Hye Sharzhoom Armenian Action
By Jennifer Keledjian
Staff Writer
As part of the continuing series on its 20th anniversary, Hye Sharzhoom has conducted an in-depth interview with Professor Khachig Tölölyan, a prominent Armenian scholar. Professor Tölölyan has been teaching English at Wesleyan University for almost 25 years. Although his Ph.D. is in Comparative Literature, he primarily teaches the 20th Century American Novel and Literary Theory. He is a professor of Diaspora studies and has taught and conducted research at other universities, such as University of Michigan-Ann Arbor, Johns Hopkins, Columbia University and Oregon State at Corvallis.
Professor Tölölyan has been a key player in many Armenian issues both nationally and globally, and now edits the publication Diaspora: A Journal of Transnational Studies. He also writes about the Diaspora in Armenian for the Armenian language daily Haratch of Paris. He has lectured at Fresno State.
The following is an interview conducted with Professor Tölölyan about his ideas on Armenian issues as well as his interest in the 20th Anniversary of the Hye Sharzhoom. He has been reading Hye Sharzhoom for about 12 years and believes that it is “one of the thousand points of light that help illuminate what is being thought and done, what matters or should matter.”
Why do you read Hye Sharzhoom?
I write about the Armenian Diaspora in Armenian for a newspaper that is published in France, called Haratch. I like to know what sorts of publications are being issued by Armenian groups so I sample a dozen of them.
How does Hye Sharzhoom fit into the concept of the Armenian Diaspora?
The Diaspora, like “The People” or “The Nation,” is the abstract concept that we use to speak about what is always a social formation with concrete, scattered units. Thus, Armenians or the Armenian people really exist and function in small, real units in Karabagh and Yerevan, Moscow or Beirut, Buenos Aires or Fresno. Each of those units must have a site in which it can express its own local issues and concerns, not just to inform each other about those concerns but also to debate them. Hye Sharzhoom does that for Fresno Armenians, or at least for the most articulate and involved portion of them. This is very important. To see why, look at an analogy. We know psychologically that to have emotions but never to express them with others is not good for the emotions or for relationships. Thus, even in a close relationship, a love that is never expressed, an anger or disagreement that is never communicated, becomes a problem. If a diaspora community is to exist properly, it must express to itself how it feels about both local and diasporic or global Armenian issues, and it must discuss and debate. Hye Sharzhoom enables that to happen. In any one issue you may be praising a group of local people who are acting in support of the Armenian chair (thus expressing the communityís appreciation) and then in another column you may also be debating what is the best way to help a university in Yerevan. This is healthy and necessary. Local concerns and global, which is to say diasporic issues, must both be expressed and debated.
What are your comments/thoughts on Hye Sharzhoom and its 20th anniversary?
It is impressive that faculty and students together have consistently managed to be interested and committed. This testifies to the existence of a self-renewing group of people in the area.
What is the most interesting part of Hye Sharzhoom?
I am interested in seeing how topics of general interest to the Armenian nation get picked up, or fail to interest, specific local communities. Whenever I am reading a publication, I am asking myself: In addition to local topics and functions, are they interested in the genocide, in the Diaspora, in homeland politics, in Armenian ecclesiastical issues, political issues, etc.? If they are interested in, say, Armenia, do they actually deal with the politics, the philanthropy, travel?
How important is it that Armenian youth be actively involved in their own community and heritage?
Well, it is important that they be involved, of course, and it is just as important that they be involved in something which initially they can enjoy and whose importance they eventually understand and can explain. Ideally, people can get interested for one reason- For example, ones sister or ones best friend is involved in a dance group- and through that became interested in other things that might never have originally attracted their involvement. At some point, the dance teacher may explain something about Armenian music or folk culture, and as a result of that the young person may become interested in Armenian folk culture, or in an organization that sends people to Armenia to study music and dance, etc. Of course I believe that “get involved” is an important message, but really it is never enough. You need to be able to say: Get involved because you will enjoy being with others your own age, dancing or looking at paintings or serving food to the old folks at the old age home, you will get a sense of doing something worthwhile with people you care about. Then you try to create an atmosphere in which one interest leads to another, larger, more rewarding, more encompassing, more compelling of lifelong involvement and commitment.
Hye Sharzhoom thanks Professor Tölölyan for taking time to respond to these questions and wish him the best of luck on future endeavors.