Blurring the Boundaries: The East-West Predicament in Pamuk’s a Strangeness in My Mind (original) (raw)
Related papers
2015
Catharina Brameswari (2015). The Irony of Turkish Modern Identity: Oscillation of the East and the West in Pamuk's My Name is Red and The White Castle. Yogyakarta: English Language Studies, Graduate Study, Sanata Dharma University. This research uses Orhan Pamuk's My Name is Red and The White Castle, in order to reveal the tension between the East and the West that is mostly present in Pamuk's works as well as to uncover how modernity, which is represented by Western art, culture, science, and technology, challenges Turkey's tradition, culture, art, and identity. Since the Ottoman Empire, modernity that is represented by the West has become a threat as well as seduction. Moreover, I employed the method of library research in dismantling Pamuk's selected works that highlight the endless oscillation by presenting the internal struggle experienced by the characters whether to leave the old Ottoman tradition or to embrace the modern Western tradition. This thesis deals with two issues namely the oscillation of the East and the West and the complex desire to imitate others in Orhan Pamuk's My Name is Red and The White Castle as well as the solutions that Pamuk's selected stories offer to the predicament of the oscillation of the East and the West. In dealing with those two issues, this study employs Edward Said's discourse on Orientalism and Homi Bhabha's discourse on Postcolonialism. These two discourses are used to illustrate the oscillation of the East and the West and the complex desire to imitate the Others as well as to illuminate the solutions offered by Pamuk's selected oeuvre. Since the two novels are rich of Turkey's historical aspects, therefore, the additional information on Turkey's history, art, painting, and its socio-condition in the 16 th and 17 th century are presented. This study shows that Turkey, which is depicted by Pamuk in My Name is Red and The White Castle, experiences the oscillation between being enchanted to the West and being drawn to its tradition. Cosmopolitanism, as the result of the encounter between the East and the West, has led to an attraction and later the appropriation of the Italian Renaissance art and European technology and science. However, there are an individual and groups that keep and preserve the Ottoman art and tradition. Additionally, this predicament of the oscillation also leads to the identity crisis that is experienced by Pamuk's characters. Dealing with the illustrated problems, this study finds that in his two novels, Pamuk does not give any clear solutions to the predicament of the oscillation of the East and the West. Through the characters, Pamuk wants to emphasize his position for not taking sides, his critique to the representatives of the East and the West, and his background as a writer in presenting hybridity in his works. Finally, the future researcher can explore more on women struggle and position in the Islamic world as well as the identity formation as an interesting topic using Sufism for identity formation is the key point in its teaching.
The Ottoman Istanbul Culture of Ambivalence in Orhan Pamuk’s Novel, The White Castle
International Journal of English Language, Literature in Humanities (IJELLH), 2017
This paper focuses on Orhan Pamuk’s novel, The White Castle, exploring the tropes of ‘ambivalence’ in the East-West discourse in Turkish culture. The paper analyses the novel against the backdrop of the East-West discourse drawing on Bhabha’s concept of mimicry, liminality and ambivalence. The novel, which is in the form of a centuries old manuscript of Ottoman Turkey proves helpful in understanding the clash of European and Ottoman culture and the result emanating therefrom. The novel also sheds light on the how Pamuk draws a contrast and comparison of the late Twentieth Century Istanbul with that of the Seventeenth Century Anatolia tracking the roots of the East-West relationship through centuries. The paper therefore discusses in detail the effect of the complex relationship between the Anatolian and the European cultures. It discusses the love and hatred between Turkish and the Western cultures that has been prevalent in the region since ages, the resultant of which is deducted in this paper as “ambivalence” in the Turkish culture and identity.
