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

190 Pages·2017·39.31 MB·English
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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 © 2017 University of Pittsburgh Press. All rights reserved. Unauthorized copying or sharing of this material is a violation of copyright law, as stated in your user agreement. 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 © 2017 University of Pittsburgh Press. All rights reserved. Unauthorized copying or sharing of this material is a violation of copyright law, as stated in your user agreement. CENTRAL EURASIA IN CONTEXT SERIES Douglas Northrop, editor © 2017 University of Pittsburgh Press. All rights reserved. Unauthorized copying or sharing of this material is a violation of copyright law, as stated in your user agreement. 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. Unauthorized copying or sharing of this material is a violation of copyright law, as stated in your user agreement. 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 © 2017 University of Pittsburgh Press. All rights reserved. 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. © 2017 University of Pittsburgh Press. All rights reserved. Unauthorized copying or sharing of this material is a violation of copyright law, as stated in your user agreement. 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 © 2017 University of Pittsburgh Press. All rights reserved. Unauthorized copying or sharing of this material is a violation of copyright law, as stated in your user agreement. 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 © 2017 University of Pittsburgh Press. All rights reserved. Unauthorized copying or sharing of this material is a violation of copyright law, as stated in your user agreement. 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 © 2017 University of Pittsburgh Press. All rights reserved. Unauthorized copying or sharing of this material is a violation of copyright law, as stated in your user agreement. 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. © 2017 University of Pittsburgh Press. All rights reserved. Unauthorized copying or sharing of this material is a violation of copyright law, as stated in your user agreement.

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