Abstract

The Massacre of Chios (1824) by Eugéne Delacroix illustrates the titular genocide from the Greek War of Independence. This genocide was a veritable razing of the entire island by Ottoman Turks in 1822. Today, a replica of Delacroix's painting resides on the island inside the entrance of the Chios Byzantine Museum, located in a converted mosque built on the ruins of a Christian church. This site is a case for the existence of non-Western temporalities, including liturgical and Aegean temporalities, as they pertain to the commemoration of the massacre through interaction with the replica. These temporalities are not causal or linear as in the West. On Chios, everyday interactions with history happen through the orthodox devotions and concomitant emotions of the present, with temporally transcendent icons, relics, and rituals promoting the imbrication of temporalities. The layout of the mosque, in its simplicity, conforms roughly to the plan of a Greek Orthodox church with the museum space organized to emphasize this, encouraging a liturgical temporality. Given that Chiots remember the massacre victims as tantamount to saints, the saturation of Christian elements in Delacroix's composition communes with the museum space to create an active site of memory, with the replica functioning like the Holy Greek Orthodox icons in the adjacent room, inviting a liturgical temporality. A comparable site, Agio Minas, a major massacre site in Southern Chios, also exhibits genocide victims as saints through eikonic imagery; here, victims' remains are displayed as relics alongside an icon of the Forty Martyrs of Sebaste, setting the stage, so to speak, for the naos where blood still stains the stone floor. In a similar way, the replica located in the "narthex" of the museum mediates a preparatory experience that overlays a narrative of Christian martyrdom onto the museum's "naos," where visitors engage with the icon collection. The proximity of replica and Byzantine collection overlays Chios' destruction with that of Constantinople's, collapsing time and presenting the two as related events. The Chios Byzantine Museum exemplifies what anthropologist Nicolas Argenti has termed "Aegean temporality," where past and present overlap in physical and incorporeal sites of memory. Orthodox icons do just that: transcendent and a-temporal by nature, their efficacy lies in bringing the pictured figure into the present moment and "enfleshing" remembrance as a current reality. The replica Massacre of Chios likewise acts as an active a-temporal object. Because of affordances granted by the narthex space and eikonic associations, it sacralizes the museum space into a living site of memory. With Aegean temporality facilitating a constant re-experiencing of the massacre, the massacre's presence and potency is not something left in the past. The painting's status as a semi-icon supports the immediacy of the massacre, as the viewer spiritually interacts with the image in the present.

Degree

College and Department

Humanities; Comparative Arts and Letters

Rights

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