Berkay Uluç | University of Michigan (original) (raw)
Publications by Berkay Uluç
Journal of the Ottoman and Turkish Studies Association, 2022
The modern science of history is to come from Europe not from the Arabs." 1 Ussama Makdisi rightl... more The modern science of history is to come from Europe not from the Arabs." 1 Ussama Makdisi rightly reads these sentences from Hüseyin Cahit's 1898 essay "The Sciences to Be Gained from the Arabs" [Arap'tan İstifade Edeceğimiz Ulum] as reflecting the "racial" and "secularist" face of Ottoman Orientalism. Cahit's essay, on the other hand, was part of a larger debate on "the Arab sciences" [ulum-ı Arabiye] that has even more compelling implications for late Ottoman epistemological transformations. In this essay, I will discuss the underexplored themes of the 1898 debate on "the Arab sciences" in tandem with Cahit's Servet-i Fünun essays to make a case for the connections between the late Ottoman imperial vision and the emergence of "aesthetics" as a literary-scientific paradigm in Turkish. Cahit wrote his essay as a polemic against Veled Çelebi who, using the pen name "Bahai," published in the same year an essay titled "There Are Many Sciences to Be Gained from the Arabs" [Arap'tan Pek Çok İstifade Edeceğimiz Ulum Var]. Veled Çelebi was an Ottoman philologist and translator who was well-versed in Arabic, Persian, and Turkish. In the essay that triggered the 1898 debate, he suggests that Turkish intellectuals replace their age-old Persian influence with the principles of the Arab scholarly tradition. Within the frame of comparison that structures his essay, "the Arab sciences"-ranging from
Monograf, 2022
In this article, I examine modernist author Vüs'at O. Bener as a political author. Focusing on th... more In this article, I examine modernist author Vüs'at O. Bener as a political author. Focusing on the figuration of "sick" and "schizoid" subjects in his novels, Buzul Çağının Virüsü (1984) and Bay Muannit Sahtegi'nin Notları (1991), as well as some of his shorter texts, I assert that these texts probe the question of subjectivity as a question of health by challenging both in form and content the distinction between inner world and exterior world, individual concern and collective concern, private history and public history. The appearance of the act of writing in these texts as an impasse, but at the same time as a way-out, having not only personal but also political significations, I further argue, is a symptom of this problematization of subjectivity. I ultimately aim to show that Bener's texts provide productive cases to rethink the relationship between literature and politics in the contexts of both Turkish modernism and "third-world literature."
Interviews by Berkay Uluç
![Research paper thumbnail of Politik Bir Yazar: Vüs’at O. Bener [A Political Author: Vüs’at O. Bener]](https://attachments.academia-assets.com/104112017/thumbnails/1.jpg)
](“Ben Buradan Okuyorum,” hosted by Hasan Turgut (Açık Radyo, 06/2022)
Journal of the Ottoman and Turkish Studies Association, 2022
The modern science of history is to come from Europe not from the Arabs." 1 Ussama Makdisi rightl... more The modern science of history is to come from Europe not from the Arabs." 1 Ussama Makdisi rightly reads these sentences from Hüseyin Cahit's 1898 essay "The Sciences to Be Gained from the Arabs" [Arap'tan İstifade Edeceğimiz Ulum] as reflecting the "racial" and "secularist" face of Ottoman Orientalism. Cahit's essay, on the other hand, was part of a larger debate on "the Arab sciences" [ulum-ı Arabiye] that has even more compelling implications for late Ottoman epistemological transformations. In this essay, I will discuss the underexplored themes of the 1898 debate on "the Arab sciences" in tandem with Cahit's Servet-i Fünun essays to make a case for the connections between the late Ottoman imperial vision and the emergence of "aesthetics" as a literary-scientific paradigm in Turkish. Cahit wrote his essay as a polemic against Veled Çelebi who, using the pen name "Bahai," published in the same year an essay titled "There Are Many Sciences to Be Gained from the Arabs" [Arap'tan Pek Çok İstifade Edeceğimiz Ulum Var]. Veled Çelebi was an Ottoman philologist and translator who was well-versed in Arabic, Persian, and Turkish. In the essay that triggered the 1898 debate, he suggests that Turkish intellectuals replace their age-old Persian influence with the principles of the Arab scholarly tradition. Within the frame of comparison that structures his essay, "the Arab sciences"-ranging from
Monograf, 2022
In this article, I examine modernist author Vüs'at O. Bener as a political author. Focusing on th... more In this article, I examine modernist author Vüs'at O. Bener as a political author. Focusing on the figuration of "sick" and "schizoid" subjects in his novels, Buzul Çağının Virüsü (1984) and Bay Muannit Sahtegi'nin Notları (1991), as well as some of his shorter texts, I assert that these texts probe the question of subjectivity as a question of health by challenging both in form and content the distinction between inner world and exterior world, individual concern and collective concern, private history and public history. The appearance of the act of writing in these texts as an impasse, but at the same time as a way-out, having not only personal but also political significations, I further argue, is a symptom of this problematization of subjectivity. I ultimately aim to show that Bener's texts provide productive cases to rethink the relationship between literature and politics in the contexts of both Turkish modernism and "third-world literature."
“Ben Buradan Okuyorum,” hosted by Hasan Turgut (Açık Radyo, 06/2022)