Marc Nichanian
Yerevan: Actual Art, Johannissyan Institute, 2016
ISBN 978-9939-816-96-8
The double volume work by contemporary Diaspora Armenian philosopher Marc Nichanian entitled Image, Narrative, History is a philosophical study dedicated to the three key problematics in contemporary thinking mentioned in the title. The book refers to the writings of the twentieth century Diaspora Armenian and French writers Maurice Blanchot, Georges Bataille, Krikor Beledian, Zabel Yesayan, Shahan Shahnour and Zareh Vorbuni. This double volume work deals with the possibility for a witness to bare witness to her own death. While pursuing this question Nichanian proposes a phenomenology of a witness wherein the witness, deprived of subjectivity, is nothing else but her own image.
The second volume is dedicated to the works of four Western Armenian writers – Zabel Yesayan, Krikor Beledian, Shahan Shahnour and Zareh Vorbuni. Nichanian considers the latter from the perspective of the figure of the survivor, the problems this figure poses and the haunting presence of the image in them. The work of the Armenian authors on the figure of the survivor and the image, as opposed to the French authors discussed in the first volume, unfolds in the atmosphere of hatered between woman and man, literature and painting, survivor and witness, and amongst generations.
The book has been published in collaboration wuth Actual Art Publishing and with the financial support of the Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation. Both volumes can be found at the bookstores and libraries in Yerevan.