Writing as if in the Center: World Literature and Orhan Pamuk’s Istanbul: Memories and the City
Turkish Academic Studies, 2020
The scholarship on world literature has often used a center/periphery model and analyzed how Orhan Pamuk’s works have been received by different cultures, especially the Western. Rather than analyzing Pamuk’s reception in other cultures, this study will examine how Pamuk overlooks and even sometimes undermines the hierarchies that shape the international literary domain by writing “as if in the center.” As a case study, a close reading of Orhan Pamuk’s Istanbul: Memories and the City (İstanbul: Hatıralar ve Şehir, 2003) will be given and the narrative techniques that Pamuk uses to upend the center/periphery dynamics will be examined. This article argues that Pamuk transforms elements that threatened to marginalize Istanbul, such as the Western gaze, into sources that nourish his artistic vision that endows Istanbul with a central status. The first section demonstrates that although Istanbul was marginalized within the international realm, Pamuk describes the act of writing as a means to endow Istanbul with a central status. It points out that Pamuk generates his vision of the city through a process that this study calls interweaving or artistic translation. The second section shows that the writer uses different mediums such as photography and painting to foreground the complexity of the city. Furthermore, it will claim that Ara Güler’s photos that are used throughout Istanbul further enriches Pamuk’s work by not always confirming Pamuk’s observations and sometimes even contradicting with them. The final section examines Pamuk’s perspectives on the Western gaze. Pamuk notes that the European gaze becomes a source of nourishment rather than a threat. He writes about the shortcomings of Edward Said’s theories and criticizes the tendency to view East and West as two well-defined regions.
The Narration on Istanbul by Orhan Pamuk: The Black Book
2019
Orhan Pamuk, who is one of the most well-known storytellers, uses the relationship between a character’s feelings and place descriptions about İstanbul. This quite often makes his novels subjects of architectural literary analysis. Pamuk strongly dwells on the city of İstanbul as background in his novels on account of his own life experiences. This paper aims to understand how Orhan Pamuk reflects İstanbul in The Black Book. The novel tells the story of the era before the military coup in 1980. Due to the socio-political environment, İstanbul was being transformed. However, as a postmodernist writer, Pamuk has seen previous periods of İstanbul so he reflects on his nostalgic feelings that İstanbul should not have changed. Being constructed as a multidirectional and sophisticated narrative layer, İstanbul is the most powerful theme in the novel while the way Pamuk writes about İstanbul is connected with his feelings and life experiences. Different regions within Nişantaşı, a well-kno...
My paper focuses on how the general predicament and indecision of Turkish society about east-west conflict in modernization debate is symbolized, characterized and criticized by Peyami Safa in the novel of Fatih-Harbiye. I will analyze how westernization was understood and what kind of criticisms made by Peyami Safa through examining symbolic representations that the novel of Fatih-Harbiye includes. I will be focusing on Turkish modernization and its relation with west and westernization by exploring particular features of characters, events, conversations and descriptions made by Safa in the novel. As stated in Fatih-Harbiye; I argue that in Turkish modernization there is always indecision about what we as a society should apply in terms of eastern or western values as a true way of modernization. Related with this argument Safa clearly indicates that we should protect our traditional and eastern values in modernization process against extreme and formalistic westernization which are accepted as wrong westernization by Peyami Safa himself.
2018
The two most well-known works of Orhan Pamuk, The White Castle and My Name is Red, are historical fiction set in the time of the Ottoman Empire. These novels represent some of the most common issues the novelist focuses on, such as the East-West binary, questions of cultural identity and differences, and possibilities of local and global co-existence. In this article, by focusing on the case of The White Castle, Pamuk's life, his Nobel prize acceptance and his controversial statements in international press, I examine how a Turkish-born, Muslim novelist portrays Islamic history and the Ottomans predominantly for the European gaze and argue that Pamuk's historical narrative borrows considerably from the legacy of European Orientalist writings.
