The autobiography of Odysseus: Odysseus as storyteller
NAZİYE KALAYCI
Homer’s epic of Odyssey is a prominent work for discussing the emergence of the political community in its accomplishments and impasses. The new community that emerged in the aftermath of a series of conflicts and compliances acquires a form thanks to a myriad of relations developed by Odysseus on his journey throughout ancient Mediterranean with various creatures. The antagonisms between the civilized and the savage, reason and passion, science and magic, the Self and the Other, city and nature, earth and sea, the old and the new, the future and the past are all channeled in a direction by way of Odysseus. The Odyssey is also important in that the narrator steps back to let the protagonist speak for himself, and in this first autobiographical poem of the written period the life story is presented as an imperative for identity construction. Odysseus’ transformation by his passing through various models of the self has also defined Hellenic identity, and this is accomplished with the help of the “narrative”. It is a narrative where identity building is made possible through autobiography, and autobiography is made possible through affecting the surrounding world. This article aims to discuss the Odyssey as an autobiographical work, and examine the various answers given by Odysseus to the mnemonic question: “Who are you?” Changes in Odysseus’ identifications as he proceeds from Nobody to “I”, from “I” to We, from We to Himself, from Himself to Him will be significant for understanding the relationship between identity construction and autobiography, and also for considering the possibilities and impasses embodied in different constructions. The article will conclude with the argument that a “true” autobiography can only be completed by “an Other”.
Keywords: Odysseus, autobiograpghy, identity, prophecy, Levinas, Arendt, Ricoeur, Malabou.
Contributions of feminist biography to literary historiography
ZEYNEP TEK
This article explores how feminist biography can challenge the traditional approaches to literary historiography heretofore dominated by a male voice. The main focus of the study is on the potential contributions of writing biographies of Muslim-Turkish women poets and writers from the Ottoman and Republican eras through a feminist perspective. However, initially, the importance of examining anti-feminist writers and the publishing world from a feminist gaze is emphasized. Studies that focus on the history of the patriarchal institutionalization of literature will highlight the strategies that have peripheralized women while also underlying aspects of literary history that are male-dominated. Writing women’s biographies from a gender lens allows us to question and transform the criteria, categories, and canons of literary historiography. The section on this topic is structured under three subheadings. The first discusses how feminist biographers approach the lives of women on issues such as objectivity-subjectivity, data use, historicization, generalization, and definitional frameworks in research and writing. The second looks at how biographies of literary women and feminist activists could open up new horizons in literary historiography through a gender perspective. Finally, the third draws attention to how the works of women writers are structured in temporal and spatial ways within patriarchal societies. Therefore, by making use of feminist biographies including analysis of literary works, the article aims to provide critical perspectives against mainstream literary historiography.
Keywords: feminist biography, Turkish literary historiography, women’s literature, anti-feminist literature, gender.
The revolutionaries of the 1970s: A collection of memory
TANIL BORA
This article, which serves as a presentation of a prosopography study based on the recollections of socialist revolutionaries in Turkey during the 1970s, examines the leftist memory literature pertaining to that period. It questions the “memory conjuncture,” that is, under what conditions and when this memory emerged, and who the narrators were. It also looks at these subjects’ discussions on the “ethics of memory.” It discusses what kind of remembering it is, what kind of reckoning it leads to (or fails to lead to), and tendencies toward nostalgia.
Keywords: Left, 1970s, facing the past, memory, nostalgia.
Alternative historiography, the models of psycho-political journey, obituarial discourses, and national mourning in Kurdish bio-fictions
AHMET ATAŞ
As a genre based on the biographies of actual historical figures, biofiction comprises an important branch of both modern Western and postcolonial literature. Whereas contemporary Western biofictions are predominantly informed by the “celebrity culture,” postcolonial biofictions often focus on marginalized lives to both make critical historical rectifications and offer important insights into postcolonial agency. Biofiction is one of the literary genres frequently used by Kurdish authors in line with their postcolonial agenda. The representational investments of the Kurdish authors in actual lives span a broad spectrum, ranging from epic national heroes to classical Kurdish poets, from famous national bards (dengbej) to political figures; however, the lives they predominantly concentrate on are 20th century Kurdish political lives. With its distinct focus on the lives of Kurdish political figures often marginalized in the dominant Turkish historiography, Kurdish biofiction shares a broad cultural agenda with postcolonial biofiction; in exploring postcolonial lives, it concurrently offers alternative historiographies and engages in the construction of national affective economies. Focusing on Kurdish biographical novels that offer fictionalized versions of the biographies of 20th-century Kurdish political figures, this article examines the historiographical practices, methods of canonization, models of psycho-political journey, obituarial discourses, and enactments of national mourning in Kurdish biofiction. Through a critical reading of four biographical novels from Kurdish literature, the study explores the revisional potentials of Kurdish biofiction literature as well as its ideological handicaps, ethical dilemmas, and aesthetic ability and limitations.
Keywords: Kurdish biofiction, postcolonial biofiction, historiography, canonization, postcolonial subjectivity, obituary discourses, national mourning.
Lives intersecting in an arbitrary terra incognita: American anthropologists in 1960s Turkey
ALİ SİPAHİ
This article documents the rise and fall of interest in Turkey within American (and to a lesser extent Norwegian) anthropology in the late 1960s through the personal trajectories of its practitioners. Focusing on eight scholars who conducted longterm ethnographic fieldwork in different regions of Turkey during the same years, the research narrates the story of the formation and subsequent decline of academic networks, drawing on archival sources and oral history interviews. Shaped by a group biography approach, this narrative aims to blend subjective paths with the historical context of the academic interest in question. This collective story brings together a series of Turkey studies, little known in the literature or characterized by entirely different features, as parts of a common historical moment. Contributing to the history of anthropology in Turkey, this article also sheds light on field selection practices in American anthropology in the 1960s.
Keywords: American anthropology, group biography, history of science, Turkish studies, 1968, Cold War.
Collective helplessness, individual solutions: Pre-disaster mobility in the context of earthquake risk in Istanbul
SUDE ŞİMŞEK - DİDEM DANIŞ
This article examines the effects of earthquake risk in Istanbul on social perceptions and individual decisions, discussing them through the concept of “pre-disaster mobility.” Drawing on the literature of disaster sociology, migration sociology, and risk society, the study reveals that the earthquake threat shapes everyday life not only in the post-disaster period but also beforehand. Interviews conducted with actors from different social groups living in Istanbul demonstrate how strongly risk perception influences individuals’ spatial strategies. The findings show that the earthquake threat not only leads individuals to limited measures such as preparing an emergency kit or making a disaster plan, but also pushes them toward deeper and more radical solutions, particularly relocation. Two key dynamics emerge in this process. On the one hand, a strong sense of “collective helplessness” is felt throughout society, while on the other hand, individuals develop “individual solutions”
by moving to areas they perceive as safe within the limits of their resources. However, these individual escape routes intersect with social inequalities: whereas wealthier groups have the means to move to relatively safer neighborhoods or even other cities (i.e. out-migration from Istanbul), lower-income groups cannot act to the same extent. The article emphasizes that pre-disaster mobility is a social phenomenon observed at the intersection of neoliberal individualization and an environment of insecurity. In this framework, the case of Istanbul illustrates how disaster risk transforms the social fabric and brings to light the tension between individual strategies and collective emotions.
Keywords: Pre-disaster mobility, out-migration from Istanbul, earthquake risk, collective helplessness, neoliberal individualization.
ABSTRACT (İngilizce Özetler)
ABSTRACT (İngilizce Özetler)
