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About the Journal
Historia: Philosophy & Theory is a double-blind peer-reviewed biannual international academic electronic journal of the Laboratory for Philosophy and Theory of History based in Yerevan State University, Armenia. The journal is published twice a year, in June and December. The journal aims to comprehensively address philosophical matters pertaining to the disciplines of history and historiography, while concurrently delving into theoretical concerns associated with historical narratives, that of national and beyond.
Current Issue
Vol. 1 (2025)
Full Issue
Article
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Article
To Achieve in History
AbstractMany studies have described how our notions of violence and war have been modified and transformed under influence of new technology, war industries, etc. But they do not explain what in violence can be mechanical as such. This is precisely what I want to explore in this article. I do not want to explain or describe a form of violence as generated by machines, but I first and foremost want to show how there can be a mechanical aspect in a form and the expression of violence as such.
ReferencesAnders, G. (2024). Die Antiquiertheit des Menschen. Bd. II: Über die Zerstörung des Lebens im Zeitalter der dritten industriellen Revolution. C. H. Beck.
Benjamin, W. (1977). Der destruktive Charakter. In Illuminationen: Ausgewählte Schriften. Suhrkamp.
Bird, K., & Sherwin, M. J. (2006). American Prometheus: The triumph and tragedy of J. Robert Oppenheimer. Vintage Books.
Brosteaux, D. V. (2025). Les désirs guerriers de la modernité. Seuil.
Cioran, E. M. (1997). Cahiers 1957–1972. Gallimard.
De Landa, M. (1991). War in the age of intelligent machines. Zone Books.
Miyamoto, Y. (2012). Beyond the mushroom cloud: Commemoration, religion, and responsibility after Hiroshima. Fordham University Press.
Mhalla, A. (2025). Technopolitique. Comment la technologie fait de nous des soldats. Seuil.
Nietzsche, F. (1997). On the uses and disadvantages of history for life. In Untimely meditations (R. J. Hollingdale, Trans.). Cambridge University Press. (Original work published 1874).
Pascal, B. (2000). Pensées. In Œuvres complètes (Vol. 2). Gallimard.
Sartre, J.-P. (1940). L’imaginaire. Gallimard.
Sebald, W. G. (2001). Luftkrieg und Literatur. Fischer.
Suny, R. G. (2015). “They can live in the desert but nowhere else”: A history of the Armenian genocide. Princeton University Press.
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Article
Dispositif Dynamics: State Narratives and Counter-Memories in the Fabric of Collective Memory
AbstractCollective memory is never neutral: it’s constantly being shaped, curated, and challenged. The state decides which events are remembered, how they are presented, and whose voices are prioritized. Historiography is therefore not simply the recording of history; it’s embedded in the dispositif described by Michel Foucault (1980): the network of institutions, narratives, and practices that form public perceptions of the past. In this context, state-sanctioned narratives tend to shape a dominant, united memory that often confronts with counter-memories rise from marginal positions. Counter-memory question omissions, challenge “official” rewrites, and open up the field of competing interpretations.
This tension is maintained by the dispositif, which operates through mechanisms and discourses that not only shape social behavior but also regulate the production, circulation, and legitimacy of historical knowledge (Medina, 2011). Historiography, ensuring that the "official" version of history conforms to the ideological and political interests of those in power, becomes a subtle but powerful tool of governance. It reinforces some worldviews to a position of primacy and pushes others to the periphery, and transforms collective memory from a neutral archive of facts into a battlefield. In this field, historical narratives struggle for recognition, legitimacy, and continuity, some rising to the status of unquestioned truth, while others are marginalized, contested, or even erased, reflecting and amplifying the deep contradictions of the social and political order.
Digital technologies bring new dynamics to this context. Digital platforms enable marginalized voices to amplify counter-memories and challenge dominant narratives. These interventions often adopt archiving practices that resist institutional erasure. However, such digital spaces also comply with algorithmic control and commercial management, which determine what becomes visible and what remains in the shadows.
