Cultural Narrative and the Motivation of the Terrorist (From Inside Terrorist Organizations, P 217-233, 1988, David C Rapoport, ed. -- See NCJ-111830)

• NCJ Number: 111839
• Author(s): K Tololyan
• Date Published: 1988
• Length: 17 pages
• Sale Source: Columbia University Press
• Publication Type: Report (Study/Research)
• Language: English
• Country: United States of America

Annotation

An examination of the writings of Armenian terrorists reveals minds steeped in a recognizable Armenian idiom that has its roots not in the experience of genocide but in 15 centuries of learned and popular discourse, ecclesiastical ritual, and living song.

Abstract

The terrorist pamphlets are explicitly allusive to and continous with Armenian social discourse. This social discourse provides an understanding in terms of familial and national narratives that are deeply intertwined. Narratives of earlier resistance are projected upon the present and the future as morally privileged patterns of action and for the interpretation of action. These include stories of the Armenian genocide, Vartan (the hereditary leader of the Armenian armies), and the Armenian assassins and of the 1920's. The Armenian narratives and culture were produced by centuries of resistance in unequal struggle, and such a culture is able to produce and sustain terrorist activity even under disaspora conditions. In the absence of a state and country, there is no possibility of reenacting classical narratives in traditional ways. Thus, terrorism produces new heroes for old stories and sustains the refusal to abandon cultural identity and national rights. 24 footnotes.