Cooking Pilaf with Words: Intersubjectivity and Feminism in the Armenian Transnation

• Published in: The Oral history review 2024-07, Vol.51 (2), p.254-277
• Main Author: Okoomian, Janice Dzovinar
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Subjects: Diaspora; Feminism; Historical text analysis; Interviews; Oral history
• ISSN: 0094-0798; 1533-8592
• DOI: 10.1080/00940798.2024.2382318

Using original oral history research conducted in 2019, this study documents the voices, values, and priorities of feminists in the contemporary Republic of Armenia, revealing how interviewees came to feminist consciousness and how they conceptualized feminism. Interviewees articulated which feminist issues they believed to be most pressing in Armenia, including domestic violence, LGBTQIA rights, sexual education, militarism, and misogyny and homophobia in the society and the church. They expressed hopes and concerns regarding the sequelae of the “Velvet Revolution” of 2018. Interviews were conducted with twenty Armenian women diverse in age and occupation, all of whom self-identified as feminists or were deeply involved in feminist activism. These interviews subvert nationalist claims that feminism is intrinsically Western and antithetical to Armenian tradition, providing instead an alternative narrative of Armenian feminism as emerging syncretically from indigenous cultural elements and Western feminism. I theorize intersubjectivity between researcher and interviewee when both are members of a transnation—a nation consisting of those living in the nation-state and those living in permanent diaspora—arguing that there is a web of interconnectedness between researcher and interviewees that complicates the usual insider/outsider oral history relationship. The interview encounter shapes the feminism of both researcher and interviewee.