ReferencesAgamben, G. (2009). What is an apparatus? And other essays. Stanford University Press.
Akçam, T. (2012). The young Turks’ crime against humanity: The Armenian genocide and ethnic cleansing in the Ottoman Empire. Princeton University Press.
Balakyan, P. (2004). The Burning Tigris: The Armenian Genocide and America’s Response. New York Times Book review.
Buckley-Zistel, S. (2006). Remembering to forget: Chosen amnesia as a strategy for local coexistence in Rwanda. Africa Spectrum, 41(3), 393–414.
Butalia, U. (1998). The other side of silence: Voices from the partition of India. Duke University Press.
Equal Justice Initiative. (2018). National Memorial for Peace and Justice. https://eji.org/national-memorial-for-peace-and-justice/
Fileborn B., Loney-Howes R. (2019), #MeToo and the Politics of Social Change. DOI:10.1007/978-3-030-15213-0
Foucault, M. (1972). The archaeology of knowledge (trans. by A. M. Sheridan Smith). Pantheon Books.
Foucault, M. (1977). Discipline and punish: The birth of the prison (trans. by A. Sheridan). Pantheon Books.
Foucault, M. (1980). Power/knowledge: Selected interviews and other writings 1972–1977 (C. Gordon, Ed.). Pantheon Books.
Foucault, M. (2003). Society must be defended: Lectures at the Collège de France 1975–1976 (trans. by D. Macey). Picador.
Garland, D. (2001). The culture of control: Crime and social order in contemporary society. University of Chicago Press.
Harrell, S. (2001). Ways of being ethnic in Southwest China. University of Washington Press.
Joseph, C. L., & Cleophat, N. S. (Eds.). (2016). Vodou in Haitian memory: The idea and representation of Vodou in Haitian imagination. Lexington Books.
Ladson-Billings, G. (1998). Just what is critical race theory and what’s it doing in a nice field like education? International Journal of Qualitative Studies in Education, 11(1), 7–24. https://doi.org/10.1080/095183998236863
Loewen, J. W. (2007). Lies my teacher told me: Everything your American history textbook got wrong. The New Press.
Markwick, R. (2012). The Great Patriotic War in Soviet and Post-Soviet Collective Memory. DOI:10.1093/oxfordhb/9780199560981.013.0035
Medina, J. (2011). The epistemology of resistance: Gender and racial oppression, epistemic injustice, and resistant imaginations. Oxford University Press.
Miller, J. R. (1996). Shingwauk’s vision: A history of Native residential schools. University of Toronto Press.
Noakes, L., & Pattinson, D. (2011). British cultural memory and the First World War. Continuum.
Papacharissi, Z. (2015). Affective publics: Sentiment, technology, and politics. Oxford University Press.
Ricoeur, P. (2004). Memory, history, forgetting (trans. by K. Blamey & D. Pellauer). University of Chicago Press.
Rose, N. (1999). Powers of freedom: Reframing political thought. Cambridge University Press.
Straus, S. (2006). The order of genocide: Race, power, and war in Rwanda. Cornell University Press.
Tutu, D. (1999). No future without forgiveness. Doubleday.
Weir, S. (1989). Palestinian embroidery: Tatreez as memory and identity. Textile History, 20(1), 53–60.
Zuboff, Sh. (2019). The age of surveillance capitalism: The fight for a human future at the new frontier of power. PublicAffairs.
