Living Language in Kazakhstan: The Dialogic Emergence of an Ancestral Worldview

190 Pages·2017·39.31 MB·English

by  Eva-Marie Dubuisson

CENTRAL ASIAN STUDIES/ANTHROPOLOGY
“Outstanding work. This book is a rare attempt to capture what Dubuisson names as
the ‘afective landscapes’ of Kazakh spirituality. By focusing on the construction of inter- L I V I N G
generational relationships within families and broader communities, she demonstrates
that the spirits of deceased ancestors play a central role in Kazakh social life, constitut-
ing a particular worldview historically rooted in an Inner Asia’s belief system.”
SAULESH YESSENOVA, University of Calgary
L A N G UA G E
“To understand politics in Kazakhstan, you need to understand Dubuisson’s argument.
She shows how many Kazakhs, through their activities, interactions, and conversations,
create a life-world where ancestors are experienced as playing an active, caring role. I N K A Z A K H S T A N
Because of their presence in everyday social interaction, ancestors take on a power to
shape social reality and political discourse. They are invoked as role models, convey
their spiritual energy to others, mediate individual relationships with God, and build
communities based on immediate as well as fictive kinship.”
LAURA ADAMS, author of The Spectacular State:
Culture and National Identity in Uzbekistan
Eva-Marie Dubuisson provides a fascinating anthropological inquiry into the deeply
ingrained presence of ancestors within the cultural, political, and spiritual discourse
of Kazakhs. In a climate of authoritarianism and economic uncertainty, many people
in this region turn to their forebears for care, guidance, and advice, invoking them on
a daily basis. This “living language” creates a powerful link to the past and a stable
foundation for the present. Through Dubuisson’s participatory, observational, and
lived experience among Kazakhs, we witness firsthand the public performances and
private rituals that show how memory and identity are sustained through an oral
tradition of invoking ancestors. This ancestral dialogue mediates questions of faith
and morality, providing role models, and offering a mechanism for sociopolitical
critique, change, and meaning making. Looking beyond studies of Islam or heritage
alone, Dubuisson provides fresh insights into understanding the Kazakh worldview
that will serve students, researchers, NGOs, and policymakers in the region.
Eva-Marie Dubuisson is assistant professor of anthropology at
Boğaziçi University in Istanbul, Turkey.
CENTRAL EURASIA IN CONTEXT
UNIVERSITY OF PIT TSBURGH PRESS ISBN 130: 907-882-02-98-6224960-6-0460-5
www.upress.pitt.edu
Cover art: Saule Suleimenova, Bata
Cover design: Joel W. Coggins 9 780822 964605 EVA-MARIE DUBUISSON
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DUBUISSON L I V I N G L A N G UA G E I N K A Z A K H S TA N PITTSBURGH
LIVING L ANGUAG E IN K A Z AK HSTAN
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CENTRAL EURASIA IN CONTEXT SERIES
Douglas Northrop, editor
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L I V I N G
L A N G UA G E
I N K A Z A K H S T A N
the dialogic emergence of an ancestral worldview
EVA-MARIE DUBUISSON
university of pittsburgh press
© 2017 University of Pittsburgh Press. All rights reserved.
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Published by the University of Pittsburgh Press, Pittsburgh, Pa., 15260
Copyright © 2017, University of Pittsburgh Press
All rights reserved
Manufactured in the United States of America
Printed on acid-free paper
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
Cataloging-in-Publication data is available from the Library of Congress
ISBN 13: 978-0-8229-6460-5
ISBN 10: 0-8229-6460-0
Cover art: Saule Suleimenova, Bata
Cover design by Joel W. Coggins
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Unauthorized copying or sharing of this material is a violation of copyright law, as stated in your user agreement.
This book is dedicated with love and gratitude to all the friends and family in
Kazakhstan who shared their time, energy, and knowledge with me; it is only
because of them that any of this writing was possible.
