East-West Entanglements: Pamuk, Ozdamar, Derrida

EAST-WEST ENTANGLEMENTS: PAMUK, OZDAMAR, DERRIDA by MELTZ ERGtN B.A. Bogaziçi University, 2000 M.A. University of Sussex, 2001 A THESIS SUBMITTED IN PARTIAL FULFILLMENT OF THE REQUIREMENTS FOR THE DEGREE OF DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY in THE FACULTY OF GRADUATE STUDIES (Comparative Literature) THE UNIVERSITY OF BRITISH COLUMBIA (Vancouver) September 2009 © Meliz Ergin, 2009 ABSTRACT In my dissertation titled East-West Entanglements: Pamuk, Ozdamar, Derrida, I analyze the representation of cultural, linguistic, and religious tensions chronicled by these authors who have variously inhabited Western and non-Western worlds. They all problematize the complicated relations between memory and identity within and without the borders of the modem nation state. I argue that their works address existing multicultural situations, which arise from diverging and converging histories, and remind us that we can no longer inhabit segregated states of being. l In the face of multi-referential modes of living in the 2 century, these authors suggest malleable and hybrid readings of entangled collectivities. Attention to the entanglements that overwhelm temporal, linguistic, and cultural boundaries is salutary, because it challenges the conceptual model based on mutually exclusive dichotomies, and calls into play the network of fihiations that generate an ongoing interaction among conflicting singularities. I propose that Pamuk, Ozdamar, and Derrida accommodate the ever-shifting ways of interaction on the levels of both content and form. They offer examples of grafted genre that accentuate the resemblances in difference across various generic forms. The grafted narratives they construct supersede and re-formulate the permeable boundaries between self and other, and call attention to the many Easts and Wests, enmeshed as they are in one another. TABLE OF CONTENTS Abstract ii Table of Contents iii Acknowledgements iv Dedication v 1 Introductory Notes 1 1.1 Toward a New Comparative Vocabulary: Reading Methodology 1 1.2 An Autobiography of the Project 4 1.3 Re-membering in Form and Content 11 2 Self-Colonialism in Snow 15 2.1 Introduction: “Otherness” within Turkey, and between Turkey and Europe 15 2.2 The Law of Genre: Second-Hand Tales 33 2.2.1 Tracing Ka’s Footsteps 34 2.2.2 From Ka to Orhan to Orhan Pamuk 47 2.3 Memory and Its Discontents 52 2.3.1 Prescribed Identities: Chronicle of a Coup Foretold 52 2.3.2 The “Return” of Islam 65 3 Mother Tongue, a Trans/National Collage 85 3.1 Introduction: Turkish-German Encounters 85 3.2 Mother Tongue, Grandfather Tongue 100 3.2.1 Nostalgia, Memory, Language 100 3.2.2 The Law of Genre: Exile and Form 114 3.3 Karagoz in Alamania 123 3.3.1 Translingual Play and Social Satire 123 3.3.2 Parodic Laughter and Critical Double Consciousness 137 4 The Double Bind in Monolingualism of the Other 152 4.1 Introduction: A French-Algerian Autobiography 152 4.2 The Law of Genre: Aporias 165 4.2.1 Dialogic Testimonies 165 4.2.2 Autobiographical Memory and Hospitality 175 4.3 Nostalgeria 181 4.3.1. Derrida, the Exemplary Franco-Maghrebian 181 4.3.2. Colonial Fantasies 196 5 Entangled Taxonomies: Resemblance in Difference 216 Bibliography 233 III ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS I would like to extend genuine thanks to all my teachers from the University of British Columbia, and to the outstanding faculty on my supervisory committee, for Prof. Mark Vessey’ s perceptive criticism and challenging questions, and for Prof. Azade Seyhan’ s astute critique and sustained engagement with this project despite the distance. I thank my supervisor Prof. Steven Taubeneck for his exceptionally generous support, enthusiasm, and incisive responses to my writing as well as teaching throughout the doctoral degree. I have immensely benefited from conversations about language and poetics with the poets of Vertigo West, and personal/collective history with my parents Semra and Oguz Ergin, who have supported me in every possible way. Many thanks to all my friends for their insightful comments, and to my brother Haluk Ergin for being a continuous source of inspiration. iv hereyin ba1angici aileme, V 1 INTRODUCTORY NOTES 1.1 Toward a New Comparative Vocabulary: Reading Methodology In Death of a Discipline, Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak observes that “since 1992, three years after the fall of the Berlin Wall, the discipline of comparative literature has been looking to renovate itself... presumably in response to the rising tide of multiculturalism and cultural studies” (1). When comparative literature as a discipline first emerged, comparison implied an emphasis on either similarities or differences. The discipline concentrated mainly on Western literature and looked outwards. The goal was to reach “universal