Occidentalism and the Imagination of Self and Other in Peyami Safa’s Fatih-Harbiye

Description

In post-colonial and post-imperial studies, the term Occidentalism refers to the creation of East and West against the backdrop of European modernity and the becoming-modern of the world. Orientalism, a style of thought defining the ‘Orient’ as a vague but homogenous geographical and sociocultural space as Edward Said famously argued, is inscribed in the epistemology and hegemony of Occidentalism. Literary texts may reveal how imaginations of self and other unfold within or in relation to the dichotomous framework of East and West. In early republican Turkey, the writer and journalist Peyami Safa reflected
upon Turkey’s new national identity, the fading heritage of the Ottomans, and the question of westernisation in times of radical societal change. This talk will make use of the conceptual lens of Occidentalism to identify patterns through which conceptions of East and West are approached in Peyami Safa’s canonical novel Fatih-Harbiye (1930).

Period	3 Mar 2021
Event title	SRII (Swedish Research Institute Istanbul) Winter Lectures 2021 : Classicism(s) & Orientalism(s)
Event type	Lecture series, colloquium
Location	Istanbul, TurkeyShow on map
Degree of Recognition	International