Süheyla Nil Mustafa. (2013). “Turk’s Ever-Lasting Quest For Identity: An Analysis Of Turkish Modernization Through A.H. Tanpınar Novels.” Global Media Journal Turkish Edition, volume 4/7, (pp.170-186)., 2013
ABSTRACT This article aims to provide a discussion on the nature of the identification process of the individual in general and on that of the Turkish national identity in particular through the exploration of the great Turkish author, Ahmet Hamdi Tanpınar’s literary works. This study illustrates that Tanpınar differs significantly from the early Republican authors of his time by the competence of his conceptualization of identity issue besides his artistic mastery. Moreover the author’s conceptualization of identity catches the intellectual level of the contemporary poststructuralist thinkers who show that identity as a sign or process of signification which is subject to constant transformation. In this respect, the article also offers discussions on the differences of the conceptualization of identity between Tanpınar and the early Republican thinkers and on the similarities between him and contemporary poststructuralist thinkers. It is argued that such an inquisition into the Tanpınar’s works provide us a more competent understanding of the nature of the Turkish national identity and its conditions of its possibility, that is to say the Turkish modernization process. Key Words: identity, Turkish modernization, Ahmet Hamdi Tanpınar, early republican period, poststructuralism Türk’ün Dinmeyen Kimlik Arayışı: A.H. Tanpınar Romanları Üzerinden Türk Modernleşmesinin Bir Değerlendirmesi ÖZET Bu makale büyük Türk yazarı, Ahmet Hamdi Tanpınar’ın edebi eserlerinin incelenmesi yoluyla genelde bireyin kimlik edinme sürecinin, özelde ise Türk milli kimliğinin doğası üzerine bir tartışma sunmayı amaçlamaktadır. Bu çalışma, Tanpınar’ın dönemindeki erken Cumhuriyet yazarlarından sanatsal ustalığının yanısıra kimlik meselesini kavramsallaştırmasındaki yetkinliği ile de önemli derecede ayrıldığını göstermektedir. Ayrıca yazarın kimlik kavramsallaştırması, bir işaret veya anlamlandırma süreci olarak kimliğin sürekli değişime maruz kaldığını gösteren günümüz postyapısalcı düşünürlerin entellektüel seviyesini yakalamaktadır. Bu bağlamda, makale Tanpınar ve erken Cumhuriyet dönemi yazarlarının kimlik kavramsallaştırmasındaki farklılıklarına ve onunla günümüz post yapısalcı düşünürlerin benzerliklerine dair tartışmalar da sunmaktadır. Tanpınar’ın eserlerinin böyle derinlemesine bir incelemesinin, Türk ulusal kimliğinin doğasına ve bu kimliğin oluşabilme koşulu olan Türk modernleşme sürecine dair daha yetkin bir anlayış sağlayacağı iddia edilmektedir. Anahtar Sözcükler: kimlik, Türk modernleşmesi, Ahmet Hamdi Tanpınar, erken cumhuriyet dönemi, post yapısalcılık
Süheyla Nil Moustafa. Re-Articulation of the Sign of Turkish National Identity through the Discursive Performances of the Arab Other: The Case of Arabs in Batman. Unpublished Master's Thesis. Social Science Institute. Boğaziçi University, 2006., 2006
ABSTRACT This thesis aims to provide an elaborated understanding of the concept of national identity through an exploration of the cultural identities of the Arab community in Batman and the consolidation of the Arab communal identity with the Turkish national identity. Concepts of national identity which are proposed by the dominant theories of nation and nationalism, that is, ethno-symbolist and modernist theories of nation and nationalism are criticized in terms of the evidence provided by the ethnographic study of Arabs in Batman. In contrast to the ethno-symbolist and modernist understanding of the concept of national identity, a new conceptual framework which provides a complex analysis of national identity is established by the introduction of post-structuralist theories of discourse into the study of national identity.Following this framework it is claimed that national identity is a process of signification or a sign which is unstable, shifting, hybrid and multiple. Although the modernist argument, that is, national identity is constructed is accepted, it is claimed against the modernist viewpoint that nationals are not only the objects of the imagination of nation but they are at the same time the subjects who imagine the nation.As they appropriate the national identity, nationals themselves tailor the imagination of nation and national identity in their own ways with respect to the cultural identities of their communities. Hence national identity has the function of constructing the nation, while it is also being constructed by the nationals in different times and localities of the nation. The study analyzes social imaginary of the Arab community in terms of the definitions of the Arab community by the members of the community and outlines the elements of the Arab communal identity. The unstable, hybrid and shifting nature of national identity is illustrated through the analyses of the renarrations of the Turkish national narratives by the Arabs with their inclusion of the Arab identity into the definition of Turkish national identity.