ABSTRACT
This chapter focuses on memories of state violence and other constructions of history in Dersim that shape identity and subjectivity of outsiderness. It aims at uncovering the meanings and practices of outsiderness by analyzing the relationships among 1938 as an experienced and remembered historical event, subjects' conceptions of history and time, and constructions and performances of identity and culture for the witness generation. Not only has official (Turkish) history maintained a thorough silence about 1938, but even those who witnessed the events have failed—or refused—to generate a consensual, unofficial account, which could have been called collective or social memory. Explaining the connections between history and outsider identity, the chapter reveals that subjective productions of history and temporality take place at two levels, one explicit and the other more latent. Consciousness of history shapes understandings of contemporary events, as well as subjects' construction of identity and perceptions and performances of agency.
