Skip to main content
×
×
Home

In pursuit of non-Western deep secularities: selfhood and the “Westphalia moment” in Turkish literary milieux

  • Barış Büyükokutan (a1)
Abstract

This article traces Charles Taylor’s “secularity three” outside the West, finding that it was present among poets but not among novelists in twentieth-century Turkey. It explains this contrast between these two very similar groups by using network analysis, highlighting the greater availability, in poetry networks, of nonpious gatekeepers to aspiring pious actors, following an initial long period of religious conflict. In order to benefit from association with these gatekeepers, pious actors learned to split their selves into two, committing themselves simultaneously to their absolutist faith and to its practical impossibility in a secular age. If and when the prospect of cross-fertilization waned, however, they would effortlessly switch back to their earlier subjectivity. Pious novelists, by contrast, underwent no such learning process. Based on these findings, I argue, first, that the study of the secular must pay greater attention to religious conflict and the ways in which it is resolved, and second, that it must consider balancing its longue-durée approach with an eventful focus.

Copyright
Footnotes
Hide All

Author’s Note: A previous version of this paper was presented at the 2015 Annual Meeting of the Social Science History Association in Baltimore. I would like to thank Jeff Guhin, Tuna Kuyucu, and the editors of New Perspectives on Turkey for their valuable comments.