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Article
Destruction of Memory and Memory of Destruction
AbstractThis paper investigates the relationship between violence, memory, and historical erasure in modernity, arguing that certain forms of political violence aim not merely to shape history but to obliterate its conditions of possibility. Drawing on Walter Benjamin, Hannah Arendt, and W.G. Sebald, the paper traces two distinct but converging strategies of silencing the past: the organized lie – a deliberate, state-engineered falsification of factual reality – and equanimity, a cultivated indifference that renders atrocity banal despite the continued visibility of its traces. These mechanisms neutralize the disruptive potential of memory, which otherwise resists the homogenizing force of official narratives. Arendt’s concept of the organized lie is compared to atomic annihilation, wherein falsification spreads through networks of interrelated facts, dissolving the fabric of historical intelligibility. Violence, in this context, is not a political instrument but an apolitical force that undoes the very structure of worldhood and temporality. The paper argues that historiography must move beyond the accumulation of empirical data and toward a reconstruction of the intentional destruction of history—influenced by what Sebald calls a “natural history of destruction.” By shifting focus from world-producing to world-dissolving violence, historiography must recognize that violence is not simply enacted within history but is directed at history itself: at its intelligibility, continuity, and transmissibility. The task is to discern the annihilative force that renders the past incommunicable or meaningless, and to bear witness to what resists re-inscription into the historical record.
ReferencesAntón, J. (2024, January 18). Could the United States have dropped the first atomic bomb on Nazi Germany? El País. https://english.elpais.com/culture/2024-01-18/could-the-united-states-have-dropped-the-first-atomic-bomb-on-nazi-germany.html
Arendt, H. (1961). Between past and future: Six exercises in political thought. The Viking Press.
Arendt, H. (1958). The human condition. University of Chicago Press.
Arendt, H. (1962). The origins of totalitarianism. Meridian Books.
Breeur, R. & Magomedov, E. (2025) E.N.D.: Exploring Nuclear Disaster. No Index Press.
Canguilhem, G. (1978). The conceptions of René Leriche. In On the normal and the pathological (Vol. 3). Springer.
Chomsky, N. (1969). American power and the new mandarins. Pantheon Books.
Derrida, J. (2008). The animal that therefore I am. Fordham University Press.
Heidegger, M. (1996). Being and time. State University of New York Press.
Koestler, A. (2019). Darkness at noon. Vintage.
Magomedov, E. (2026). Repetition of the Nameless Presence. Angelaki: Journal of the Theoretical Humanities (31:6).
Nietzsche, F. (1997). Untimely meditations. Cambridge University Press.
Sartre, J. P. (2003). Being and nothingness (trans. by H. E. Barnes). Routledge.
Sebald, W. G. (2003). On the natural history of destruction (trans. by A. Bell). Hamish Hamilton.
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Article
The Dual Reality of Destruction: The Dissimulation and Simulation of the Armenian-Assyrian Genocide
AbstractThe paper examines the denial of the Armenian-Assyrian genocide of 1915 in the Ottoman Empire, situating it within a broader discussion on state-sponsored historical manipulation and genocide denial. The Turkish state's politics of denial strategically exploits ambiguities in the legal definition of genocide and is simultaneously embedded in the Turkish national identity. Drawing on Hannah Arendt's concept of the organized lie, I argue that Turkish genocide denial operates as a propagandistic myth. This propagandistic lie dissimulates historical facts and simulates alternative facts, an alternative history, through denial of factual evidence, censorship, school curricula, and even scholarly research that lacks intellectual integrity.
Within this denialist narrative, the Assyrian genocide plays a disruptive role. The Assyrian genocide took place at the time of the Armenian genocide but is remembered differently and is largely transmitted through oral history. This difference in remembrance and transmission disrupts the coherence of the Turkish denialist narrative, exposing its contradictions. Far from being a marginal manifestation of the concept of genocide, the Assyrian Genocide transcends something local and uncovers something structural about genocide and truth. The Assyrian genocide reveals the internal mechanism of the genocidal machine, demonstrating how denial is an extension of the genocidal process itself.
This disruptive role opens a broader reflection on genocide. Building on Marc Nichanian, Giorgio Agamben and Gilles Deleuze, I conceptualize genocide as a limitless, absolute destruction that operates on different levels; the physical extermination of the group, the erasure of the genocidal event and the undermining of the fact itself. The absence of evidence can paradoxically serve as evidence, while traces such as oral transmission and suppressed memories, can function as signs that compel interrogation of the denialist narrative. Genocide is rooted in material reality but necessarily exceeds it, and must be understood both as fact and as sign.
