Imperial (Re)assemblages and Reconstructions: Intimate Terrors and Ontological Possibilities
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.25071/1913-5874/37340Abstract
The jade eucalyptus trees stand in the centre of the village of Aphania, holding secrets, gently exuding their soft scent. The aroma strikes deep chords within me, invoking images of my many walks with many important persons in my life (friends, father, mother, grandfathers, grandmas, aunts and uncles, cousins). This small village was constituted by many different struggles, joys, the sweat of so many ancestors that brought it to life again and again even when it was supposed to disappear. I am remembering as I walk today in the midst of the eucalyptus scents, this village of approximately a 1000, full of life, its cobbled streets walked daily by all peoples, Muslims, Christians, Greek, Turkish, maronites, rich, poor, roma peoples, black, olive-skinned peoples, us. It is in this village that the imperial-sovereign machine ground some of us, and our land, into its surplus, that vital energy that would make possible its most anxious desire, the creation of buffers: ethno-national conflicts. The village next door kicked out much of its population, those Turkish Cypriots who were deemed contaminants to a purist ethno-nationalist project of Greekness.
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