Islam and the Limits of Translation: Orhan Pamuk and the Ottoman Revival

2020 ◽  
pp. 215-259
Author(s):  
Karim Mattar
Keyword(s):  
Religious Identity ◽  
The United States ◽  
Translation Theory ◽  
The Novel ◽  
Black Book ◽  
Aesthetics And Politics ◽  
Culturally Specific ◽  
The Face ◽  
Orhan Pamuk ◽  
Anglo American

This chapter addresses the carefully (self-)cultivated image of Orhan Pamuk as a worldly, cosmopolitan, and secular-liberal writer. This image, I argue, has come to define the aesthetics and politics, the ethos, of his novels in their worldly reception, and has functioned to undermine the nature and extent of his engagement with the local (especially his native city, Istanbul, and its Ottoman, Islamic heritage). I trace this argument through a sustained focus on The Black Book as this novel has been translated and read in Britain and the United States. Drawing on translation theory, I show that both English versions of the novel are unable to capture the logic and significance of Pamuk’s culturally-specific use of language, and have influenced its Anglo-American (mis)reading as a postmodernist work. In my counter-reading, I argue that anything but a postmodernist deconstruction of myths of national and religious identity, The Black Book in fact comprises an evocation of Istanbul’s Ottoman, Islamic heritage in the face of a Turkish secular modernity by which this heritage was historically repressed. I detail this argument through close attention to Pamuk’s treatment of Sufism and Hurufism. The Black Book, I conclude, inscribes what I call “cultural neo-Ottomanism” as form.

scholarly journals Vitoria, Suárez, and Grotius: James Brown Scott’s Enduring Revival

Grotiana ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 41 (1) ◽  
pp. 137-162
Author(s):  
Mark Somos ◽  
Joshua Smeltzer
Keyword(s):  
International Law ◽  
American Exceptionalism ◽  
The United States ◽  
Foreign Affairs ◽  
United States Constitution ◽  
Institutional Work ◽  
Hugo Grotius ◽  
American Hegemony ◽  
The Face ◽  
Anglo American

This article recovers James Brown Scott’s conviction in American exceptionalism, a belief that underlay both his institutional work as well as his understanding of the origins and trajectory of international law. In the first section, we discuss Scott’s interpretation of Hugo Grotius as part of his tactic to make US foreign affairs policies and perspectives more compelling by presenting them as universal. In the second section, we argue that Scott’s writings on the Spanish origins of international law were in fact meant to protect Anglo-American hegemony and US influence in the Americas in the face of rapidly changing geopolitical pressures. In the final section we suggest that Scott’s US exceptionalism is reflected in his use of the United States Constitution and Supreme Court as a model for key international organizations. We conclude that Scott reframed Vitoria not to redress American bias but to enshrine it.

Orhan Pamuk and the Limits of Translation: Foreignizing The Black Book for World Literature

2014 ◽  
Vol 23 (1) ◽  
pp. 42-67 ◽  
Author(s):  
Karim Mattar
Keyword(s):  
Case Studies ◽  
English Translation ◽  
World Literature ◽  
Local History ◽  
Translation Theory ◽  
The Novel ◽  
Black Book ◽  
Sociology Of Translation ◽  
English Translations ◽  
Linguistic Categories

This article questions the often all-too-readily adduced arguments and methodologies of translation theory with reference to the English translations of Orhan Pamuk's novel The Black Book as exemplary case studies. It argues that domestication and foreignization are problematic as linguistic categories. It then seeks to rework such intuitively forceful terms for a sociology of translation, suggesting that they regain their coherence when directed towards questions of reception. The reception of The Black Book in English translation has been dominated by domesticating readings that minimize or neglect Pamuk's engagement with local history in favour of stock categorizations of the novel in terms of postmodernism. Against such readings, a ‘foreignizing reading strategy’ is proposed, one that seeks to restore to interpretation something of Pamuk's engagement with the local, especially his treatment of Sufism and Hurufism. Translation theory, it is urged, can be more effectively and universally applied in literary studies when directed towards literary sociology rather than linguistic comparison.

scholarly journals THE MOTIVE OF SEARCH IN THE NOVEL “THE BLACK BOOK” BY ORHAN PAMUK

2018 ◽  
pp. 235-238
Author(s):  
Elena Aleksandrovna Gruzdeva ◽  
◽  
Alsu Hadievna Vafina ◽  
Keyword(s):  
The Novel ◽  
Black Book ◽  
Orhan Pamuk

scholarly journals The IGNITE Trial: Participant Recruitment Lessons Prior to SARS-CoV-2