ReferencesAgamben, G. (2018). Wat er overblijft van Auschwitz: De getuige en het archief (Homo sacer III) (W. Hemelrijk, Vert.). Uitgeverij Verbum.
Arendt, H. (1994). Tussen verleden en toekomst: Vier oefeningen in politiek denken: ‘Waarheid en Politiek’ (J. Masschelein, Red.; B. Schreurs & G. Beheydt, Vert.). Garant.
Atto, N. (2016). What Could Not Be Written: A Study of the Oral Transmission of Sayfo Genocide Memory Among Assyrians. https://doi.org/10.17863/CAM.13086
Atto, N. (2017). The Death Throes Of Indigenous Christians in the Middle East: Assyrians Living under the Islamic State. In J. Cabrita, D. Maxwell, & E. Wild-Wood (Red.), Relocating World Christianity: Interdisciplinary Studies in Universal and Local Expressions of the Christian Faith. Koninklijke Brill NV.
BarAbraham, A. (2017). Turkey’s Key Arguments in Denying the Assyrian Genocide. In Let them Not Return: Sayfo – The Genocide against the Assyrian, Syriac and Chaldean Christians in the Ottoman Empire. Berghahn.
Breeur, R. (2019). Lies—Imposture—Stupidity. Jonas ir Jokubas.
Deleuze, G. (2008). Proust and Signs: The Complete Text (R. Howard, Vert.). Continuum International Publishing Group.
Nichanian, M. (2009). The Historiographic Perversion (G. Anidjar, Vert.). Columbia University Press.
Pomerantsev, P. (2020). This is not propaganda: Adventures in the war against reality (Paperback edition). Faber.
Talay, S. (2017). Sayfo, Firman, Qafle: The Frist World War from the Perspective of Syriac Christians. In D. Gaunt, N. Atto, & S. O. Barthoma (Red.), Let Them Not Return: Sayfo–The Genocide against the Assyrian, Syriac and Chaldean Christians in the Ottoman Empire. Berghahn.
Yacoub, J. (2016). Year of the Sword: The Assyrian Christian Genocide, A History (J. Ferguson, Vert.). Oxford University Press.
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Article
Screen Memory or Multidirectional Memory? The Holocaust and the Brazilian Military Dictatorship in The German Brother
AbstractThis article examines how Holocaust memory enters into productive interplay with other historical and cultural memories, focusing specifically on its relationship to representations of the Brazilian military dictatorship (1964–1985) in Chico Buarque’s novel The German Brother (2014). I argue that the novel mobilizes Holocaust memory not merely as a distant historical reference but as a framework through which Brazil’s unresolved dictatorial past can be narrated and confronted. To illuminate this dynamic, the article brings together Sigmund Freud’s concept of screen memory and Michael Rothberg’s theory of multidirectional memory. While screen memory is often understood as a mechanism that obscures access to repressed experiences, I propose that it can also function as an enabling structure that opens pathways to engage difficult or silenced histories through mediated or displaced representations. This does not imply a harmonious relationship between memories; rather, it acknowledges ongoing political disputes and tensions in the field of remembrance. Drawing on multidirectional memory, I explore how such displacement may not only produce competition for space among traumatic pasts but may also generate new, overlapping interpretive possibilities. The article unfolds across three interconnected sections. First, I define screen memory and analyze its relevance for understanding the often indirect and fragmentary nature of Holocaust representations. Second, I consider the theoretical convergences between screen memory and multidirectional memory, showing how both concepts challenge linear or hierarchical models of historical remembrance. Finally, I demonstrate how the novel deploys Holocaust memory as a metaphorical and narrative tool for grappling with the dictatorship’s legacy of state violence, institutionalized torture, and persistent national memory disputes within Brazil’s contested historical landscape.
ReferencesAarons, V. (2014). A genre of rupture: The literary language of the Holocaust. In J. Adams (Ed.), The Bloomsbury companion to Holocaust literature. Bloomsbury.
