The heritage politics of one man's living room

This provocation is an analysis of a display in the corner of Dimitris's living room in his Athens home. Dimitris is a Greek (“Rum”) from Istanbul. His family was expelled from Istanbul in 1964, which was the year in which tensions over the Cyprus Question led to the expulsion of the Greeks of Istanbul who held the Greek passport. Because of intermarriage with others in Istanbul, the total number of displaced people was around 30,000. Dimitris curates his “Istanbul Corner,” comprising an old writing bureau assembled with ornaments and keepsakes related to his memories and life in Istanbul. The corner space looks like a period room display in a museum or historic house. It is a “heritage site” even if it's not associated with canonical public importance. Its stories are linked to a marginalised group that don’t make it into the official channels of museums and lists. The corner is also a site of political complexity in multiple ways: it exists because of high-scale geopolitics: wrangling over territory, breakdowns of diplomacy, invasion and clashing nationalisms. While debates and contests over heritage politics are usually associated with the public sphere, the essay highlights the political nature of heritages in private, domestic and personal contexts, and how this connects with “higher-scale” political and human histories such as mass forced displacements.