36 against a dominant colonial power.
105
Bhabha also states that hybridity is the revaluation of the assumption of colonial identity through the repetition of
discriminatory identity effects. In addition,
colonial hybridity is not a problem of genealogy or identity between two different cultures, which can then be resolved as an issue of cultural relativism. Hybridity
is a problematic of colonial representation and individuation that reverses the effects of the colonial disavowal, so that other “denied” knowledges enter upon
the dominant discourse and estrange the basis of its authority—its rules of recognition.
106
Pamuk also presents hybridity in his My Name is Red in the sultan’s commissioned book, an Islamic Ottoman illuminating book, which contains the
Venetian painting, Olive’s double identity as the representative of the Eastern and Western side, and in The White Castle on the Italian slave’s hybrid speech and his
double identity.
2.2.2. The Discourse on Orientalism
107
Edward Said in Orientalism 2003 explains that the discourse on Orientalism is a style of thought based on the ontological and epistemological
distinction between “The Orient” and “The Occident”.
108
Orientalism is a discourse used by the Occident to dominate and control the Orient. It is a product
of Europe’s—mainly British and French—certain political forces and activity
109
as well as domination and hegemony over the East. Fundamentally, Orientalism is
105
Bhabha, Location of Culture, 112.
106
Bhabha, Location of Culture, 114.
107
Edward Said’s discourse on Orientalism is principally a way of defining and “locating” Europe’s others. But as a group of related disciplines, the discourse on Orientalism is about
Europe itself and hinges on arguments that circulated around the issues of national distinctiveness and racial and linguistic origins. Quoted from Bill Ashcroft Pal Ahluwalia, Edward Said
London: Routledge, 2001.
108
Edward Said, Orientalism London: Penguin Books Ltd, 2003 2.
109
Said, Orientalism, 203.
37 a political doctrine, which promotes a binary opposition between the East and the
West. Said shows that this opposition is important to Europe’s self-conception: if the Orient is weak, Europe is strong; if the Orient is inferior then the Occident is
superior; if the Orient is static, Europe can be seen as developing and marching ahead.
110
Besides, it is never far from Denys Hay’s idea of Europe, the idea of European identity as a superior one over Oriental backwardness.
111
However, Said’s project is to show how this idea about the Orient is part of Western style
for dominating, restructuring, having authority, and maintaining power over the Orient.
112
The relationship between Occident and Orient is a relationship of power, of domination, of varying degrees of a complex hegemony
113
and the Orient is always stereotyped as the weak. Said stresses that,
the other feature of the Orient was that Europe was always in a position of strength. There is no way of putting this euphemistically…the essential
relationship, on political, cultural, and even religious grounds was seen to be one between a strong and weak partner.
114
Said describes the Orient as a system of representation framed by a whole set of forces that brought them into Western learning, Western consciousness, and later,
Western empire.
115
They are Europe’s cultural contestant and one of its deepest and most recurring images of the Other. Said also argues that the Orient has
helped to define Europe or the West as its contrasting image, idea, personality,
110
Ania Loomba, ColonialismPostcolonialism, Second Edition Oxon: Routledge, Taylor Francis Group, 2005 45.
111
Said, Orientalism, 7.
112
Said, Orientalism, 3.
113
Said, Orientalism, 5.
114
Said, Orientalism, 40.
115
Said, Orientalism, 203.
38 and experience.
116
The Orient is seen as a locale requiring Western attention, reconstruction, even redemption. Moreover, the Orient existed as a place isolated
from the mainstream of European progress in the sciences, arts, and commerce.
117
Additionally, Pamuk also stresses that for Turkey and the Turks, Europe has always figured as a dream, a vision of the future, a goal to achieve or danger, and
a future—an imagined future—but never a memory, just like the collapsed Ottoman Empire.
118
Therefore, as Turkey’s deepest image of the Other, Europe is very important for Pamuk’s works for he always presents and complicates this
binary opposition in them, especially My Name is Red and The White Castle. For that reason, I use the discourse on Orientalism to analyse the self-orientalism as
well as the binary opposition and the complex desire to imitate the Other that is experience by Pamuk’s characters in his selected oeuvre.
