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1. Review of Related Studies
Orhan Pamuk, the winner of the Nobel Prize in Literature in 2006, tries to reintroduce the Ottoman past to his readers through his tales. As he tells his tales,
the past becomes more like a creative puzzle in the pages of My Name is Red 2001 and The White Castle 1998.
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His works invite scholarly discussions especially on the dialogue, tension and negotiation between the East and the West,
the high tension between the enchanting Western technology and art and the Ottoman traditions, as well as the identity formation process toward the so-called
a new ideal identity. The first research to mention is by Feride Çiçekoglu,
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titled “A Pedagogy of Two Ways of Seeing: A Confrontation of ‘Word and Image’ in My Name is
red”
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, which claims that My Name is Red is a chronicle of the confrontation of two ways of seeing and the story of how the quest for representationalism defeats
the miniature tradition, although such defeat is, by no means, a one-dimensional praise of the impact of Venice and its quest for naturalism on Islamic art. In
addition, this article attempts to pick up clues in My Name is Red for tracing two different ways of seeing East-West framework in the late 16
th
century, not as a binary opposition but as a dialectical trope of word and image.
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In other words,
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Pinar Batur, “Author in the Classroom: An Interview with Orhan Pamuk”, Middle East Studies Association Bulletin 41, 1 June, 2007: 9.
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An Associate Professor and Director of the Master Program in Visual Communication Design, İstanbul Bilgi University, İstanbul.
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This article is developed from Çiçekoglu’s earlier version written in Turkish Çiçekoglu 2001 when she was an artist-in-residence in Rotterdam January-May 2002 under a grant from the
Dutch Ministry of Education, Culture, and Science, the Municipality of Rotterdam and Rotterdam Art Foundation. Çiçekoglu, “Pedagogy”, 1-20.
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Çiçekoglu, “Pedagogy”, 3.
16 Çiçekoglu wants to see the East-West relations apart from the different way of
seeing between those two poles. Çiçekoglu’s another research on the same novel is “Difference, Visual
Narration, and ‘Point of View’ in My Name is Red”
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, which employs visual narration technique and point of view. It focuses on the difference between the
Eastern and the Western ways of visual narration. This essay discusses issues of portraiture and character, movement and time, and story and space with reference
to the narrative structure in fiction film. It aims to contribute to the discussion on point of view in visual narration, narrative structure of film as a continuation, and
interaction of different traditions in East and West. A research written by David Martyn entitled “Turkish-German Literature
goes İstanbul, or, Lessons for Multicultural Germanists in Orhan Pamuk’s My Name is Red” n.d.
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firstly explains “Germanophonie” or literature written in German by non-German, transcultural authors, especially Turkish immigrants
who live in Germany and publish literature. He observes Pamuk’s My Name is Red, as a contemporary Turkish literature, which can help in recognizing the
individual value of the writings of Germanophone authors. This engagement concerns the notion of individuality that is used to point out what is missing in the
existing research on Germanophone authors. Martyn states that Pamuk’s work can be read as an eloquent commentary on the double binds that modernity imposes
on individuals. He also notes that his research is an indication of what is designed
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Feride Çiçekoglu, “Difference, Visual Narration, and ‘Point of View’ in My Name is Red”. Journal of Aesthetic Education 37, 4 2003: 124-137.
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Martyn, “Turkish-German”, 231-240.
17 to overcome the dualist mode of thought that sees everything before the backdrop
of an East-West dichotomy. Abdur Rahman Shahin’s article “Why am I what I am: Hoja’s Impatience
at Turkish Identity in Orhan Pamuk’s The White Castle”
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discusses a searching for a stable identity for Hoja, the main character in The White Castle, who finally
changes his identity with the Italian slave. Shahin, in his writing, wants to explore the reasons of Hoja’s intolerance to his Turkish identity and critic to the legacy of
the Ottoman Empire that finally compelled him to change it. Another research by Dilek Kantar, entitled “The Stylistic Dialogue of East
and West in Orhan Pamuk’s The White Castle”
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, which borrows Mikhail Bakhtin’s dialogic heteroglossia, illustrates how another speech is infused into the
speech of the main characters in Pamuk’s novel. Bakhtin says that in dialogic heteroglossia, language lies between oneself and the other and the word used is
half someone else’s. However, it can be one’s own when he appropriates the word and adapting it into his own speech.
