Meryem Demir will begin to discuss Orhan Pamuk's discourse through his Nobel lecture, and essays in the books entitled Other Colors and Istanbul: Memories and the City in which the discourse can make visible things that are otherwise invisible. In Pamuk discourse, his intelligence and cleverness with words have lots of potential to discover his positions between places, East and West, center and periphery, in and out. Positioning himself as an author Pamuk makes a strong relation with possessions, and his writing ironically follows the trying to lose the ties from belonging. After referring a possessive relation between the author and the city the speaker will continue with the question how Pamuk’s father’s belongings (suitcase metaphor) shape his own sense of belonging which is undeniable material in Pamuk’s discourse for exchanging the visibility and invisibility.
Gunvald Axner Ims, will continue to discuss in Pamuk’s work as a personal reflection of the City, Istanbul, Pamuk’s home town, after the 20th century collective trauma that Pamuk calls Conquest or Fall: The Turcification of Constantinople in his 2003 work Istanbul: Memories and the City is a text with many layers, positions, perspectives, and voices – all expressed through Pamuk’s narrative, which goes in dialogue with representations of the City in art and literature through previous centuries. In his unique way, Pamuk partly shows, partly hides earlier representations of the City as he moulds them into his text, notable for its distinctive mode of irony, by which the text, in the traditional sense of this mode, “says one thing and means something else”.
Kamilya Khamitova will analyze individual trauma and collective memory through the lens of objects in the novel The Museum of Innocence. She will explore the significance of objects as a representation of trauma, particularly focusing on protagonist Kemal's obsessive collection and preservation of items related to his dramatic past with Füsun. Each object serves as a symbol of Kemal's unresolved desires and the loss of innocence. Kemal’s obsession is the central theme that echoes the psychological depth explored by Freud, Lacan, and Yalom. Through Freudian analysis, Kemal's obsession with Füsun reveals repressed desires and unresolved traumas, while Lacan's mirror stage demonstrates identity struggles mirrored in his fixation. By analyzing the themes of possessions, position, and memories in Pamuk's works, this paper will seek to shed light on the connections between individual and collective traumas, objects, and spaces in the narratives.
Finally Funda Guven will discuss the portrayal of invisible female character, albeit the author was initially criticized for the absence of female voices in his works, within the novel, The Black Book (1996). Representing modern Turkish women in the novel, Rüya or Dream is not seen in the plot, yet she is the center of the discourse. Coming from an upper-class family, born abroad, Dream does not represent ordinary Turkish women. Yet, she is a disintegrated character between real and ideal, chased by the Turkish male protagonist. This paper will follow the hidden voice of Dream in the novel. This portrayal of educated, Westernized, independent Turkish women in a Muslim society reveals secular women without agency in the male dominant society while undermining her position regarding cultural norms and stereotypes. Replacing Orientalists writers’ female characters, as Edward Said pointed, Pamuk continues narrating the stories of voiceless women in the East. The paper will use Bakhtin’s dialogism how the dispositioning and positioning of others reveal the self of women in the novel.
[This panel brings both male and female scholars from different countries, ages, identities, nationalities, and backgrounds.]