From National Survival to National Perversion

The chapter traces the history of the 2012 sex panic through popular histories and mythologies of Armenianness, demonstrating the ways in which the proper social and biological reproduction of the nation was felt to have been located in strong, heroic Father figures and their moral leadership. The author draws links between contemporary notions of propriety surrounding Armenianness and the mythical first Armenian, the giant warrior Hayk. Providing a mytho-poetic reading of the nation’s and Republic’s history, the author shows how the 1991 independence from the Soviet Union produced a new ruling elite with an uncanny resemblance to the mythical Father Hayk and how this paved the way for a rhetoric of moral deviation from the nation’s proper social reproduction. The chapter sets the scene for how the postsocialist period became a rupture in the story of the nation’s millennia-long survival, paving the path toward perversion and, thus, national annihilation.