How should the communicative function of a narrative be organized? Or what are possible strategies of a narrative intervention as applied to the narratives of the conflicting sides?
2 See: F. Shafiev, "Ethnic Myths and Perceptions as a Hurdle to Conflict Settlement: The Armenian-Azerbaijani
Case," The Caucasus & Globalization, No. 1 (2), 2007, pp. 57-72.
3 See: P. Berger, T. Luckmann, The Social Construction of Reality: A Treatise in the Sociology of Knowledge, Anchor Books, Garden City, New York, 1966.
4 See: H. White, The Content of the Form. Narrative Discourse & Historical Representation, The Johns Hopkins University Press, London, 1987.
Before going on with a direct discussion of the problem, we would like to present an example of how artistic narratives are perceived and understood.5 This was written fairly long ago, but this analysis will help us find the best possible strategy of narrative changes of historical representations.
Reading as a Sense Producing Activity: Akutagawa's "In a Grove"6
The composition of this story, written in 1922,—a collection of monologues of people who present their own contradictory accounts of a murder in a bamboo grove—set it apart. There are three main accounts:
A. The Robber's Version. B. The Woman's Version. C. The Husband's
(Samurai's) Version.
More often than not the reader concentrates on the detective side of the story in an effort to guess who committed the crime and what "really" happened. The group of students to whom the text was offered as a psychological test, likewise, tried to find out which of the participants in the drama was telling the truth, who was lying, and who was the murderer. Nearly all the answers were built on personal preferences: one of the students was inclined to accept the version of the samurai because "women are the source of all evil;" another believed that the robber was the murderer. We cannot exclude the possibility that in the course of logical deliberations, the reader will discover the flaws of his strategy because the text does not contain any indications, that is, "objective" evidence that any of the versions is true/false. In fact, the reader is confronted with a "parallel" structure: three different events—A, B, and C—take place at one and the same time in one and the same place. This obviously contradicts the classical idea of unity of time and space according to which identical—but not mutually contradictory—events can coincide in time and space. This presents the reader with a dilemma that cannot be resolved by formal logic. In this case, the "detective" approach is useless—the reader must turn to other "paradigms." The search for other paradigms inevitably reveals that these possibilities are equally true/false which defies logic; further analysis suggests that more "paradigms" should be found. A "map of alternative models of plot development" is one of the methods that stimulates this search, viz. the "logically justified possibilities of the plot" when all versions of the plot development are studied one by one. When complete, the procedures produce a process which, in its concise form, can be presented as a table (here we present a real "map of logical possibilities" compiled by N.K., one of the students):
A Map of Logical Possibilities of Plot Development
Development of the Plot Alternative Models of Plot Development
A. The Robber's Version
1. Lured the man into a grove and
tied him to a tree x—x
5 See: R.R. Garagozov, "Reading as a Sense Producing Activity," in: Art & Emotions, The Perm State Institute of Culture, Perm, 1991, pp. 211-219.
6 See: R. Akutagawa, "In a Grove," Transl. by T. Kojima, available at [http://ru.scribd.com/doc/3682435/In-a-Grove-by-Ryunosuke-Akutagawa].
(continued)
■ Development of the Plot Alternative Models of Plot Development
2. Raped the woman x—x
3. Fell in love with her and tried to persuade her to remain with him x—x
4. She agreed if one of the men died x—x
5. The robber untied the man and killed him in a swordfight The robber murdered the man still tied to the tree
Meaning definition: "...hard to say, I cannot define the meaning."
Meaning 1: "... the robber would act dishonorably by killing the husband tied to a tree..."
Meaning 2: ".If the robber told the truth than he acted nobly or wanted to pass for a noble man..."
B. The Woman's Version
1. Rape
2. The robber disappeared
3. The woman guessed that her husband hated her She was aware of her husband's compassion and commiseration
4. Unable to survive disgrace in front of her husband she decided to kill him and herself She untied her husband and they trailed along the road in deep sorrow. Or they part ways. Or probably she untied him and he killed her and then committed suicide
5. She killed her husband, but could not kill herself
Meaning definition: "...she probably told the truth since she had every reason to kill her husband..."
Meaning 1: "She followed the code of honor as she understood it..."
Meaning 2: "...placed in a rigid system of ideas about honor she had either to kill her husband or to present the case in this way..."
