The Armenian genocide not only constituted a necropolitical project of deportation and mass murder. It also constituted a moment of primitive accumulation that laid the foundation for a postimperial national economy and fundamentally altered class relations. It did so by forming a key moment for the elaboration of a racialised property regime built on the fundamental exclusion of non-Muslims. I argue that we see reverberations of this property regime in the way local actors today, including local municipalities, residents, treasure hunters and descendants of survivors, engage with the land as a necro-geography filled with ruinous remains of Armenian settlements. We see it through the ways in which individual objects and material assemblages become objects of desire for new projects of accumulation. In my talk, I will take listeners through some of these scenes in order to illustrate my arguments regarding the connection between genocidal violence, property and accumulation.

The event is supported by the ERC Starting Grant 'Memory and Populism from Below' (MEMPOP) #101076092