Foucauldian Discourse Analysis and Historical-Critical Pedagogy in the South Caucasus: Reading the Armenian Satirical Newspaper Khatabala (1906-1926)

Abstract

This article applies Michel Foucault’s conceptual vocabulary to three documented caricatures from the Armenian satirical newspaper Khatabala, published in Tiflis during 1906-1916 and revived in 1922 and 1925-1926, in order to connect historical interpretation with historical-critical pedagogy in the late imperial South Caucasus. The study is qualitative and corpus-informed. It draws on a structured research dataset containing several hundred caricatures, articles, and editorials from the South Caucasian satirical press and focuses on three Khatabala images already documented in the author’s dissertation corpus: Death standing on a mountain of skulls in no. 14 (1906), ‘The Question of the Mukhrani Bridge in Tiflis’ in no. 22 (1906), and ‘Internal Pedagogical Reform at the Hovnanyan School’ in no. 34 (1907). These examples were selected purposively to represent three recurrent thematic clusters – intercommunal violence, municipal governance, and communal education – and are treated as analytically illustrative rather than statistically representative. Reading satire as a discursive practice, the article examines how allegory, visual equivalence, captioning, irony, and ridicule expose authority while also producing norms and subject positions. The final section proposes, rather than evaluates, a classroom methodology based on the three sourced caricatures.