«Մեղքի զգացումը՝ որպես հայկական ինքնության հիմք սփյուռքում» - Նենսի Գրիգորյան

Nancy Kricorian's article "Guilt as the Foundation of Armenian Identity in the Diaspora" is devoted to analyzing the phenomenon of "symbolic Armenianness" and the associated complex of guilt experienced by members of the Armenian diaspora who have lost the language and direct cultural connection to their historical homeland.

Introduction and Personal Context

The author, a writer of Armenian descent who does not speak Armenian, begins her essay by acknowledging her own "inadequacy" before an audience of native speakers and bearers of the culture in Yerevan. The starting point for her reflections is her talk before students at the Hrimian Saturday lyceum in New York, where an improvised question about the division of Armenians into "good, bad, and average" unexpectedly animated the audience: the teenagers eagerly listed activities, dance ensembles, and charity events proving their belonging to the category of "good" Armenians.

Key Premise: The Concept of "Symbolic Armenianness"

Drawing on the research of sociologist Anny Bakalian, Kricorian shows that for the second and subsequent generations of the diaspora, Armenian identity ceases to be an innate given and becomes a set of consciously chosen practices — language, religion, cuisine, charity. Such "situational" identity turns national belonging into something akin to an activity that can be performed "better or worse," which inevitably gives rise to a sense of guilt over insufficient effort.

Comparison with "Survivor's Guilt"

The author compares the Armenian case with the phenomenon of "survivor's guilt" among the descendants of Holocaust victims, noting a fundamental difference:

among Jewish descendants, guilt is connected with the memory of the dead and the function of a "memorial candle";
among Armenians, according to the studies cited, guilt is directed toward the living — toward obligations to family and community rather than to the dead, which the author links to particularities of religious tradition.

Evidence and Examples

Based on an informal survey of acquaintances, the writer offers characteristic confessions: guilt over mixed marriages, over the loss of language, over reluctance to have children, over insufficient participation in the life of Armenian organizations. These testimonies confirm the thesis that diasporic identity is built around the experience of one's own cultural inadequacy.

Conclusion

The article's key conclusion is that guilt itself becomes the structuring element of Armenian identity in the diaspora — an identity based not on the fullness of belonging, but on its absence, engendered by the historical losses of the Genocide.

Attached to the publication is an extended reader's commentary (from an author of a mixed Russian-Armenian family) that develops Kricorian's theses in relation to the post-Soviet experience. The commentator distinguishes between everyday guilt, which can be atoned for and forgiven, and the existential "pain of assimilation," which has no addressee capable of granting forgiveness and accompanies one's whole life as an inescapable condition. He describes the mechanism of tabooing traumatic subjects as a temporary but not final defense against the recognition of "total loss," and ends the text with testimony of a personal turning point at the age of 26 as an attempt to break out of the vicious circle of guilt through a conscious return to one's roots.