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CONTENTS
acknowledgments
ix
a note on the cover art
xi
a note on transcription and transliteration
xiii
a note on fieldwork and method
xv
introduction. An Ancestral Worldview
3
one. Bata and Blessing
25
two. Guardians of the Ancestors
56
three. Ancestry in Aitys Poetry
84
four. Dialogic Authority
106
conclusion. Participatory Politics
133
notes
145
references
157
index
169
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A NOTE ON FIELDWORK AND METHOD
AITYS RESEARCH AND THE NATIONAL NETWORK
One of the central methodological premises of this book—that meaning comes
from conversation and dialogue in encounter—was born not only from a theo-
retical perspective but also from practical and methodological issues emerging
after years in the feld. The material I present in chapters three and four on the
contemporary oral tradition of aitys was gathered during the years of my doctoral
research (2004–6). I worked primarily with a national network of poets, cultural
organizers, and sponsors described at length in this volume, all of whom collabo-
rated to stage performances around the country in a conscious efort to build and
1
revive this form of poetry as a national tradition in the post-Soviet period.
Over my years of research on this oral tradition, I traveled widely throughout
Kazakhstan, as well as to Kyrgyzstan and to Russia, by train and by car to attend
dozens of performances. Given my enthusiasm and long-term presence, my re-
search position was something like that of a groupie in the community; I became
like one of the many journalists and writers who tend to hang around poets and
to form a community of support and interest. My knowledge of Kazakh was
only intermediate—enough to grasp the literal content, and even the metaphor
of poetry sometimes, but not colloquialisms or complete contextual comprehen-
sion; my understanding necessarily remained partial. Most members of the aitys
community spoke a mix of Kazakh and Russian with me, although they preferred
to speak Kazakh, and this was also an ideological position, given the context of
nationalist politics. For these reasons, I almost always worked with long-term re-
search assistants who helped interpret to me in English. I owe a great deal in this
regard to both Zaure Batayeva and Murat Abdi, whose patience and perspective
greatly afected my own, as we spent a great deal of time together, and without
whom there would be no research project at all. My research assistants and I
went backstage and on trips together, taking photographs, speaking informally
with other audience members, and giving interviews to local newspapers. We also
simply spent a great deal of time in and with the aitys community and conducted
personal interviews with people at all levels of the network in order to contextual-
ize their words and experiences.
Renat was the frst akhyn (poet) I interviewed, the frst to take a chance on me, to
come to my home and be awkwardly served tea (made with tea bags) and cakes in
the kitchen (these were my silly attempts at Kazakh hospitality, in which the table
xv
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xvi A NOTE ON FIELDWORK AND METHOD
is supposed to be in the formal room, piled with things to eat, and the tea should
be freshly brewed). He was a very polite guest, but when we talked years later he
laughed and said he’d thought it was pretty funny. He was nineteen when I met
him, and even then he was a star. We talked for two hours straight. I asked him
all the questions I’d fretfully prepared, and Renat answered them each seriously
and thoughtfully. “I have a gift,” he said. “My purpose is to voice the truth of the
people.”
Over the years I worked in the aitys community, interviewing participants,
there came to be a few questions I asked of everyone: Why do you do what you
do? What is the point of aitys? How do you know aitys has been successful? Aman
Zhol, a poet from Astana who has participated in the televised national aitys com-
petitions for more than a decade, explained that he should reach people’s hearts
and leave something there: “Even if someone’s only [at aitys] for an hour, [they]
will listen to beautiful, strong words,” which he hopes will infuence people by gen-
erating diferent ideas about the situations and issues they face in their lives. The
well-known poet Balghymbek, also from Astana, told me that aitys akhyns exist to
raise the social and political consciousness of the people. The particular genre of
zhek pe zhek (one on one, which he also refers to simply as shyndykh, or truth) allows
poets to do just that, because they can relay information about current events,
“who is who and what is happening.” As a result of aitys, he noted, people living
in the country now have access to a lot of new information. If a poet does not tell
the truth and make an efort to relay real circumstances, a poet is not an akhyn.
