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about its separation from the reed bed, Rumi wails all day telling about being separated from his Beloved and the deep longing to reunite with it again.
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Similar song is sung in Pamuk’s tales; it sings the ecstatic longing for the loss
of Turkey’s origin in the present Turkey’s life. Being cut from the continuity of Ottoman
Empire’s legacy and Turkey’s cultural root, the characters in Pamuk’s novels are wandering constantly between two different polarizations, trapping in a
deep lamentation of losing their cultural roots and suffering from profound bewilderment of choosing on
e identity over another on their travel to their ‘true’ self in their identity quest.
Hence, to unfold the dynamic of Turkey identity’s predicament as well as the solution that Pamuk has to offer, this study formulates the research questions
as follows: 1.
How is the Sufi framework of meaning in the The Black Book, Snow, and The Museum of Innocence shown in terms of
symbolism, metaphors, and the stages of identity formation? 2.
How does Sufi framework indirectly influence Pamuk’s concept of
identity formation in The Black Book, Snow, and The Museum of Innocence?
B. Towards a Contribution
The present work hopes to anticipate its major contribution toward a better understanding of
Pamuk’s three novels in terms of mystical understanding through the Sufi framework of identity formation as the theoretical concept.
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See Rumi Masnavi Book One, trans. Jawid Mojaddedi Oxford: Oxfor UP, 2008: 4-5.
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This study is expected to provide an alternative on the diversity of literary horizon, particularly literary oeuvre from Middle East Turkey which is still less
explored by Indonesian scholars specifically scholars from Sanata Dharma University. As Turkey and Indonesia share comparable history as well as
contemporary issues of contested identity within plurality, studying Turkish literature will be beneficial for Indonesian scholars to attain better understanding
of other cultures as well as their own. In view of this, certain parallel in the identity quest of Indonesia and Turkey may emerge.
Another hope is that this study will provide more angles and perspectives in conducting research on identity formation by employing the concept of the Sufi
framework of identity construction. Sufism is astoundingly not merely about Rumi and the exquisite beauty of his love poems, but it also offers rich layers of
identity searching theory. The widely known theory used in exploring the identity formation or
doubling identity is Freud’s psychoanalysis theory; Lacan’s mirroring stage
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, and Bhabha’s poscolonial conce
pt
s mimicry, hybridity, and liminality.
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One example of a research that used Jaques Lacan’s Mirroring Stage is a Ph.D. dissertation of
Semra Saraçoğlu’s entitled Self Reflexivity in Modern Text: a Comparative Study of the Works of John Fowles and Orhan Pamuk. Turkey: Middle East Technical University, 2003.
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The exam ple of a research that used Bhabha’ theory of mimicry is research article of Nagihan
Haliloğlu entitled “Re-Thinking Ottoman Empire: East West Collaboration in Orhan Pamuk’s The White Castle
,”In Re-Thinking Europe Literature and TransNational Identity Vol. 55. Eds. Bemong Nele, Mirjam Truwant, and Pieter Vermeulen. Amsterdam: Rodopi,2008; a research
article that also a pplied Bhabha’s theory of hybridityand in-betweenness is written by Rezzan
Kocaöner Silkü, “Nation and Narration”: Cultural Interactions in Orhan Pamuk’s My Name is Red,
Aesthetic Education 37 2003: 1-13; another research that em ployed Bhabha’s concept of
liminality is a Ph.D. dissertation of Leyla Yücel, An Experimental Analysis: The Problem of Liminality in Orhan Pamuk’s The Black Book and The New Life, Unpublished Dissertation
Belgium: Ghent University, 2013.
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However, only few researches explore identity construction by using the Sufi’s
framework of identity formation. As corollary to the above, this work hopes to supplement the limited corpus
of studying Middle Eastern literature on Orhan Pamuk’s works. Finally, it is the hope that the spiritual dimension of the Sufi framework of identity formation may
be promoted by this work.
C. Scope of the Study