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Eric D. Vidoni ◽  
Amanda Szabo-Reed ◽  
Chaeryon Kang ◽  
Jaime Perales-Puchalt ◽  
Ashley R. Shaw ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Large Scale ◽  
The United States ◽  
Phase Iii ◽  
Trial Participant ◽  
The Novel ◽  
Brain Health ◽  
Challenges And Opportunities ◽  
Phase Iii Trials ◽  
The Face ◽  
Comprehensive Test

AbstractFull and diverse participant enrollment is critical to the success and generalizability of all large-scale Phase III trials. Recruitment of sufficient participants is among the most significant challenges for many studies. The novel SARS-CoV-2 coronavirus pandemic has further changed and challenged the landscape for clinical trial execution, including screening and randomization. The Investigating Gains in Neurocognition in an Intervention Trial of Exercise (IGNITE) study has been designed as the most comprehensive test of aerobic exercise effects on cognition and brain health. Here we assess recruitment into IGNITE prior to the increased infection rates in the United States, and examine new challenges and opportunities for recruitment with a goal of informing the remaining required recruitment as infection containment procedures are lifted. The results may assist the design and implementation of recruitment for future exercise studies, and outline opportunities for study design that are flexible in the face of emerging threats.

scholarly journals Bergamo and Covid-19: How the Dark Can Turn to Light

2021 ◽  
Vol 8 ◽  
Author(s):  
Norberto Perico ◽  
Stefano Fagiuoli ◽  
Fabiano Di Marco ◽  
Andrea Laghi ◽  
Roberto Cosentini ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Latin American ◽  
The United States ◽  
Natural Immunity ◽  
The Novel ◽  
Local Organization ◽  
Containment Measures ◽  
The Face ◽  
Novel Coronavirus ◽  
Second Wave

The novel coronavirus, SARS-CoV-2, continues to spread rapidly. Here we discuss the dramatic situation created by COVID-19 in Italy, particularly in the province of Bergamo (the most severely affected in the first wave), as an example of how, in the face of an unprecedented tragedy, acting (albeit belatedly)—including imposing a very strict lockdown—can largely resolve the situation within approximately 2 months. The measures taken here ensured that Bergamo hospital, which was confronted with rapidly rising numbers of severely ill COVID-19 patients requiring hospitalization, was able to meet the initial challenges of the pandemic. We also report that local organization and, more important, the large natural immunity against SARS-CoV-2 of the Bergamo population developed during the first wave of the epidemic, can explain the limited number of new COVID-19 cases during the more recent second wave compared to the numbers in other areas of Lombardy. Furthermore, we highlight the importance of coordinating the easing of containment measures to avoid what is currently observed in other countries, especially in the United States, Latin American and India, where this approach has not been adopted, and a dramatic resurgence of COVID-19 cases and an increase in the number of hospitalisations and deaths have been reported.

scholarly journals Metafysiske tegn. Skønlitteratur som religionsvidenskabeligt objekt

2003 ◽  
Author(s):  
Inge Liengaard
Keyword(s):  
Cultural Identity ◽  
The Novel ◽  
Black Book ◽  
Islamic Tradition ◽  
Narrative Structures ◽  
Turkish Culture ◽  
The Common ◽  
East And West ◽  
Orhan Pamuk ◽  
The Many

Analysing The Black Book, a novel by the contemporary Turkish writer Orhan Pamuk, this paper suggests that fiction can serve as an illuminating source in understanding one of the many roles that religion can play for modern man. Pamuk´s literary perspective is aesthetic and he disagrees with an essentialistic way of understanding and defining personal or cultural identity and cultural phenomena. In the novel he tries to create and describe alternative ways of conceiving reality. First and foremost by writing a novel without a fixed centre, but with many layers of undetermined meaning and persons with unclear, changing identities. Considering reality as chaotic and heterogenous he wants to avoid the common, monolitic descriptions of ‘tradition’, ‘modernity’, ‘East’ and ‘West’ and at the same time reintroduce elements long forgotten in the Turkish culture. It is at this point that Islam – or rather parts of the Islamic tradition - becomes interesting to Pamuk, who uses themes, metaphors and narrative structures especially from the Sufi-literature. Not only do these components present parts of a forgotten, but very rich, part of the Turkish culture, but the Sufi vocabulary and pictures are also useful vehicles to express the fluid and immaterial way of perceiving cultural as well as personal identities.

