Representing Censored Pasts: State-Violence in Twentieth Century Turkish and Spanish Literature by Başak Çandar A dissertation submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy (Comparative Literature) in the University of Michigan 2014 Doctoral Committee: Professor Kader Konuk, Co-Chair, Universität Duisburg-Essen Professor Cristina Moreiras-Menor, Co-Chair Associate Professor Gottfried J. Hagen Professor Anton Shammas ii To the extraordinary memory of my grandmother, Saffet “Safko” Çandar, who taught me my words. iii Acknowledgements This dissertation began in earnest in 2007 in Barcelona, after one of the most spectacular summers of my life. We had assumed that it would take much shorter and that it would end in Turkey. We were amiss, but I would still like to begin by thanking the memory of that uphill walk, which began this journey. Throughout the past six years, my committee has been an invaluable source of support and wisdom and I thank them for all their help and kindness. Kader was the reason I came to the University of Michigan, and her brilliant scholarship, her ability to alert me to the most unexpected connections and her friendship have helped me immensely and meant more to me than I can describe here. Despite her busy schedule as the Chair of the Romance Languages Department, Cristina has taken the time to comment on my work and listen to my ideas. I cannot thank her enough for her encouragement and support, without which I would have never ventured into Spanish literature. The classes I have taken with Gottfried and our conversations have been incredibly informative for me. I thank him for sharing his thoughts with me and for his patience, especially with my chapter on Kar. Anton has been a constant in my life since the day I began this PhD program. His teaching and his scholarship had a crucial role in my curiosity in this topic and without him I would certainly be living a different, much less interesting life, not the least because he is also indirectly responsible for my meeting Chris. I will miss him dearly and I will always cherish our friendship. I also want to thank Professors Yago Colas, Tatjana Aleksic and Elizabeth Wingrove, who iv have been sources of personal and scholarly inspiration and whose friendship I deeply appreciate. I thank the University of Michigan's Department of Comparative Literature for their continued support, without which this dissertation certainly would not be possible. Nancy Harris has been an endless source of information and kindness, and without her I would not have been able to navigate this process even half as well. I thank her also for meeting me after my very late arrival in Ann Arbor some seven years ago. Mama-duck, you are amazing! I thank the Barbour Scholarship for providing me with a year in which I could concentrate on my research. During the 2012-2013 academic year, I was a fellow at the University of Michigan's Institute for Humanities, which provided me with a space in which I could work in dialogue and collaboration with other scholars, some of whom have become dear friends. My crook mates Alison DeSimone, Sara Jackson, Brandon Wright, and Rebecca Porte (who has been my favorite person for a very long time): nailed it! My Ann Arbor friends have been the best comrades. I thank them especially for all the fun we have had even while writing our dissertations: Chris Meade, Shannon Winston, Mei-Chen Pan, Spencer Hawkins, Gen Creedon, Jessica Moorman, Olga Greco (Prawn par excellence), Richard and Anna Pierre, Amr Kamal, Will Runyan: I will miss you all so much. Rostom, I am not entirely sure how I will manage without you, but at least I will always have the memory of your attire on the day I finally got v my driver’s license. I also want to thank Mike Kicey, who is my personal hero in many ways. His very patient and thorough comments on my first chapter have informed the way I conceptualized the rest of this project. All parts of this dissertation are indebted to the many conversations I have had with my non-nationalists in arms in Ann Arbor: Neveser Köker, Ali Bolcakan, and Duygu Ula. And finally, YOSE: For a Degree! I also want to thank John Gasparini and Dan Freeborn – they were so young when they were my teachers, but they are still the teachers I aspire to be every time I step into the classroom. I had never thought I would one day have an American family, but I do and they are the best second family anyone could have asked for. They have all made my life so much better and so much more entertaining in the past four years. I cannot wait to have many more with them. My camaraderie with my friends in Turkey has been the most surprising constant in my life. I have been away for so long, and yet they are where I feel most at home. I especially thank them for their patience with a friend who always