excellence,” which led to canon formations. Later on, in reaction to this universalizing Eurocentrism, literary critics began to place greater emphasis on incommensurable differences, which led to a process of fragmentation into closed identities and culturalist ideologies. I contend that Eurocentric universalism and anti Eurocentric identitarianism reciprocally maintain one another and legitimize the hierarchy; and, neither one offers an accurate picture of the potentials of comparative literary studies. The renovation that is to take place in the discipline of comparative literature involves a necessary break with the kind of reading that seeks purely sameness or difference through “map making literary criticism,” (Spivak, Discipline 6) because such an approach works against the possibility of a creative literary analysis. Rather than regressing to the hegemonic collectivity of globalization, and its repressive hierarchical classifications (good/bad literature, highllow culture), or retreating into closed subjectivities, and proudly announce that only an Arab can understand another Arab, we must consider, in Spivak’s words, “nonexhaustive taxonomies” and “unpredictable fihiations” (Discipline 6). Such effortful “active teleopoiesis” (Discipline 31) requires that we seek new combinations and comparative contexts to enable us to cross boundaries between diverse genres, and cultural and linguistic legacies overlapping in a global context. 1 Crossing boundaries does not mean that the occluded borders can or should be dismantled altogether; they can, however, be rendered flexible. I embarked upon this project with this hope, and shifted my critical focus from oppositional binaries to entanglements on a number of levels. My dissertation titled East-West Entanglements: Pamuk, Ozdamar Derrida sheds light on thematic, generic, linguistic, temporal, and geographical entanglements in the works of the three writers. I analyze the representation of cultural, ethnic, and religious tensions chronicled by these authors who have variously inhabited Western and non-Western worlds. The Turkish author Pamuk, the Turkish-German author Ozdamar, and the French- Algerian philosopher Derrida all problematize the complicated relations between cultural memory and identity within and without the borders of the modern nation state. I argue that their works address existing multicultural situations that arise from diverging and converging histories. The different formulations of the East-West entanglement in their works remind us that we can no longer inhabit segregated states of being. In the face of multi-referential modes of living in the 1st 2 century, these authors offer examples of grafted writing to accommodate the new ways of interaction. My position is that there are many Easts and Wests imagined in reference to one another, and entangled through cultural and historical legacies. These entanglements supersede, resist, and overwhelm the boundaries erected to occlude the interlacing of communities in a global context. Ironically, the means of segregation and exclusion become possible venues for inclusion and interrelation. Attention to these entanglements is salutary, because it suggests malleable and hybrid readings of entangled communities across diverse geo-political locations. I contend that this manner of reading literary and philosophical texts can lead to new energies in the field of comparative literature. Therefore out of this project comes a comparative methodology, which invites a dialogic engagement of different voices and cultures, by questioning the undecideable 2 borders between self and other. What I propose here is a comparative approach, which accentuates the points of tension between sameness and difference, universal and singular, without yielding to either one. What Derrida, Pamuk, and Ozdamar show us is that it is possible and productive to perceive cultures and literatures in terms of their vitality in a diversity of approaches. The metaphor of “entanglement” has a number of connotations. For some, it invokes romantic entanglement, bond; for others, it implies a problematic knot that needs to be untangled. I use this metaphor with neither positive nor negative implications; it displays both tendencies simultaneously, positive and negative, entangled as they are in each other. I argue that we can conceive of entanglement as providing a matrix for a dynamic network of relations, variably loosening and tightening, both risky and promising. A recognition of the entanglements can strengthen the peaceful tendencies, because wherever there is a space of relation, there is a sensitized understanding of resemblance in difference. Hence it is helpful to envision a space of confrontation, where hierarchical models are replaced by potential venues for co-operation. I shall

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