Assmann, A., & Conrad, S. (2010). Introduction. In A. Assmann & S. Conrad (Eds.), Memory in a global age: Discourses, practices and trajectories (pp. 9-11). Palgrave Macmillan.
Brasil. Comissão Nacional da Verdade. (2014, December 10). Relatório da Comissão Nacional da Verdade. http://cnv.memoriasreveladas.gov.br/
Chico, um artista brasileiro [Film]. (2015). Miguel Faria Jr. (Director). Globo Filmes.
Costa Braga, S. (2024). Multidirectional memory: The Holocaust and the Brazilian military dictatorship in K. Relato de uma busca and O irmão alemão. Revista de Teoria da História, 27(1), 189-205.
Felman, S. (2001). Theaters of justice: Arendt in Jerusalem, the Eichmann trial, and the redefinition of legal meaning in the wake of the Holocaust. Critical Inquiry, 27(2), 201-238.
Freud, S. (1914). Psychopathology of everyday life (trans. by A. A. Brill). T. Fisher Unwin. (Original work published 1901).
Freud, S. (1981). The standard edition of the complete psychological works of Sigmund Freud (Vol. 3). (J. Strachey, Ed.). Hogarth Press.
Huyssen, A. (2003). Present pasts: Urban palimpsests and the politics of memory. Stanford University Press.
Jessen, J. (2016, May 4). Pochen des aufgewühlten Herzens [Review of the book Mein deutscher Bruder, by C. Buarque]. Die Zeit, 20.
Lang, B. (2000). Holocaust representation: Art within the limits of history and ethics. Johns Hopkins University Press.
Linenthal, E. (1995). Preserving Memory: The Struggle to Create America’s Holocaust Museum. Viking.
Neher, C. (2014, November 21). Historiador revela detalhes sobre "irmão alemão" de Chico Buarque. DW. http://www.dw.de/historiador-revela-detalhes-sobre-irm%C3%A3o-alem%C3%A3o-de-chico-buarque/a-18079537
Rothberg, M. (2009). Multidirectional memory: Remembering the Holocaust in the age of decolonization. Stanford University Press.
Stannard, D. (2001). Uniqueness as denial: The politics of genocide scholarship. In A. Rosenbaum (Ed.), Is the Holocaust unique?. Westview Press.
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Wieviorka, A. (2006). The era of the witness (trans. by J. Stark). Cornell University Press. (Original work published 1998).
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Article
E. P. Thompson’s Historiographic Agency in Beyond the Frontier
AbstractThis article examines how E. P. Thompson’s Beyond the Frontier: The Politics of a Failed Mission: Bulgaria 1944 (1997), a hybrid work of affectionate commemoration, historiographic investigation, and political intervention, redefines the practice of historiography. I argue that the book is driven by what I term historiographic agency: a historian’s capacity to mediate between past and present, to resist ideological distortions, and to construct meaning through evaluative and interpretive judgment. For Thompson, such agency entails a dual responsibility: to recover the irreducible complexity of past lives and simultaneously to intervene in the political dilemmas of his own time. By confronting state-sponsored myths in both Britain and Bulgaria, and by resisting the abstraction of lived experience into scholarly categories, Beyond the Frontier amplifies the tension between agency and structure that had long preoccupied Thompson’s political, pedagogical, and historiographic practice. I try to demonstrate that, rather than representing a pessimistic break with Thompson’s romanticism evident in his earlier works, the book reflects a strategic shift: from depicting and celebrating the agency of historical actors themselves, to foregrounding the historian’s own role in negotiating between events, myths, and lived experiences. In this sense, Thompson’s mourning becomes historiography, and his historiography itself a form of political engagement.
ReferencesAnderson, P. (1980). Arguments within English Marxism. NLB.