C. The Husband's (His Ghost's) Version
1. Rape The robber killed the woman and
disappeared. The husband vowed over the dead body of his wife to avenge her. His grief probably drove him to suicide
2. The robber tried to persuade the woman to remain with him
3. The wife agreed but demanded that the robber kill her husband
(continued)
■ Development of the Plot Alternative Models of Plot Development
4. The robber enraged by the woman's perfidy suggested that he and the husband punish her Since the woman was alive, the husband was killed either by the robber or by the woman
5. The husband did not want to punish the woman, who runs away
6. The robber loosens the ties binding the man and disappears
7. The man commits suicide
Meaning definition: "... The ghost is probably telling the truth since ghosts do not
lie..."
Meaning: "... If he was killed by the robber or by his own wife he was dishonored once more. It is much more honorable to commit suicide..."
While working on the map of logical possibilities the reader identifies the following rhythmic-meaning structure—repeated admissions of murder—in an effort to look honorable each of the characters claims that he/she committed the murder. In this case, the story can be interpreted as follows:
A. The Robber's Version B. The Woman's Version C. The Husband's Version
A1. Claims that he murdered the husband B1. Claims that she murdered the husband C1. Claims that he killed himself
Each claims the murder according to their own code of honor.
This rhythmic-meaning structure brings together the semantically opposite concepts honor/ crime and nobleness/murder as the basic axiological values of the story put in a nutshell. This rhythmic structure is a sort of a key to the story's symbolic meaning, which reveals the story's value "contradiction." A paper submitted by one of the students (N.K.) demonstrated that, when properly identified, this rhythmic structure can lead deeper into the symbolism of the story. In his report, he wrote: "We do not know what really happened; this is of no importance. The fact that the three characters claim that they committed murder guided by their moral code of honor reveals the stifling nature of moral injunctions. The very title (the title of the Russian translation "V Chashche" suggests an impenetrable forest.—Tr.) is symbolic. It means that people are still living in a forest of prejudices. A code or rituals is the true culprit to be brought to the court of justice! Our life brims with obsolete norms and "rituals" which make life unbearable." The student went on to say that his parents very much devoted to old norms had objected to his marriage with a woman who loved him and thus ruined his happiness.
The above suggests two conclusions.
■ First, the story can, to a certain extent, be regarded as a proto-image of the Armenian and Azeri historical narratives about Karabakh: very much like the accounts of what happened in the grove, they contain very different or even contradictory versions of what happened in the past.
■ Second, the conclusions of an analysis of the story deserve attention.
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Our experiment led to the following conclusions: there are four levels of understanding the story, which can be conventionally described as follows:
> 1st level —the "formal" meanings stemming from a purely formal interpretation of the
text;
> 2nd level — the plot's meanings, which reveal the rhythmic structure without stressing its
"value" contradiction and without revealing its symbolism;
> 3rd level —the author's meanings, which reveal the symbolic side of the story;
> 4th level —"personalized" meanings, which contain much deeper interpretations of the
text and which include fragments of personal experience and its re-evaluation.
We came to the conclusion that interpreting the meaning depends on what steps the reader carries out to this end, i.e. reconstruction of the plot; modification of the plot; or identification of rhythmic (repeated) constructions and their correlation with the meaning of the story. In fact, this is done to reconstruct the elements of the spatial-temporal (chronotopical) organization of a literary text. This pattern is, in fact, a model of chronotopical reading, that is, reading which relies on "chronotopical patterns."7 Now we should move on to possible strategies of narrative changes.
Version 1: The Multi-Perspective Approach
Some researchers suggest that the so-called multi-perspective approach can serve as one of the forms of narrative change8 in which the analyst deals with several, rather than one, versions of the same event; this offers a chance to look at what is called historical truth from different perspectives.9 Those who support this approach insist: "This process entails understanding that we too have a perspective which has been filtered through our own cultural context, reflects our own standpoint and interpretation of what has happened and why, our own view of what is and is not relevant, and may also reflect other prejudices and biases."10 In other words, it is suggested that having been exposed to different versions of the same historical events, students will follow the process of sense-producing or understanding we followed to describe the experiment with Akutagawa's "In a Grove," when the readers arrived at the conclusion that different accounts of the same event were, so to speak, conditioned by the story-teller's cultural and axiological context. There are reasons to believe, however, that this approach will hardly achieve the aim specified above. First, as our experiment showed, understanding of the story stemmed from the reader's system of "chronotopical actions" rather than being an inevitable result of reading the story. In this sense, exposure to historical versions may miss the desired aim of which the adepts of the multi-perspective approach write. The effect of the multi-perspective approach is limited due to one more reason directly related to the Karabakh conflict. In conflicts, in which the conflicting societies cling to mainly mythologized interpretations of the past, knowledge of various and equally mythologized interpretations of history cannot achieve the desired
7 R.R. Garagozov, op. cit.
8 See: K.P. Fritzsche, "Unable to be Tolerant?" in: Tolerance in Transition, ed. by R. Farnen et al. BIS, Oldenburg,
2001.
