Talin Suciyan
What is the connection between Frantz Fanon and Zaven Biberyan?
Araz Kojayan
During a war, bodies and souls are transformed, willingly or not, and the passage of time seeps into them more quickly than is natural. Uncertainty, fear, and loss transform the individual from within, and the survival instinct comes to dominate all values. This latter has a sharper manifestation on the individual's daily life in countries composed of diverse and multi-layered communities, such as Lebanon.
Aylin Vartanyan
And perhaps one of the most striking symbols of this blindness is the aircraft that came to be known as the ‘Lolita Express.’ How could so many powerful adults, from business figures to politicians, from academics to scientists, board an aircraft carrying this name without question? A plane named after a young girl became a chilling symbol of how normalized this regime of gaze had become.
Talin Suciyan
To express shock at such crimes requires ignoring the colonial violence accumulated over centuries by humanity’s blindingly white half. As the colonial knowledge of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries was obscured by nationalist theories, empires transformed into nation-states, and that knowledge became a founding pillar of white supremacy. The foundational knowledge that nourished Epstein and allowed that smile to settle on his face is precisely this accumulated knowledge.
Meri Tek Demir
In fact, perhaps I should not have been surprised, because even within our own society, there were those who preferred to examine Yesayan through a stereotyped understanding of feminism. This approach acknowledged the testimonies Yesayan lived through. However, when it came time to examine her works, most of which have not properly come to light anyway, what she wrote about women "as a woman" and what she did for women's rights took on more importance.