Chaldeans

Politics and Identity in Iraq and the American Diaspora

Häftad, Engelska, 2020

AvYasmeen Hanoosh

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Modern Chaldeans are an Aramaic speaking Catholic Syriac community from northern Iraq, not to be confused with the ancient Mesopotamian civilization of the same name. First identified as ‘Chaldean’ by the Catholic Church in the sixteenth century, this misnomer persisted, developing into a distinctive and unique identity. In modern times, the demands of assimilation in the US, together with increased hostility and sectarian violence in Iraq, gave rise to a complex and transnational identity. Faced with Islamophobia in the US, Chaldeans were at pains to emphasize a Christian identity, and appropriated the ancient, pre-Islamic history of their namesake as a means of distinction between them and other immigrants from Arab lands. In this, the first ethnographic history of the modern Chaldeans, Yasmeen Hanoosh explores these ancient-modern inflections in contemporary Chaldean identity discourses, the use of history as a collective commodity for developing and sustaining a positive community image in the present, and the use of language revival and monumental symbolism to reclaim association with Christian and pre-Christian traditions.

Produktinformation

Utgivningsdatum2020-11-26
Mått156 x 234 x 18 mm
Vikt514 g
FormatHäftad
SpråkEngelska
Antal sidor328
FörlagBloomsbury Publishing PLC
ISBN9780755638482

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Yasmeen Hanoosh is associate professor of Arabic Studies at Portland State University, USA. She received her PhD. in Arabic Language and Literature from The University of Michigan, Ann Arbor (2008). She has contributed chapters to several peer-reviewed edited collections and her research on Iraqi literature and Arabic literary translation has been published in Arab Studies Journal and the Journal of Arabic Literature.

DedicationFiguresAbbreviations Acknowledgements Introduction 1. On the Politics of Appellation: The Making of the Modern Chaldeans 272. Archaeology, Philology and Mission: The Modern History of Ancient Chaldean History3. Arab/Chaldean/Assyrian Distinctions: Political Survival in the New Nation State of Iraq 4. From Religious to Ethnic Minority: Between Iraq and America in the Twentieth Century5. Family, Marriage and Ethnic Economy: A Transnational Social Field Perspective6. The Modern Chaldean Church: Global Circuits of Ecclesial Power 7. A Safe Haven Dream: Home between Detroit and the Nineveh Plain8. Chaldeanness: The Official Narrative and its Changing Displays Epilogue: Centre and Peripheries of Chaldeanness in the Twilight of the Nation State Appendix: Appellations and LanguagesNotesWorks CitedIndex

The Chaldeans offers a superbly textured account of the shifting interplay of religious, racial, national, and ethnic designations and self-designations of community identity, moving compellingly from the late Ottoman era to the present. Addressing the modern revival of ancient Mesopotamian civilization, Hanoosh develops a densely complex narrative of the fraught ideological politics swirling around “Iraq’s Christians," especially as articulated vis-à-vis Arabness and Islam. In this astute analysis of the efforts to stabilize definitions of belonging, the book insightfully captures the tensions and paradoxes embedded not simply in regional but rather in transnational processes of minoritization.