The Historical Analysis of Criminal Codes

2000 ◽  
Vol 18 (2) ◽  
pp. 433-440 ◽  
Author(s):  
Markus Dirk Dubber
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Criminal Law ◽  
Historical Analysis ◽  
The United States ◽  
Penal Code ◽  
Raw Material ◽  
Historical Study ◽  
Model Penal Code ◽  
The Face ◽  
Anglo American

Students of Anglo-American criminal law, historians included, have traditionally had very little to say about criminal codes. This omission is startling in the face of ongoing efforts to codify criminal law since the late eighteenth century, not only in England and the United States, but also in Canada and India. The only historical study of criminal codification in the United States is a survey article that is, strictly speaking, not about codification at all, but about the great men who made codification possible, in particular the forefathers of Herbert Wechsler, the main drafter of the Model Penal Code. The Model Penal Code itself gave no clues as to its historical antecedents, if any. It is regarded, and portrayed itself, as having invented the wheel by starting from scratch, the raw material of the common law.

France and the United States, Allies in War

2018 ◽  
pp. 8-27
Author(s):  
Robert L. Fuller
Keyword(s):  
The United States ◽  
Military Government ◽  
German Occupation ◽  
Vichy Regime ◽  
Modus Vivendi ◽  
The Face ◽  
Occupied Territories ◽  
Anglo American ◽  
A Minor ◽  
De Gaulle

General de Gaulle transformed the Free French from a minor committee in London into France’s provisional government in the face of enormous obstacles. These included President Roosevelt, who planned to impose an Allied Military Government of Occupied Territories (AMGOT) in France, replacing the German occupation and the Vichy regime with an Anglo-American occupation. This never happened because it was vigorously opposed not only by de Gaulle but also by the Allied military chief who would have been responsible for it, General Dwight D. Eisenhower. Eisenhower had faced this same dilemma in French North Africa in 1942 and had managed to avoid assuming responsibility for governing French domains. He replicated this modus vivendi in France in 1944.

scholarly journals Laurie Halse Anderson’s Speak

2020 ◽  
Vol 3 (1) ◽  
pp. 81-87
Author(s):  
Arsto N. Ahmed ◽  
Rebwar Z. Mohammed
Keyword(s):  
Social Issue ◽  
Sexual Violence ◽  
Well Being ◽  
The United States ◽  
Ninth Grade ◽  
Psychological Effects ◽  
Trauma Theory ◽  
Traumatic Experience ◽  
The Novel ◽  
The Face

Speak (1999) is Laurie Halse Anderson’s first novel that calls attention to a critical, social issue that is common to girls entering teenagehood in the United States. The novel tells the specific story of the rape and subsequent selective silence of a ninth-grade protagonist named Melinda Sordino. Since the novel’s focus is on sexual violence and its associated traumatic responses, this paper offers an analysis of the novel through contemporary trauma theory. It presents Melinda’s painful narrative by depicting the impairment that the rape trauma causes in her behaviour, attitudes, thinking, interactions, and her overall well-being. In addition to exposing the adverse psychological effects on the victim, it scrutinises the tools she employs during her journey towards healing or recovery. This is done through demonstrating how Melinda’s resilience in the face of traumatic experience, reconciliation with her miserable situation, and acts of resistance to be changed by this experience can be read in the context of recovery rather than of madness and illness, as the traditional trauma theories could possibly suggest. Reading the novel through the lens of contemporary trauma theory makes one realise that Anderson’s work fulfils the goal of empowering survivors of rape, and it thus contributes to the recovery of those individuals who have undergone sexual violence at some point in their lives.

scholarly journals A Lacanian Reading of Orhan Pamuk᾽s The Black Book

2020 ◽  
pp. 649-658
Author(s):  
Mojgan Abshavi ◽  
Shahla Moayedi
Keyword(s):  
Jacques Lacan ◽  
The Self ◽  
Individual Identity ◽  
The Novel ◽  
Human Beings ◽  
Black Book ◽  
The Unconscious ◽  
Long Time ◽  
Orhan Pamuk ◽  
A Chain

From long time ago up to now, and in the trend of the human’s thought development, question about identity and the essence of self has been always an attractive matter for thinking. Searching for a lost soul mate, that can be supposed as a reflection of ourselves has been a great challenge for human beings, as well. The present research focuses on a type of psychoanalytic criticism which is based on ideas developed by Jacques Lacan in regard to Orhan Pamuk’s The Black Book. Lacan as a psychologist with a post-structuralist viewpoint believes that the unconscious is structured like a language. He states that language, the signifying chain with a perpetual sliding of the signified under the signifier, never provides "ultimate meaning" or a "transcendental signified". Accordingly, this study represents a Lacanian reading of Orhan Pamuk᾽s The Black Book with emphasis on the main roles of the "other", and language in forming of the unconscious and individual identity. Galip, the protagonist of the novel, apparently is in search of his lost wife "Rüya". But in fact, following this lack, he starts his search for knowing himself through a chain of signifiers. However, this search does not lead him to reach to a complete ultimate meaning of his "self". His bewildered subject cannot anchor at a fix point of integrated and wholeness of the "self".

Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document