Village nostalgia: Assyrians, folklore and the hybrid intellectual sphere in modern Iraq

Abstract

In the 1970s, cultural and political currents aligned, enabling Assyrian migrants from northern Iraq who were visible in urban centres, given their activism within the Iraqi Left, to benefit from cultural concessions granted by the Iraqi state. These currents were in accordance with a global movement intrigued by folklore, but also politicized by an Iraqi state focused on the appropriation of folklore for the purposes of expanding its hegemony. I explore the hybridized and multilingual Iraqi cultural space by examining Iraqi publications – not only general circulation magazines concerned with folklore, women and leftist politics, but also bilingual publications in Arabic and neo-Aramaic produced by the Assyrian community, and particularly the Alqoshis. With its multilingual bazaar and historic role as See of the Church of the East, Alqosh can be seen as a precursor to the pluralistic cultural scene experienced in urban Iraqi centres of the 1970s.