8 Complexities in Hoja’s life and his exhaustion on the Sultan and his
“traditionality”, “forced” him to adore the identity of his Venetian slave whose life is more interesting in Italy where people do not depend on the prediction and
interpretation of the dreams and stars. In the end, master Hoja changes his identity with his Venetian slave—who is more knowledgeable in the science and has
physical similarities—after his “war machine” does not give victory to the Sultan. He wants to correspond with men of science in Venice, Flanders, whatever
faraway land occurred to him at that moment. TWC, 121
2. Research Questions
Based on the background information above, this study is focused on the issues concerning with the discourse of the clash between the East and the West
and the identity crisis and the problems of the study can be formulated as follows: 1. How is the oscillation of the East and the West and Turkey’s complex desire to
imitate the Other depicted in Orhan Pamuk’s My Name is Red and The White Castle and how do the theories of Said and Bhabha help this discourse?
2. What are the solutions that Pamuk’s selected stories offer to the predicament of the oscillation of the East and the West?
3. Scope of the Study
The oscillation to embrace Western tradition or to preserve the old Islamic tradition has been experienced by Turkey since the Ottoman Empire. The
encounters of the East and the West, the seduction of Western culture, as well as
9 the desire to become and imitate the Other have led Turkey to this high tension.
Turkey also experiences the up and down emotion of the anxiety to embrace the forced modernity as well as the feeling of hüzün because of the loss of the
Ottoman past’s glory. Due to this predicament, this research uses Orhan Pamuk’s My Name is Red and The White Castle in order to reveal the negotiation and the
complexity of the oscillation between the East and the West, the seduction of the European art and technology that lead to the complex desire to imitate the Other
and identity crisis faced by the characters, and its solution offered in these two tales. It is a critical reading using Said’s discourse on Orientalism and Bhabha’s
discourse on Postcolonialism, which focuses on in-betweenness, self-orientalism, mimicry, ambivalence, and hybridity. These points are very important since MNR
and TWC complicate Turkey’s desire to imitate the Other and how it manages to overcome the anxiety by combining the Self and the Other. These two discourses
are used to expose the oscillation of the East and the West and the complex desire to imitate the Other. In addition, Said’s and Bhabha’s discourses are also applied
to illuminate the solutions offered by Pamuk’s selected oeuvre. Since the two selected novels are rich of and related to Turkey’s historical aspects, therefore,
other aspects such as Turkey’s socio-culture condition in the 16
th
and 17
th
century will be linked to Turkey’s present events—especially where the two stories take
place, İstanbul—in unity with the discussion in the novel, which negotiates the East-West arts and traditions.
10
4. Research Methodology