Blake, W. (1794). Eternally I labour on [Urizen, Plate 9 from Small Book of Designs copy B]. https://catalog.princeton.edu/catalog/99106418483506421
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Hamilton, S. (2012). The Crisis of Theory: E. P. Thompson, the New Left and Postwar British Politics. Manchester University Press.
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Thompson, E. P. (1957a, Spring). Socialism and the Intellectuals. Universities and Left Review, 1, 31–36.
Thompson, E. P. (1957b, Summer). Socialist Humanism: An Epistle to the Philistines. The New Reasoner, 1, 105–123.
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Article
Transformations of Armenian Presence and the "Rediscovery" of the Past in the First Half of the 18th Century: Joseph Emin (1726-1809)
AbstractThis article examines the transformations of Armenian presence and the "rediscovery" of the past during the first half of the eighteenth century through the intellectual experience of Joseph Emin (1726-1809). Following the fall of the Cilician Kingdom (1375), Armenian historical consciousness gradually stagnated, dominated by myths of a "sinful people" and eschatological expectations. The study analyzes how the emergence of cultural-educational centers in the diaspora—particularly Amsterdam, Venice, and Madras—initiated a reformist movement that reached its culmination during the Age of Enlightenment. Special attention is devoted to Joseph Emin's role in revaluing the Armenian past and present through his European (particularly British) educational experience and his engagement with Enlightenment ideas, especially those of Edmund Burke. Emin's conception emphasized the necessity of education, rational self-government, and the reinterpretation of history liberated from superstition and ecclesiastical dogmatism. The article demonstrates how Emin's approach represented a departure from viewing Armenian subjugation as divine punishment, instead framing it as a consequence of foreign oppression and ignorance. This "rediscovery" of the Armenian past laid the groundwork for a new understanding of national identity based on political interests rather than moral imperatives, initiating the tendency to separate church from nation in Armenian liberation discourse.
ReferencesAslanian, S. D. (2012). A reader responds to Joseph Emin's Life and Adventures: Notes toward a "history of reading" in late eighteenth century Madras. Handes Amsorya, 1–12, 351–396.
Ayntabyan, P. P. (1972). Dprotz yev mankavarzhutyun [School and pedagogy]. In L. S. Khachikyan et al. (Eds.), Hay zhoghovrdi patmutyun [History of the Armenian people] (Vol. 4, pp. 437–450). Armenian SSR Academy of Sciences Press.
Barkhudarian, V. B. (1989). Russastani yev Hndkastani haykakan gaghut'nery XVIII dari verǰin k'arrordi hay azatagrakan sharzhumnnerum [The Armenian colonies of Russia and India in the Armenian liberation movements of the last quarter of the eighteenth century]. In V. B. Barkhudarian et al., XVI-XVIII dareri hay azatagrakan sharzhumnery yev gaght'avayrnery [The Armenian liberation movements and diaspora communities of the 16th–18th centuries: Collection of articles] (pp. 185–210). Yerevan: Armenian SSR Academy of Sciences Publishing House.
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Braudel, F. (1979). Civilisation matérielle, économie et capitalisme, XVe-XVIIIe siècle: Vol. 2. Les jeux de l'échange. Paris: Librairie Armand Colin.
Burke, E. (1999). A philosophical enquiry into the origin of our ideas of the sublime and beautiful. Oxford: Oxford University Press. (Original work published 1757).
Butterfield, H. (1944). The Englishman and his history. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Chamchian, M. (1784–1786). Patmut'iwn Hayots' [History of Armenia: From the beginning of the world until the year of our Lord 1784] (Vols. 1–3). Venice.
Davrizhetsi, A. (1988). Patmut'iwn [History] (V. Arakelyan, Trans.). Yerevan: Sovetakan Grokh.
Della Valle, P. (1745). Voyages de Pietro Della Valle, gentilhomme romain, dans la Turquie, l'Égypte, la Palestine, la Perse, les Indes orientales, & autres lieux (Vol. 3). Robert Machuel.
Emin, J. (1792). The life and adventures of Joseph Emin, an Armenian. Written in English by himself. London.