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Here, Kantar also analyses “stylistic hybrids” that speculate Western and Eastern conceptions of self in The White
Castle’s dialogue interaction. According to Baktin, a “stylistic hybrid” is an utterance that belongs to a single speaker, but actually contains mixed within it
two utterances, two speech manners, two styles, two “languages”, two semantic
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Abdur Rahman Shahin, “Why am I what I am: Hoja’s Impatience at Turkish Identity in Orhan Pamuk’s The White Castle”, Language in India August, 2012: 323-334.
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Dilek Kantar, “The Stylistic Dialogue of East and West in Orhan Pamuk’s The White Castle” a journal compilation in the Challenging the Boundaries edited by Işil Baş and Donald C. Freeman.
New York: Rodopi B. V., 2007 125-134.
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Mikhail Bakhtin, “Discourse in the Novel”. Quoted from Kantar, “The Stylistic Dialogue”, 126.
18 and axiological belief systems.
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In The White Castle, this hybrid construction can be found in the relationship between Hoja and his slave, which makes them more
and more alike until they lose their own voice, as they more immersed in the other’s lifestyle, and finally fuse on the story.
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Stylistic hybrids also let Pamuk challenge the boundary between the Eastern and the Western patterns of thinking
personified by the main characters in his novel, Hoja and his Italian slave. Grant Farred’s “To Dig a Well with a Needle: Orhan Pamuk’s Poem of
Comparative Globalization” 2007
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tries to deconstruct the concept of comparative globalization in Pamuk’s oeuvre, which are impossible to understand
except as an instance of globalized comparison, using Derrida and Heidegger’s. Farred states that Pamuk’s works address themselves persistently to criticizing the
traces of globalization that was the Ottoman Empire and the globalization that seems always just on the horizon. Moreover, they also demonstrate the
comparison between Self and Other and can only be understood through the act of comparison of its Otherness. The comparison, then, is not only between Self and
Other but also, more essentially, at the very core of the Self. A research on Orhan Pamuk’s oeuvre is also discussed by an Indonesian
scholar even though it is only a few. Albertus Bagus Laksana’s article entitled “İstanbul: Melankoli yang Mendera” 2013
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explores the concept of hüzün in Pamuk’s İstanbul: Memories and the City and My Name is Red as a deep spiritual
loss towards past’s glory and a fear to face the future. Here, Laksana states that
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Bakhtin, “Discourse in the Novel”, 126.
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Kantar, “The Stylistic Dialogue”, 127.
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Farred, “Dig a Well”, 81-99.
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Albertus Bagus Laksana, “İstanbul: Melankoli yang Mendera”, BASIS 62 2013: 28-35.
19 the entire İstanbul resident as well as the characters in My Name is Red cannot
free the complexity of hüzün from their spiritual and cultural experience. However, he also offers a solution to overcome the complexity of hüzün by
combining and living in the two traditions—the East and the West tradition. From the previous studies above, I remark that these studies generally
focus on the different way of seeing, that is represented by the Eastern and Western style of painting; the issue on the unstable and mixed identity; the binary
opposition between Self and Other; and also the feeling of hüzün that is caused by the forced modernity and the loss of the past’s glory. Departing from the previous
studies above, I propose a study that concerns with the oscillation of the East and the West and the complex desire to imitate the Other. Since my study focuses on
the predicament of the oscillation, the information on the previous studies, which deals with the confrontation of the two ways of seeing, the unstable identity, and
the binary opposition between Self and Other are very useful to reveal the complex desire of Pamuk’s characters to imitate the Other. Moreover, the research
by Laksana offers alternative solutions on the predicament and tension between the East and West by combining and living in those two traditions. Apart from the
journals above, my thesis employs Said’s and Bhabha’s discourses on Orientalism and Postcolonialism, which focus on self-orientalism, hybridity, in-betweenness,
mimicry, and ambivalence.
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2. Review of Theoretical Concept