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8
Orient. I will examine the ways in which the traveler, considered as a figure analagous to the flȃneur, is unsettled and disordered, if not totally disempowered, as a result of his/her journey to Istanbul. Confronted with the changing face of the modernized city, the melancholic impulse experienced by the figure of the traveler/flȃneur in western travelogues can be perceived as initiating a critique of modernity specifically for Istanbul, but also for a larger (European) geography also afflicted by modern loss.
The Arcades Project, Benjamin‘s extensive work on the archeology of Parisian urban space, and his book on Charles Baudelaire, discuss the flȃneur as a marginal figure who deciphers the city in such a way that he opens up possibilities for the narration of a counter-history of the present moment. He pays attention to ‗the trivia, the refuse, the trash‘ of history. He is more interested in the demise concealed behind the monumental facades than in the monuments themselves. Hence, the flȃneur transforms the city into a site of remembering. Looking at the urban space, he can conjure up personal memories or historical facts while he can also do the reverse: looking into his memories, into the past, he is able to bring forth a spatial form to temporality. As Graeme Gilloch points out, ―The flaneur is heroic in exemplifying contradictory moments in the city: on the one hand, the ruination of experience and the fragmentation of memory; on the other, the decipherment of meaning and the recollection of lost moments‖ (214). In other words, the flȃneur dismantles the city into multiple layers of space, and then reassembles its fragments to create an alternative point of view of urban space and modernity. By doing that, he brings together temporal and spatial aspects of the city. Yet, coeval with his efforts to understand and capture the past, comes the realization that the past can never be fully
Object Description
| Title | Collective melancholy: Istanbul at the crossroads of history, space and memory |
| Author | Tekdemir, Hande |
| Author email | tekdemir@usc.edu; hande_tekdemir@yahoo.com |
| Degree | Doctor of Philosophy |
| Document type | Dissertation |
| Degree program | English |
| School | College of Letters, Arts and Sciences |
| Date defended/completed | 2008-08-06 |
| Date submitted | 2008 |
| Restricted until | Unrestricted |
| Date published | 2008-10-11 |
| Advisor (committee chair) | Russett, Margaret |
| Advisor (committee member) |
Lloyd, David Norindr, Panivong |
| Abstract | This study draws on a historical perspective on the evolution of a certain form that I call the "Istanbul canon" in which the city has always been associated with loss. Tracing the genealogy of loss in the literary representations of Istanbul by both western and local writers in the past and the present, I explore how the various configurations of loss are related to the local context and to the history of modernity at large. The city's ambivalent history in this geography on the threshold, functions as a means to understand loss, concealed in the various spatio-temporal layers -- East and West, colonizer and the colonized, pre-modern and modern, -- within the history of modernity. My objective is to consider the cityscape as a template upon which modernity is projected as a subjective and fleeting experience, comprehended in both local and global terms, and critiqued accordingly. I focus on the uncanny as a recurrent characteristic of nineteenth-century travelogues, in which the traveler is unsettled by unexpectedly encountering the familiar within the unfamiliar terrain of Constantinople, while I consider the nostalgic renditions of modern travelogues and western detective fiction not only as reflections on the changes within the western literary canon about the city, but also as reactions against the modernizing world. Finally, the last chapter illustrates melancholy as the dominant sentiment in the contemporary Turkish literature on Istanbul; yet, it also displays the convergence of melancholy with the uncanny and nostalgia in Turkish writers' ambiguous relationship to the modern. |
| Keyword | melancholy; Istanbul; Orhan Pamuk; travel literature; detective fiction |
| Geographic subject (city or populated place) | Istanbul; Constantinople |
| Coverage date | after 1800 |
| Coverage era | Nineteenth Century; Twentieth Century |
| Language | English |
| Part of collection | University of Southern California dissertations and theses |
| Publisher (of the original version) | University of Southern California |
| Place of publication (of the original version) | Los Angeles, California |
| Publisher (of the digital version) | University of Southern California. Libraries |
| Provenance | Electronically uploaded by the author |
| Type | texts |
| Legacy record ID | usctheses-m1656 |
| Contributing entity | University of Southern California |
| Rights | Tekdemir, Hande |
| Repository name | Libraries, University of Southern California |
| Repository address | Los Angeles, California |
| Repository email | cisadmin@lib.usc.edu |
| Filename | etd-Tekdemir-2357 |
| Archival file | uscthesesreloadpub_Volume26/etd-Tekdemir-2357.pdf |
Description
| Title | Page 11 |
| Contributing entity | University of Southern California |
| Repository email | cisadmin@lib.usc.edu |
| Full text | 8 Orient. I will examine the ways in which the traveler, considered as a figure analagous to the flȃneur, is unsettled and disordered, if not totally disempowered, as a result of his/her journey to Istanbul. Confronted with the changing face of the modernized city, the melancholic impulse experienced by the figure of the traveler/flȃneur in western travelogues can be perceived as initiating a critique of modernity specifically for Istanbul, but also for a larger (European) geography also afflicted by modern loss. The Arcades Project, Benjamin‘s extensive work on the archeology of Parisian urban space, and his book on Charles Baudelaire, discuss the flȃneur as a marginal figure who deciphers the city in such a way that he opens up possibilities for the narration of a counter-history of the present moment. He pays attention to ‗the trivia, the refuse, the trash‘ of history. He is more interested in the demise concealed behind the monumental facades than in the monuments themselves. Hence, the flȃneur transforms the city into a site of remembering. Looking at the urban space, he can conjure up personal memories or historical facts while he can also do the reverse: looking into his memories, into the past, he is able to bring forth a spatial form to temporality. As Graeme Gilloch points out, ―The flaneur is heroic in exemplifying contradictory moments in the city: on the one hand, the ruination of experience and the fragmentation of memory; on the other, the decipherment of meaning and the recollection of lost moments‖ (214). In other words, the flȃneur dismantles the city into multiple layers of space, and then reassembles its fragments to create an alternative point of view of urban space and modernity. By doing that, he brings together temporal and spatial aspects of the city. Yet, coeval with his efforts to understand and capture the past, comes the realization that the past can never be fully |
