Dr. Jeremy F. Walton and Dr. Kevin Kenjar: On Empire’s Uncanny Returns: The Revenant Project – Persons, Places, Things

Tuesday, May 12, 19:00
Film Screening
Orient-Institut Istanbul
Language: English

From the cobblestone streets of central Vienna to the rolling hills overlooking the Bosporus, the empires of the past in southeast Europe enjoy vibrant, complicated afterlives today. Bygone empires are available for consumption in a variety of forms, from Sachertorte to Ottoman-themed television serials, from Habsburg haberdashery to Janissary jingles. Nor are imperial afterlives limited to commodity culture. Politicians throughout the region invoke the Habsburg and Ottoman eras in alternately nostalgic and paranoid registers. References to empires past are the touchstones of national politics in the present. In the memorable words of Stefan Zweig, “the world of yesterday” no longer seems as decisively gone as it previously did.

The research group “REVENANT—Revivals of Empire: Nostalgia, Amnesia, Tribulation” (European Research Council Grant # 101002908), based at the Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences at the University of Rijeka, is an interdisciplinary inquiry into the legacies and memories of the empires that have shaped central, eastern and southeastern Europe, the Middle East and the Caucasus. The afterlives of the Habsburg, Ottoman, and Romanov (Russian) Empires are the principal focus, though the ongoing, tragic war in Ukraine—itself an outcome of imperial legacies and neo-imperial ambitions—has reduced the capacity to conduct fieldwork in former Romanov and Soviet contexts. In order to streamline and to integrate the work, REVENANT relies on a threefold distinction among postimperial persons, postimperial places, and postimperial things. Sultans, kaisers and tsars, the rulers of empires past, coordinate memories of the empires today. So too do the former wives, lovers, and consorts of potentates, though in distinct ways. Imperial rebels, who rejected the empires’ power, offer yet another frame for collective memories of imperial pasts. A variety of places and spaces, ranging from former imperial capitals to port cities and inter-imperial frontiers, refract and reshape post-imperial legacies. Finally, a wide range of objects, including relics, mass-produced commodities, and memorials, provide the flesh and bones of imperial afterlives.

The film, The Revenant Project – Persons, Places, Things introduces the project by focusing on one postimperial person, one postimperial place, and one postimperial thing, each located in one of the cities that orient the research: Istanbul, Sarajevo, and Vienna. In Istanbul, the team joins eminent historian Edhem Eldem to consider the ambivalent life and legacy of the artist, intellectual and imperial administrator, Osman Hamdi Bey. In Sarajevo, anthropologist Kevin Kenjar conveys the team to a particularly charged place, the street corner on which Habsburg heir apparent Franz Ferdinand was assassinated by Gavrilo Princip, who thus ignited the political tinderbox, causing an explosion that resulted in World War I. Dr. Kenjar narrates a detailed, lengthy microhistory of this corner to reveal the multiple imperial ambivalences, both Ottoman and Habsburg, that continue to inhabit Sarajevo. In Vienna, historian Tamara Scheer helps to explore the textures and stories embodied by a peculiar object, the gigantic Pummerin Bell of the iconic Stephansdom. Situated at the heart of the city, Pummerin literally materializes a fraught inter-imperial history: It was forged from cannonballs that were discarded following the second Ottoman Siege of Vienna in 1683.

The screening will be followed by a Q&A with Jeremy F. Walton and Kevin Kenjar, members of the REVENANT project who appear in the film.

Jeremy F. Walton is a cultural anthropologist whose research resides at the intersection of memory studies, urban studies, the comparative study of empires and imperialism, and critical perspectives on materiality. He leads the research group “REVENANT—Revivals of Empire: Nostalgia, Amnesia, Tribulation” at the University of Rijeka, Croatia, with support from a European Research Council consolidator grant (#10100290). Dr. Walton received his Ph.D. in Anthropology from the University of Chicago in 2009. His first book, Muslim Civil Society and the Politics of Religious Freedom in Turkey (Oxford University Press, 2017), is an ethnography of Muslim NGOs, state institutions, and secularism in contemporary Turkey. REVENANT, which Dr. Walton designed, is an interdisciplinary, multi-sited project on postimperial memories and legacies in post-Habsburg, post-Ottoman realms, and post-Romanov realms.

Kevin Kenjar is an Austrian-American linguistic and cultural anthropologist specialized in language ideologies, nationalism, linguistic landscape studies, historical anthropology, and memory studies. He has spent nearly two decades working on former Yugoslavia, particularly Bosnia and Herzegovina. He completed his PhD in 2020 at the University of California, Berkeley, and is the author of a forthcoming book, The Street Corner That Started the 20th Century, concerning the changing ideological and linguistic landscapes at a single intersection in Sarajevo over the past several hundred years.

Tomislav Žaja, the film’s director, earned his master’s degree in Documentary Film Directing at the FAMU in Prague. He is a multi-awarded author of more than fifty documentary films. His films are related to history, culture, sports, biographies, social conditions, and human rights. He is a member of the Documentary Association of Europe (DAE) and the International Documentary Association (IDA).

The language of the event is English. Participation is free of charge. To join this invitation in person please register below. To join online no registration is necessary. Photos or videos will be taken during the event. By participating, you agree that these may be used on the OII website, newsletter and social media. The event will not be recorded.

VENUE
Orient-Institut Istanbul
Galip Dede Cad. 65, Şahkulu Mah., TR – 34421 Istanbul
Tel: +90 212 293 60 67 oiist@oiist.org www.oiist.org

REGISTRATION
To join this invitation at the venue please register here:

To join ONLINE please use this Zoom Link. No registration necessary:

https://maxweberstiftung.zoom-x.de/j/67293212448?pwd=p3EDfZxP3GGMbweUTybRUegDV88P36.1
ID: 672 9321 2448
Password: 923287