Küreselle？menin ？ntarihi: Hareket Halindeki ？erkes Kimli？i [Prehistories of Globalisation: Circassian Identity in Motion]

This article through a closer look at an emergent notion that might be called the prehistory of globalization will focus on how the pasts of one small diasporic group, the Circassians, act upon their present engagements with globality and the ways in which they experience a newly accessible homeland in the North Caucasus. In looking at the linkages between Circassian pasts and presents, mobility and migration emerge clearly as a constitutive element of Circassian identity. To explore the relationship between motion and identity the author juxtaposes two texts from different time-spaces. The first is an ethnographic text narrating a journey undertaken by a Circassian woman in 1993 from diaspora to homeland, from Turkey to the Caucasus. The second is an historical text dating from 1854 and documenting the journey of a Circassian woman from homeland to slavery, from the Caucasus to Egypt. The unexpected divergences, convergences, and counterintuitive insights illuminated by the juxtaposition illustrate the changing trajectories of migration, memory, and imagination. They help assess the utility of prehistory as a conceptual link between past and present and reveal the profoundly gendered nature of globalization and its pasts