leaves, and for their teasing, which makes me a better and more inquisitive person. I cannot think of a "me" without them – or at least I do not want to. This dissertation has come at the expense of a reunion with Berkay and Başak, and owes an apology to them. I thank Erdem for all the dancing. Anıl, see above. Most of all and haliyle, I thank Sanem vi Gürus Tanyar and Zeynep Darendeliler, who know, understand and, most importantly, criticize me best. I cannot wait for the next reunion, wherever it may be. My conversations with Tuba and Cengiz Çandar lurk behind these chapters. I can only hope to reach their erudition and match their intellectual curiosity one day. My parents Hülya Çandar and Volkan Çandar have been the best parents imaginable as usual, tirelessly traveling back and forth between Istanbul and cities I happen in that are always more than a direct flight away. They are still slightly confused about the title of the dissertation, but proud of it nevertheless. Last but certainly not least, I thank Chris - who is my best and without whom I would have given up long time ago. Parks and lots. vii TABLE OF CONTENTS Dedication ii Acknowledgements iii Abstract ix Introduction 1 Chapters: 1. Representing Torture Fictionally: Yaralısın 23 Torture Narratives 23 Agency Through Realism 40 Fictionalizing the Inexpressibility of Pain 48 The Dynamics of Representing Torture 52 2. Writing into Pitfalls: Si te dicen que caí 59 Writing into pitfalls 59 The Self-Conscious Narrative 66 Storytelling and Violence 74 Representations and Re-presentations of Torture 78 3. Murderous Theater: Violence and Performance in Orhan Pamuk’s Kar 90 The Literary and the Political 92 A Prescient State/God and its Self-Fulfilling Prophecies 101 Reenactments of Violence 105 Staged Revolution 116 Layered Representations: The Allegorical Impulse 120 viii 4. Between Fiction and History: Juan Goytisolo 130 The Passing Foreigner 134 The Sarajevo Notebook 150 Promises and Limits of Fiction: El sitio de los sitios 158 Violence Elsewhere 168 Conclusion 172 Bibliography 177 ix Abstract Representing Censored Pasts: State Violence in Twentieth Century Turkish and Spanish Literature examines literary representations of state-violence in Turkish and Spanish literature through an analysis of five works from the second-half of the twentieth century: Yaralısın (You Are Wounded) by Erdal Öz, Si te dicen que caí (The Fallen) by Juan Marsé, Kar (Snow) by Orhan Pamuk, and Cuaderno de Sarajevo (Sarajevo Notebook) and El sitio de los sitios (State of Siege) by Juan Goytisolo. While the first two works were written under repressive regimes, the rest are examples from after transitions to democracy. I focus on the challenges of fictionalizing historical traumas, which magnify tensions inherent to literature between fiction and reality, imagination and history. I contend that the works that thematize these difficulties provide the most effective representations by confronting readers with the same dilemmas that trouble their fictional frameworks. Such representations problematize their connections to reality, emphasizing their capacity to expose and reflect on historical contexts. Individual chapters analyze the ways in which each work negotiates the challenges of fictionalizing state-violence, articulated through the theories of Elaine Scarry, J.M. Coetzee and Shoshana Felman. In these chapters, I am concerned with the the dynamic relationship between state-violence and its literary representations. Through an analysis of these representations, I offer a reflection on the different uses and functions of realism in these works, as well as the links between realism and reenactment. This project offers a new comparative perspective. Turkey and Spain are not considered within a center-periphery model, or in a hierarchical relationship in which one is the model for x the other, but rather function as alternative voices within Comparative and World Literature that speak to each other from the geographical margins of Europe. Literary production in Turkey and Spain is fueled by national and cultural histories obsessed with a violent past that continues to assert its power in the present even after transitions into democracy. Based on this background, this comparison pushes back against the East/West divide by refusing to conceptualize either context as representative of East or West, arguing instead for equivalence within the comparative framework. 1 Introduction Cons-tan-ti-no-pla está cons-tan-ti-no-po-li-za ¿Quién la des-cons-tan-ti-no-po-li-za-rá? El des-cons-tan-ti-no-po-li-za-dor que la des-cons-tan-ti-no-po-li-ce, buen des-cons-tan-ti-no-po-li-za-dor será –– Juan Goytisolo1 Spanish author Juan Goytisolo concludes his review of Orhan Pamuk’s fourth novel Kara Kitap (The Black Book) with the tongue twister quoted above.