scholarly journals Istanbul as Palimpsest: The Black Book as a Postmodernist Representation of Turkish History and Culture

2021 ◽  
Vol 9 (2) ◽  
pp. 158-167
Author(s):  
Aneesa Ayanee

Orhan Pamuk’s novel, The Black Book is a postmodern chronicle of Turkey in which the author uses the structure of a detective novel to delineate the themes of identity, culture and hybridity. The paper aims to depict how Pamuk foregrounds that identities are never determinate but are forever eluding by presenting a love triangle which disappears underneath a mystical quest for one’s true self. Galip’s assuming the persona of his alter-ego, Celal; Prince Osman’s pursuit of true knowledge through reading diverse books and ultimately rejecting them; and Bedii Usta’s disillusion with the State for disapproving the mannequins, all represent the interlacing of cultures and interdependence of identities in contemporary Turkey. Moreover, in the novel, the rich Ottoman tradition and Islamic literature are also revisited in a postmodern light so as to present the allegorical and political connotations inherent in them. The paper also examines how the novel portrays the forced westernization and erasure of history and memories through the use of film ekphrasis to highlight how the Turkish citizens were lured by the Western cinema and indoctrinated about the superiority of the West so as to generate in them a sense of anxiety about their identities.

This paper explores Jonathan Wilson’s A Palestine Affair (2003), reflecting on the parallels between its underlying logic on one hand and the illogic of liberal Zionism and the state of Israel on the other hand. The paper revolves around the rationalizing, detective apparatus deployed in the novel both thematically and formally. More specifically, it dwells on the ways in which the form of the novel buttresses its ideological underpinnings, or rather its content. I argue that the form selected by the writer; that is, the detective novel, mirrors the Zionist quest for colonizing Palestine, especially in the context of Jerusalem. I further suggest that by means of detection, Jerusalem is familiarized in the text so much so that readers might think of it as a new London, with the “here” of Britain expanded and its cultural incorporation into the Zionist imaginary facilitated. That familiarity obfuscates and negates the presence of Palestinians in Jerusalem and Palestine at large, who are mostly portrayed as marginal, inconsequential, and criminal characters. At the same time, the novel gives rise to an alternative creative, detective vision that does not necessarily entail the use of typical methods of detection, a vision that mirrors the Zionist conquest, especially in its so-called liberal form. Employing what I call counter-detection, I aim to excavate the problematic aspects of both detection and creative detection (detection through indirection) and show their complicity with the conquest of Palestine through paying close attention to the writer’s Zionization of the artist on whose life the protagonist is modelled.


Al-Burz ◽  
2019 ◽  
Vol 11 (1) ◽  
pp. 21-31
Author(s):  
Jaffar Shah ◽  
Ghulam Rasool ◽  
Zia-ur-Rehman

Magic Realism refers to the method of describing reality in a mythical, magical and supernatural version of the indigenous cultures. This paper highlights the significance of the tool of Magic Realism with reference to Gabriel Garcia Marquez’s One Hundred Years of Solitude as a fantastic literary form employed by the writer to present his culture, society and political history. Reality combined with magical elements, this paper has Magic Realism as theoretical framework to prove how Gabriel Garcia Marquez manipulates this tool to tell the reality of his national history, colonialism, and post-colonialism period. Employing the tool of Magic Realism, the writing is all about troubles, loss and death in the Colombia. The intention is to combine fantastic in order to present his Colombia, where myths and modern inventions are part of the same environment; where the indigenous culture has not been subdued by the advent of modern technology. The writer of the novel also wants his people to acquire true knowledge in lieu of mere imitation of the West. The main source of the data in this paper was literature review that helped identify the gap. This paper is meant to bridge the gap identified through the literature. The specific objective is to ascertain as to how Magic Realism has been employed by Gabriel Garcia Marquez in One Hundred Years of Solitude so as to stick to the truth of his national history.


2019 ◽  
Vol 10 (5) ◽  
pp. 120
Author(s):  
Nfon Rita Gola

This paper looks at globalization, civil societies and their extensions, NGOs, as forces of development within the contemporary global era through the prism of Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie’s Half of a Yellow Sun, The Thing Around Your Neck and Americanah. In these texts, the above forces have eroded both ideological and geopolitical boundaries for the betterment of humanity. The centrality of the state, with regards to state development, has been questioned by civil society activism. Civil society agencies, especially, NGOs, the paper posits, have become players in governance−an activity generally reserved for the state. The paper views the flux in state and civil society borders as a part of the shifts in the borders of most of the once outstanding binary pairs−the west and the non-west, the whites and the blacks, as well as the rich and the poor. These are positive shifts that are integral to the present mix in which humanity now exists. The works I analyze market this blend in that Adichie’s characters, no matter where they find themselves, move away from fixed ways of doing things and get connected with the supposed others for humanistic purposes. Globalization theory is used to underline the extent to which the ‘self’ and ‘other’ concepts disappear when it comes to development issues in the postcolony. The paper seeks to answer two basic questions, namely; is the proliferation of civil societies, especially NGOs, the result of the globalization phenomenon or the cause of the globalization process? How has globalization, civil societies and NGOs developed Nigeria, in particular, and Africa in general? It premises the civil society as a trajectory of the globalisation process with a positive outcome from the perspective that its various forms have encouraged and facilitated the spread of humanitarian considerations for the purpose of development.