9 See: R. Stradling, Multiperspectivity in History Teaching: A Guide for Teachers, Strasbourg, 2003, available at [http://www.coe.int/t/dg4/education/historyteaching/Source/Notions/Multiperspectivity/MultiperspectivityEnglish.pdf], 28 September, 2012.
10 Ibid., p. 14.
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results, viz. revised attitudes, stereotypes, and prejudices. They rely on "inflexible scripts (scenarios)," a set of rigidly fixed convictions, perceptions, and ideas about the past.11 Moreover, the effect of representing conflicting versions might be different from what was expected: instead of diminishing negative perceptions and prejudices, they invigorate the existing ones.12 In this context we suggest a slightly different strategy of narrative changes, which we call the method of progressive narrative transformations.
Version 2:
The Method of Progressive Narrative Transformations
We suggest that "step-by-step" transformations of the existing narratives should be used to arrive at a non-contradictory, integral, and perspective idea of the region's past and future.
It is not easy to arrive at a common or harmonized narrative; such narratives should be looked for and specified; they should reduce confrontation, while both sides should be equally "tempted" by them. The method of chronotopical texts described above can be used to make the task easier. In other words, the unsealing of "sealed off' narratives (this was done with the different accounts of one and the same event described in Akutagawa's "In a Grove") could be promoted by such action as searching for common elements of both versions of the history of Karabakh, that is, rhythmiza-tion of the narrative structures.13 There are three rhythmic figures in the Armenian and Azeri narratives:
(1) both nations fall victim to a "thirdparty" (blaming a "thirdparty");
(2) both sides admit that they are both guilty;
(3) future prospects.
Both Nations Fall Victim
to a "Third Party" (Blaming a "Third Party")
The Armenian and Azeri historical narratives agree that both nations were "victims." The Armenian version describes the Armenians as victims of the Turks whom the Azeris supported; the Azeri version speaks of the Azeris as victims of the Armenians supported by Russia. From this it follows that a narrative about the Armenians and Azeris falling victim to the processes started by political disintegration of the Ottoman and Russian empires and, later, of the Soviet Union can be used as a starting point for narrative transformation.
11 See: J.S. Wistrand, Becoming Azerbaijani: Uncertainty, Belonging and Getting By in a Post-Soviet Society, Unpublished doctoral dissertation, Washington University in St. Louis, Saint Louis, 2011.
12 Recently, several international organizations contributed to an attempt to write a textbook of this sort for the South Caucasian countries (see: Ocherki istorii stran Yuzhnogo Kavkaza: multiperspektivny vzglyad na istoriu, ATsGRS, Erevan, 2009).
13 See: R.R. Garagozov, "Chronotopical Schemas of Action as the Basis of Sense Producing," in: Emotion, Creativity and Art, ed. by L. Dorfman, C. Martindale, Perm State University, Perm, 1997, pp. 145-166.
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Both Sides Admit that They are Both Guilty
At the next stage, this narrative can become even more neutral either by passing over in silence the fact that both sides were guilty or by pointing to their guilt (James Gibson suggests this approach for South Africa).14 We all know that symbolic admission of one's responsibility for past violence and crimes plays an important role in reconciliation of the conflicting sides.
Future Prospects
These modifications should contain "elements of future prospects." This means that while changing the structure of narratives we can, finally, introduce changes that will offer a "picture of the future:" potential advantages of coordinated regional development if and when the conflict is resolved.
By Way of a Conclusion
The importance of detailed experimental studies of how different types of narratives affect the attitudes and emotions of groups of people cannot be overestimated. Our recent studies have demonstrated that the "common sufferings" narrative fanned negative feelings among the Azeri refugees toward Armenians and created a phenomenon we have called "comparative victim-hood."15 Our experiments suggested, in particular, that narrative interventions should be differentiated according to audiences. Here we have discussed, or rather formulated, the problem of possible strategy of negative intervention and described certain principles for dealing with texts designed to transform "sealed off' and conflicting narratives into a sort of "harmonized" narrative that might diminish the sides' negative attitudes toward one another and lead to stable peace in the region.
14 See: J.L. Gibson, Overcoming Apartheid: Can Truth Reconcile a Divided Nation? Russell Sage Foundation, New York, 2004.
15 R. Garagozov, "Do Woes Unite Foes? Interplay of Narratives, Memory, Emotions and Attitudes in the Karabakh Conflict," Dynamics of Asymmetric Conflict: Pathways toward Terrorism and Genocide, No. 5 (2), 2012, pp. 116-135.
