Self and Desire in the Modern Turkish Novel. A Study on Non-Western Literary Modernities

This study aims to be a critical investigation of the modern Turkish novel focused on the textual analysis of four different works published between 1970 and 2002. It explores the possibilities and subversions of subjectivity in those works with the emphasis on the notion of desire. Identifying subjectivity as the ground of meaning for the modern project and as the essence of the novel as a literary genre, it examines the ways in which the Turkish modern novel reconciles with and subverts the textual modern self. Its objective is to trace the way modern Turkish subject is constructed in those literary works. It focuses on desire as a thematic component of subjectivity and analyses the various structures desire follows and constructs different forms of interiority. Each of the four canonical works corresponds to a decade, in parallel to the traumatic experience of three coups. Tutunamayanlar (1972) is the most striking attempt to express the condition of its own schizophrenia and belatedness. The novel shows an interesting structure of desire that corresponds to the imitative existence of the belated subject. Berci Kristin Çöp Masalları (1984) represents collective experience that belongs to social strata that had been excluded from dominant discourse and by doing so, it shows that marginalisation from modernity brings desubjectivisation and silencing of desire. In Gece Dersleri (1986), on the other hand, there is an opening up of a thoroughly and essentially feminine and individual space through spontaneous desire derived from the immediate, the body. Tol (2002) articulates a political desire, a wish for revolution and it is a declaration of the re-convergence of language and politics.