2021 ◽  
Vol 3 (8) ◽  
pp. 113-121
Author(s):  
Tanmoy Mazumder

A literary text can be a propagator of values- both explicitly and implicitly. As Edward Said claims in his book, Orientalism (1978), for centuries Eurocentrism pervades Western literary pieces; they somehow justify and/or uplift European values and perspectives as superior ones while portraying lands, people and cultures of the colonized nations elsewhere, especially in the East. Sometimes, it may become more oblique as the apparent issues dominating the text seem to be something very different, but the writing, however, in the undercurrent, portrays things in a Eurocentric way, often by “othering” the non-Europeans. Said famously terms, this process of creation of an alter ego of the West in the East as “Orientalism”. Graham Greene’s novel, The Heart of the Matter (1948), set in West Africa’s Sierra Leone, a then British colony during WWII, summons rethinking of its presentation of the non-White people and the land of Africa. This study would like to take the focus away from the dominating themes of religion, sin, pity, mercy, responsibility, love, etc. in this piece of fiction to assess its underlying colonial issues which often go unnoticed. The novel portrays a variety of characters- both the British colonizers and the colonial subjects- though the roles and space occupied by the non-British characters are mostly marginal. The “Whites” are portrayed sympathetically, whereas the “non-Whites” are presented as evil, naïve, weak and mystic. This study, thus, argues that the portrayal of Africa (Sierra Leone), the Africans, and the major “non-White” characters in the novel, in contrast to the empathetic presentation of the major “White” European characters, indicate an obvious “othering” of “non-Whites” and the marginalization of non-Europeans in the narrative of the novel. The paper further opines that this process of “othering” and marginalization underlines the operation of an underlying Eurocentric attitude in the representation of the Europeans and non-Europeans in Greene’s fiction.


2003 ◽  
pp. 66-76
Author(s):  
I. Dezhina ◽  
I. Leonov

The article is devoted to the analysis of the changes in economic and legal context for commercial application of intellectual property created under federal budgetary financing. Special attention is given to the role of the state and to comparison of key elements of mechanisms for commercial application of intellectual property that are currently under implementation in Russia and in the West. A number of practical suggestions are presented aimed at improving government stimuli to commercialization of intellectual property created at budgetary expense.


2013 ◽  
Vol 3 (2) ◽  
pp. 161-183
Author(s):  
Mary L. Mullen

This article considers the politics and aesthetics of the colonial Bildungsroman by reading George Moore's often-overlooked novel A Drama in Muslin (1886). It argues that the colonial Bildungsroman does not simply register difference from the metropolitan novel of development or express tension between the core and periphery, as Jed Esty suggests, but rather can imagine a heterogeneous historical time that does not find its end in the nation-state. A Drama in Muslin combines naturalist and realist modes, and moves between Ireland and England to construct a form of untimely development that emphasises political processes (dissent, negotiation) rather than political forms (the state, the nation). Ultimately, the messy, discordant history represented in the novel shows the political potential of anachronism as it celebrates the untimeliness of everyday life.


2018 ◽  
Vol 56 (3) ◽  
pp. 42-46
Author(s):  
Barbara Bothová

What is an underground? Is it possible to embed this particular way of life into any definition? After all, even underground did not have the need to define itself at the beginning. The presented text represents a brief reflection of the development of underground in Czechoslovakia; attention is paid to the impulses from the West, which had a significant influence on the underground. The text focuses on the key events that influenced the underground. For example, the “Hairies (Vlasatci)” Action, which took place in 1966, and the State Security activity in Rudolfov in 1974. The event in Rudolfov was an imaginary landmark and led to the writing of a manifesto that came into history as the “Report on the Third Czech Musical Revival.”


2016 ◽  
Vol 1 (1) ◽  
pp. 85-97
Author(s):  
Moh. Ah. Subhan ZA

The main problem of social life in the community is about how to make the allocation and distribution of income well. Inequality and poverty basically arise not because of the difference of anyone’s strength and weakness in getting livelihood, but because of inappropriate distribution mechanism. With the result that wealth treasure just turns on the rich wealthy, which is in turn, results in the rich get richer and the poor get poorer.Therefore, a discussion on distribution becomes main focus of theory of Islamic economics. Moreover, the discussion of the distribution is not only related to economic issues, but also social and political aspects. On the other side, the economic vision of Islam gives priority to the guarantee of the fulfillment of a better life. Islam emphasizes distributive justice and encloses, in its system, a program for the redistribution of wealth and prosperity, so that each individual is guaranteed with a respectable and friendly standard of living. Islam recognizes private property rights, but the private property rights must be properly distributed. The personal property is used for self and family livelihood, for investment of the working capital, so that it can provide job opportunities for others, for help of the others through zakat, infaq, and shodaqoh. In this way, the wealth not only rotates on the rich, bringing on gap in social life.The problem of wealth distribution is closely related to the welfare of society. Therefore, the state has a duty to regulate the distribution of income in order that the distribution can be fair and reaches appropriate target. The state could at least attempt it by optimizing the role of BAZ (Badan Amil Zakat) and LAZ (Lembaga Amil Zakat) which has all this time been slack. If BAZ and LAZ can be optimized, author believes that inequality and poverty over time will vanish. This is because the majority of Indonesia's population is Muslim.


2020 ◽  
Vol 2020 (10-2) ◽  
pp. 86-98
Author(s):  
Ivan Popov

The paper deals with the organization and decisions of the conference of the Minister-Presidents of German lands in Munich on June 6-7, 1947, which became the one and only meeting of the heads of the state governments of the western and eastern occupation zones before the division of Germany. The conference was the first experience of national positioning of the regional elite and clearly demonstrated that by the middle of 1947, not only between the allies, but also among German politicians, the incompatibility of perspectives of further constitutional development was existent and all the basic conditions for the division of Germany became ripe. Munich was the last significant demonstration of this disunity and the moment of the final turn towards the three-zone orientation of the West German elite.


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