The Cry of the Heart: Russian and Ottoman Literary Enlightenments

This article examines the works of Alexander Radishchev and Namık Kemal to explore how Russian and Ottoman Enlightenments conceptualized emotion as integral to political subjectivity. Moving beyond conventional interpretations of these traditions as reactionary or subordinate to Western Enlightenment ideals, the study argues that both thinkers redefined emotion as the foundation of autonomy and collective identity, challenging binaries between rationalism and sentimentality. Radishchev’s Journey from Petersburg to Moscow demonstrates how emotional introspection enables the critique of social and political systems, transforming individual awareness into communal ethical engagement. Similarly, Kemal’s writings merge Romantic individualism with Enlightenment rationality, advocating for emotional conscience as a basis for modernization and cultural reform in the Ottoman Empire. This comparative study situates Radishchev and Kemal within the broader nineteenth-century intellectual field, where tensions between reason and emotion, individuality and collectivism and internal versus external authority shaped debates about modernity. It ultimately reveals the transnational complexity of Enlightenment thought and its enduring relevance for understanding the intersections of emotional and rational paradigms in shaping modern political and cultural discourses.