Esin Akalin, in “The Ottoman Phenomenon and Edward Said’s Monolithic Discourse on the Orient” explains that Said’s Orientalism chooses to homogenise
the East and fails to recognise the element of power associated with the Ottoman Empire. Akalin, in addition, stresses that she is not agree with Said’s discourse
that has generalized the East. Quoting from Kafadar, she states that Said disregards the fact that the Ottoman, who has excelled in statecraft and
administration, financial policies, land system, and military power, are a “self- consciously imperial state”.
119
Akalin also finds that Said’s ahistorical and
116
Said, Orientalism, 1-2.
117
Said, Orientalism, 206.
118
Pamuk, Other Colours, 190.
119
Esin Akalin, “The Ottoman Phenomenon and Edward Said’s Monolithic Discourse on the Orient”, a compilation journal in Challenging the Boundaries edited by Işil Baş and Donald C.
Freeman. New York: Rodopi, B.V., 2007 113.
39 ageographical approach to the Orient does not do justice to the historical realities
of the Ottoman Empire as a world power in the 16
th
-17
th
centuries.
120
This can be seen when Constantinople, which has reigned supreme for more than a thousand
years,
121
was conquered by the reign Ottoman Sultan, Mehmed II, on May 29, 1453. At its heyday, the Ottoman Empire’s regions were stretched from Morocco
to Ukraine, from the borders of Iran to Hungary.
122
Moreover, the Ottoman’s presence in the Mediterranean and the extension of Ottoman rule over large parts
of south-eastern Europe and North Africa deeply affected Westerners politically and culturally.
Nevertheless, the overgeneralisation of the historical interactions of systems and cultures make the Ottoman case particularly challenging.
123
The case of Turkey is very special. Here, it is not the West who orientalised Turkey but it is
Turkey that has orientalised itself. In fact, Western people even respect the Turks for their glory and military power. Turkey was never a European colony and in
the 16
th
century, the Ottoman Empire was even Europe’s great rival for commercial hegemony in the economic space stretching from Venice to the Indian
Ocean.
124
However, the loss of the Ottoman Empire had left a deep wound. When the Ottoman Empire fell and the new Republic founded, Turkey experienced a
feeling of cultural inferiority because Turks wanted to Westernize but could not
120
Akalin, “Ottoman Phenomenon”, 112.
121
Boyar and Fleet, Social History, 6.
122
Boyar and Fleet, Social History, 1.
123
Akalin, “Ottoman Phenomenon”, 114.
124
Cited by Akalin, “Ottoman Phenomenon”, 122.
40 go far enough. Moreover, this westernization also brought isolation, which made
them isolated from the Western world they emulated.
125
Orientalism is a political doctrine, which is used to control and dominate the Orient by promoting the stereotype that the Orient is weaker than the
Occident. Even though, in reality, the Ottoman was strong and able to dominate both East and West but there is still tension and longing within them to embrace
and imitate the West. As Said stresses the West has been imagine as the “messiah” that can save and release Turkey from the backwardness and
retardation. Therefore, Said’s discourse on Orientalism will be used to reveal the oscillation of the East and the West as well as the complex desire to imitate
Others.
3. Theoretical Framework
Since both novels depict the encounter between the Turks and the Italian, in the case of their tradition, culture and art, I will employ Edward Said’s
discourse on Orientalism and Homi K. Bhabha’s discourse on Postcolonialism to answer the research questions. These theories are utilized in problematizing the
influence of the Italian Renaissance style and science as well as technology toward Turkish miniature painting and traditional Turkish custom. Edward Said’s
Orientalism will be used to examine the Turks’ perception on seeing themselves upon the Italian. In addition, it is also borrowed to complicate the binary
opposition between the East and the West and self and other that is always
125
Pamuk, Other Colours, 370.