Footnotes
References
Hide All
Acar, Zafer. Sezai Karakoç Kuşağı: İkinci Yeni. İstanbul: Kişisel Yayınlar, 2013.
Akbayır, Sıddık. “Yoktur Gölgesi Türkiye’de”: Sezai Karakoç. Istanbul: Turkuvaz Kitap, 2013.
Andrade, Susan Z.Rewriting History, Motherhood, and Rebellion: Naming an African Women’s Literary Tradition.” Research in African Literatures 21, no. 1 (1990): 91110.
Asad, Talal. Formations of the Secular: Christianity, Islam, Modernity. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2003.
Asiedu, F.B.A.Theology in a Subjunctive Mood: Reflections on Charles Taylor’s A Secular Age .” Scottish Journal of Theology 66, no. 2 (2013): 230240.
Atay, Oğuz. Günlük. İstanbul: İletişim Yayınları, 1987.
Aydın, Cemil. The Idea of the Muslim World: A Global Intellectual History. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2017.
Bakhtin, Mikhail M. The Dialogic Imagination: Four Essays. Edited by Michael Holquist. Translated by Caryl Emerson and Michael Holquist. Austin: University of Texas Press, 1981.
Barosky, Todd. “Legal and Illegal Moneymaking: Colonial American Counterfeiters and the Novelization of Eighteenth-Century Crime Literature.” Early American Literature 47, no. 3 (2012): 531560.
Berger, Peter. The Sacred Canopy: Elements of a Sociological Theory of Religion. Garden City, NY: Doubleday, 1967.
Bourdieu, Pierre. The State Nobility: Elite Schools in the Field of Power. Translated by Lauretta C. Clough. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1996.
Bourdieu, Pierre. Science of Science and Reflexivity. Translated by Richard Nice. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2004.
Bruce, Steve. Choice and Religion: A Critique of Rational Choice Theory. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1999.
Casanova, Jose. Public Religions in the Modern World. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1994.
Çayır, Kenan. Islamic Literature in Contemporary Turkey: From Epic to Novel. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2007.
Dalacoura, Katerina. “The Secular in Non-Western Societies.” The Immanent Frame. February 11, 2014. http://blogs.ssrc.org/tif/2014/02/11/the-secular-in-non-western-societies/.
Diggins, John Patrick, “The Godless Delusion.” The New York Times Book Review. December 16, 2007.
Dobbelaere, Karel. Secularization: An Analysis at Three Levels. Brussels: P.I.E.–Peter Lang, 2002.
Ecevit, Yıldız. Türk Romanında Postmodernist Açılımlar. İstanbul: İletişim Yayınları, 2001.
Fedai, Celâl, ed. Şiiri Konuştular. İstanbul: Sütun Yayınları, 2011.
Fedai, Özlem, ed. Romanı Konuştular. İstanbul: Sütun Yayınları, 2011.
Finke, Roger and Stark, Rodney. The Churching of America, 1776–1990: Winners and Losers in Our Religious Economy. New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 1992.
Fuat, Memet, ed. Çağdaş Türk Şiiri Antolojisi, 1920–1970. İstanbul: Adam Yayınları, 2008.
Geertz, Clifford. Islam Observed: Religious Development in Morocco and Indonesia. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1968.
Gordon, Peter E.The Place of the Sacred in the Absence of God: Charles Taylor’s A Secular Age .” Journal of the History of Ideas 69, no. 4 (2008): 647673.
Gorski, Philip. “Historicizing the Secularization Debate: Church, State and Society in Late Medieval and Early Modern Europe, ca. 1300–1700.” American Sociological Review 65, no. 1 (2000): 138167.
Granara, William. “Nostalgia, Arab Nationalism, and the Andalusian Chronotope in the Evolution of the Modern Arabic Novel.” Journal of Arabic Literature 36, no. 1 (2005): 5773.
Gülalp, Haldun. “Enlightenment by Fiat: Secularization and Democracy in Turkey.” Middle Eastern Studies 41, no. 3 (2005): 351372.
Kabaklı, Ahmet. Türk Edebiyatı. İstanbul: Türk Edebiyatı Vakfı Yayınları, 2002.
Kadıoğlu, Ayşe. “Civil Society, Islam and Democracy in Turkey: A Study of Three Islamic Non-Governmental Organizations.” The Muslim World 95, no. 1 (2005): 2341.
Karaalioğlu, Seyit Kemal, ed. Çağdaş Türk Şiir Antolojisi. İstanbul: İnkılâp ve Aka Kitabevleri, 1983.
Karakoç, Sezai. Günlük Yazılar I: Farklar. İstanbul: Diriliş Yayınları, 1986.
Karataş, Turan. Doğu’nun Yedinci Oğlu Sezai Karakoç. İstanbul: Kaknüs Yayınları, 1998.
Kolcu, Ali İhsan, ed. Modern Türk Şiiri Antolojisi. Erzurum: Salkımsöğüt Yayınevi, 2011.
Korkmaz, Halil. Şiir Hangi Sözcüklerle Yazılmalı Ki? 46 Şair, 381 Soru-Dize, 381 Yanıt. İstanbul: Yön Yayıncılık, 1993.
Kuru, Ahmet T. Secularism and State Policies Toward Religion: The United States, France, and Turkey. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2009.
