Ilay Romain Ors (Istanbul Bilgi University, Turkey)
Notes from the Diaspora of the City: Three modes of urban cosmopolitanism or How to write about Istanbul in Athens
The long presence of the Rum Orthodox community in Istanbul is a testimony to the history of cosmopolitanism of the city. The omnipresent discourses of nostalgia claim that Istanbul has lost it cosmopolitan character when the Rum Orthodox were forced to leave the city through the adoption of a series of anti-minority measures throughout the 20th century. Yet such discourses present no analysis of this cosmopolitan character or its claimed disappearance.
I explore the traces of urban cosmopolitan life through the remembrances of the Rum of Istanbul, who now reside in Athens. Analyzing them in terms of their temporal, spatial, and social specificities, I show that their reconstructions of old Istanbul concentrate on three modes of cosmopolitanism. This practice is both an attempt at historicizing and situating the otherwise non-referential nostalgia, and a way of recognizing how a community reproduces its diasporic subjectivity by maintaining a connection to its home city through its cosmopolitanist representations.
I explore the traces of urban cosmopolitan life through the remembrances of the Rum of Istanbul, who now reside in Athens. Analyzing them in terms of their temporal, spatial, and social specificities, I show that their reconstructions of old Istanbul concentrate on three modes of cosmopolitanism. This practice is both an attempt at historicizing and situating the otherwise non-referential nostalgia, and a way of recognizing how a community reproduces its diasporic subjectivity by maintaining a connection to its home city through its cosmopolitanist representations.
