Reading the Paratexts of the Cyprus Conflict: Policy, Science, and the Pursuit of 'Objectivity'

This article addresses the way in which ‘the Cyprus conflict’ post-1974 has been constructed in studies that straddle the academic/political divide. Since their inception, analyses of the Cyprus conflict have striven to produce accounts that are insightful, impartial, yet at the same time engaged. The article focuses on authors who have had an impact on wider Greek-Cypriot public perceptions beyond academia and analyses their treatment of impartiality and engagement. What such works have in common, the article suggests, is the fact that they attempt to navigate the space between political analysis and political involvement, and therefore, the tension between impartiality and engagement is of primary importance in the interpretation of the discourse each deals with. Genette’s concept of ‘paratexts’ is used to argue that strategies of managing the tension between impartiality and engagement as well as further tensions arising from it are evident in paratextual material, emphasising what perhaps might not be directly stressed in the text.