School of Social and Political Sciences - Theses

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Start date: 1950 × Type: Masters Research thesis × Subject: Assyrians of Iraq × Subject: politics and government ×

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    The Assyrian community of Iraq: identity, gender, space and the politics of borders
    Ham, Anthony Julian ( 1998)
    This study of the Assyrian Christian community of Iraq explores the fundamental separation which has existed between the community and the Iraqi state. By using the concept of 'borders' as signifier of separation, it is argued that the separation has occurred because the state has drawn discursive and material barriers to inclusion as full citizens of Iraq, and the Assyrian community has refused to be confined within those borders. The borders which are explored are those which have been drawn around legitimate historical identity; the gender borders within the Assyrian and Iraqi nations which seek to control and exclude women; and spatial borders around the physical territory of Iraq. In addition to tracing the outline of these borders, the thesis maps some of the points at which the zones of separation have been crossed - Assyrians continuing to assert their distinctive historical identity in the face of attempts by the Iraqi state to enclose them within history; Assyrian women refusing to be confined within the stereotypes drawn around Middle Eastern women; and the act of migration across territorial borders. Finally, this work suggests that the drawing of 'new' borders of separation by the Assyrian community - the old borders having been crossed - has further entrenched the conditions of separation. This thesis is informed by the framework of postcolonial theory, although this does not represent the primary focus of the study, but rather is used to identify some of the tensions between the body of theory and its application in the Iraqi operational context. Further sub-narratives of the project include writing the agency of the Assyrian community into the Iraqi and Assyrian national narratives, and enacts a moving beyond the confines of monolithic identities and binary oppositions, particularly as they relate to 'Arabs' and 'Muslims'. In exploring the fundamental separation between community and state, it becomes clear that the Assyrians' journey across the terrain of Iraqi history has been one of enclosure, confinement and control - 'culminating' in the final act of separation through migration.