The success of that efort depends on your opponent, explains Balghymbek—
if two poets go in diferent directions, they bore the people.
Here, he means literally the people in the live audience, upon whom the suc-
cess of every aitys depends. All the poets have explained this to me, how they feel
the audience and sense their response, how audience support is palpable, how it
brings confdence and happiness, how it can make the muses come faster. Poets
feel the audience react—during performance they must make a connection. What
is the point of all of this—how do we know aitys has been successful? Every single
person I ever interviewed had the same answer: because it is satisfying. Balghymbek
explained the connection between performance and politics in this way: “It’s of
course important to inform authorities in our country, but [here] you can’t criti-
cize openly. But [poets] try, of course, try to say something important for the peo-
ple. If people hear it, about the problems they think about, they’re very satisfed—
you can tell from their reaction.” Refecting on this point, his friend Dauletkere,
a fellow poet from Astana, told me he likes it when people recognize him: “It’s a
great pleasure because they don’t just recognize you, it means they recognized your
words, it means you can infuence people toward something.” But on whom and
how can a poet’s words have infuence?
National sponsors are hoping that poets and their audiences can have some
efect on the broader politics of the country: from within the frame of ethnic
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A NOTE ON FIELDWORK AND METHOD xvii
nationalism, they hope to popularize Kazakh language and culture, as well as to
use these categories metaphorically to criticize other government leaders who do
not take the concerns of the Kazakh people seriously. Since the late Soviet years,
lead organizers have intensely focused their eforts on publicizing modern aitys
performances. In addition to encouraging large live audiences with reasonably
priced tickets and advance advertising, organizers also work to televise and record
performances—a new series of videos and DVDs of notable aitys performances
was already available for purchase in local bazaars by the time of my research.
The editorial ofce of the Kazakh writers’ union in Almaty was one ofcial entity
heavily involved in recording and transcribing performances into text. Some of
the excerpts I present here come from their collection, which they were incredibly
generous to copy for me.
The eforts of the aitys community itself in turn very much shaped how I came
to create my own collection of materials. In addition to collecting books and DVDs,
I also traveled to Astana to work for a short time in the fall of 2004 with histori-
ans and poets at the Aitys Research Center run by Murzatai Zholdasbekov and
housed at the Eurasian National University in Astana. From conversations there,
I was able to understand the place of poetry within a broader historiographical
and ideological imagination, undergirding the project of political nationalism. In
Almaty, with the help of the comparative literature scholar Margarita Madanova,
I was able to work for a time in the archive of aitys materials housed at the Acad-
emy of Literature and Arts in Almaty. This was essential to understanding the
context of aitys during the Soviet period, as well as to identifying those scholars
who had made writing about this oral tradition the object of their own research
in Kazakh folklore at the academy, as well as to seeing the ways in which the ap-
proach of the academy difered from that of the contemporary national network.
In the last year of my research, I was also able to visit the audio archive at Kazakh-
stan’s national radio station and listen to historical recordings of Soviet-era aitys
performances preserved there as part of the Altyn (Golden) trust.
Working with the national network was at once productive and alienating. I
felt that I was “chasing” my research subject in an almost journalistic fashion,
rather than functioning as an ethnographer. My research often felt like my “day
job” when I worked with research assistants and interpreters/translators in all my
travels and interviews. While I did fnd friends among poets, sponsors, and cultur-
al organizers and while I did tend to have close relationships with those working
as assistants, ultimately my work life during those years overlapped with but often
tended to be separate from my “home life,” the day-to-day living I shared with
friends and families in the feld. I couldn’t always seem to integrate especially well
these two spheres of my experience. But over the years it was always clear that my
own understanding of the impact and importance of the aitys tradition was being
shaped signifcantly not just by poets or sponsors but by all the people with whom
I spent time, even if we were not always directly discussing poetry or performance.
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