Larmore, Charles. “How Much Can We Stand?” New Republic. April 9, 2008.
Mahmood, Saba. Politics of Piety: The Islamic Revival and the Feminist Subject. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2011.
Martin, David. On Secularization: Towards a Revised General Theory. Burlington: Ashgate, 2005.
Marty, Martin. “A Secular Age.” Church History 77, no. 3 (2008): 773775.
McGuirk, Carol. “Burns, Bakhtin, and the Opposition of Poetic and Novelistic Discourse.” The Eighteenth Century 32, no. 1 (1991): 5872.
Miyasoğlu, Mustafa. Roman Düşüncesi ve Türk Romanı. İstanbul: Ötüken Neşriyat, 1998.
Moran, Berna. Türk Romanına Eleştirel Bir Bakış 1. İstanbul: İletişim Yayınları, 1983.
Moran, Berna. Türk Romanına Eleştirel Bir Bakış 2. İstanbul: İletişim Yayınları, 1990.
Moran, Berna. Türk Romanına Eleştirel Bir Bakış 3. İstanbul: İletişim Yayınları, 1994.
Morris, David B.Burns and Heteroglossia.” The Eighteenth Century 28, no. 1 (1987): 327.
Necdet, Ahmet. Modern Türk Şiiri: 100 Şair, 500 Şiir: Yönelimler, Tanıklıklar, Örnekler, Albüm, Şairler Sözlüğü. İstanbul: Broy Yayınevi, 1993.
Nelson, Samuel and Gorski, Philip S.. “Conditions of Religious Belonging: Confessionalization, de-Parochialization, and the Euro-American Divergence.” International Sociology 29, no. 1 (2013): 321.
Owens, Louis. Other Destinies: Understanding the American Indian Novel. Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1992.
Özdenören, Rasim. Yazı, İmge ve Gerçeklik: Denemeler. İstanbul: İz Yayıncılık, 2002.
Özyürek, Esra. Nostalgia for the Modern: State Secularism and Everyday Politics in Turkey. Durham: Duke University Press, 2006.
Paxton, Nancy L.Mobilizing Chivalry: Rape in British Novels about the Indian Uprising of 1857.” Victorian Studies 36, no. 1 (1992): 530.
Robbins, Bruce, “Disenchanted.” n+1. August 4, 2009.
Rossi, Philip J.A Secular Age.” Theological Studies 69, no. 4 (2008): 953954.
Sedgwick, Timothy F.A Secular Age.” Anglican Theological Review 93, no. 3 (2011): 510516.
Sewell, William H. Jr.Three Temporalities: Toward an Eventful Sociology.” In The Historic Turn in the Human Sciences . Edited by Terrence J. McDonald. Ann Arbor: The University of Michigan Press, 1996. 245280.
Soysal, İlhami. 20. Yüzyıl Türk Şiiri Antolojisi. Ankara: Bilgi Yayınevi, 2005.
Stark, Rodney and Bainbridge, William Sims. A Theory of Religion. New York and Bern: Peter Lang, 1987.
Swidler, Ann. Talk of Love: How Culture Matters. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2001.
Taylor, Charles. A Secular Age. Cambridge, MA: The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 2007.
Turam, Berna. Between Islam and the State: The Politics of Engagement. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2007.
Ünlü, Mahir. Türkçede Öykü – Roman: Seçki (Antoloji). İstanbul: İnkılap, 2009.
Warner, R. Stephen. “Work in Progress toward a New Paradigm for the Sociological Study of Religion in the United States.” American Journal of Sociology 98, no. 5 (1993): 10441093.
Warner, Michael, VanAntwerpen, Jonathan and Calhoun, Craig J., “Editors’ Introduction.” In Varieties of Secularism in a Secular Age. Edited by Michael Warner, Jonathan VanAntwerpen, and Craig J. Calhoun. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2010. 131.
Yamane, David. “Secularization on Trial: In Defense of a Neosecularization Paradigm.” Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion 36, no. 1 (1997): 109122.
Zarifoğlu, Cahit. Bir Değirmendir Bu Dünya. İstanbul: Nehir Yayınları, 1988.
Zarifoğlu, Cahit. Mektuplar. İstanbul: Beyan, 2012.
Zemmin, Florian. “ A Secular Age and Islamic Modernism.” In Working with A Secular Age: Interdisciplinary Perspectives on Charles Taylor’s Master Narrative . Edited by Guido Vanheeswijck, Colin Jager, and Florian Zemmin. Berlin and Boston: De Gruyter, 2016. 307330.
Recommend this journal

Email your librarian or administrator to recommend adding this journal to your organisation's collection.

New Perspectives on Turkey
  • ISSN: 0896-6346
  • EISSN: 1305-3299
  • URL: /core/journals/new-perspectives-on-turkey
Please enter your name
Please enter a valid email address
Who would you like to send this to? *
×

Keywords:

Metrics

Full text views

Total number of HTML views: 7
Total number of PDF views: 88 *
Loading metrics...

Abstract views

Total abstract views: 337 *
Loading metrics...

* Views captured on Cambridge Core between 21st April 2017 - 12th June 2018. This data will be updated every 24 hours.