Grammatology and Literary Modernity in Turkey [Hardcover]

The 1928 Turkish alphabet reform replacing the Perso-Arabic script with the Latin phonetic alphabet is an emblem of Turkish modernization.Grammatology and Literary Modernity in Turkeytraces the history of Turkish alphabet and language reform from the mid-nineteenth to the mid-twentieth century, examining its effects on modern Turkish literature. In readings of the novels, essays, and poetry of Ahmed Midhat, Rec?izade Mahmud Ekrem, ?mer Seyfeddin, Ahmet Hamdi Tanpinar, Peyami Safa, and N?zim Hikmet, Nergis Ert?rk argues that modern Turkish literature is profoundly self-conscious of dramatic change in its own historical conditions of possibility. Where literary historiography has sometimes idealized the Turkish language reforms as the culmination of a successful project of Westernizing modernization, Ert?rk suggests a different critical narrative: one of the consolidation of control over communication, forging a unitary nation and language from a pluralistic and multilingual society.



Acknowledgments
A Note on Translation, Transliteration, and Usage
Preface: Nationalism, Comparatism, and the Colonization of the Outside
Introduction:, Be or Die: The Stakes of Phonocentrism
Part I -- Failed Revolution
Chapter One: Words Set Free
Chapter Two: The Grammatology of Nationalism
Part II -- Other Writings
Chapter Three:The Time Regulation Institute: Dwelling in a Mechanized Language
Chapter Four: Safa's Translation and Its Remainders
Chapter Five: N?zim's Ghostwriting

Works Cited
Index

In this ground-breaking study of modern Turkish literature, Ert?rk explores the insistent presence of the unheimlich in the work of novelists who, by supporting the vernacularization and purification of the Turkish language, aspired to found a unitary self-identity but ended up writing a narrative of profound self-alienation. --Jale Parla, Bilgi University

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