Gay, P. (1995). The Enlightenment: An interpretation, Volume II: The science of freedom. New York: W. W. Norton & Company.
Ghougassian, V. (1999). The quest for enlightenment and liberation: The case of the Armenian community of India in the late eighteenth century. In R. G. Hovannisian & D. N. Myers (Eds.), Enlightenment and diaspora: The Armenian and Jewish cases (pp. 229–254). Atlanta, GA: Scholars Press.
Hovhannisian (Ionisian), A. R. (1989). Iosif Emin [Joseph Emin]. Yerevan: Armenian SSR Academy of Sciences.
Hovhannisian, A. (1959). Drvagner hay azatagrakan mtk'i patmut'yan [Episodes from the history of Armenian liberation thought] (Vol. 2). Yerevan: Armenian SSR Academy of Sciences Publishing House.
Hovhannisyan, S. (2014). Examination of Armenian trade capital (16th–18th centuries) in light of Fernand Braudel's civilization theory. The Armenian Review, 54(3-4), p. 45–59.
Hovhannisyan, S. (2015). Armenian world-economy and the challenges of the industrial era in light of Fernand Braudel's civilization theory. Journal of the Society for Armenian Studies, 24, p. 124-131.
Hovhannisyan, S. (2017). Hay arrevtrakan kapitaly ibrev «ashkharh-tntesut'yun» yev ardinaberayin darashrzhan martahravernery [Armenian commercial capital as a 'world-economy' and the challenges of the industrial age]. Vem Pan-Armenian Journal, 1, 49–76.
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Khorenatsi, M. (1752b). Het'evi hamarot patmut'iwn ashkharhagrut'ean [A brief history of geography]. Venice: Antonio Bortoli Press.
Ktchanyan, J. (2017). Edmond Byrk'i patmagitakan hayats'k'nery: pahpanoghakanut'yuny ibrev patmakan hghats'k' [Edmund Burke's historiographical views: Conservatism as a historical concept]. In A. Stepanyan (Ed.), Patmut'yan harc'er – 4 (Ankakhut'yan hrchakagir – 240) [Questions of history – 4 (Declaration of Independence – 240)] (pp. 140–160). Yerevan: Zangak.
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Mirzoyan, H. Gh. (1983). XVII dari hay p'ilisop'ayakan mtk'i k'nakan verlutsut'yun [Critical analysis of seventeenth-century Armenian philosophical thought]. Yerevan: Yerevan University Press.
Oshagan, V. (1999). From enlightenment to renaissance: The Armenian experience. In R. G. Hovannisian & D. N. Myers (Eds.), Enlightenment and diaspora: The Armenian and Jewish cases (pp. 153–174). Atlanta, GA: Scholars Press.
Panossian, R. (2006). The Armenians: From kings and priests to merchants and commissars. London: Hurst & Company.
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Article
History as Gatekeeper: The Role of State-Sponsored History in Civic Integration in the Low Countries
AbstractBelgium and the Netherlands are prominent destinations for immigrants. Whereas policymakers before assumed migrants would eventually return to their countries of origin, both countries began around the turn of the century to acknowledge the permanence of migrant communities, prompting the development of civic integration policies. These policies, particularly in Flanders and the Netherlands, now require newcomers—especially non-EU+ migrants—to complete structured integration trajectories, including language instruction and social orientation. This article critically examines the civic integration frameworks in the Low Countries, identifying three key trends: the expansion of the target population, the increasing coerciveness of integration requirements, and the culturalization of citizenship through historical education. It argues that history has become a central tool in these programs, with governments explicitly curating historical narratives to be taught to newcomers. Civic integration courses thus function as sites of state-sponsored history, where the host society presents a selective self-image to the immigrant ‘Other.’ By analyzing the treatment of colonial history within these courses, the article reveals how integration policies reinforce a moral hierarchy between host society and newcomers. Rather than fostering inclusive citizenship, these practices often perpetuate a ‘we–they’ dichotomy.
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