L’Hellénisme pontique et sa diaspora : les territoires de la mémoire

Abstract

The Pontic Greeks have within the Hellenism a very strong identity related to the singularity of their territory of origin which they had to leave during the exchange of the populations enacted by the treaty of Lausanne (1923). Refugees, alive since then as a diaspora in Greece and in the world (Russia, America, Germany, Australia), they constituted a transnational space-network in which they arranged places of memory (churches, monasteries, memorials) carrying a very rich iconography. Their active associative networks (federations, congresses) ensure the transmission of their identity based on a continuity of their history since the Byzantine empire of Trebizond and, since 1888, on the claim of the recognition of the “genocide” (1919‑1923) of which they were victims. The pontic hero, the icon of Panagia Sumela, the lyre, the dances and their language (the pontic dialect) which is expressed through the songs and the theatre, are the strong points of this iconography support of their claim of “a right and a duty to remember”.

Keywords

• diaspora
• hellenism
• iconography
• memory
• Pont‑Euxin
• refugee