Get Herald RSSOrhan Pamuk's literary accomplishments have been recently acknowledged worldwide, especially after receiving the Nobel Prize for Literature this past month. Given his controversial political stance in Turkey, we were very eager to hear him speak at Brown ("Nobel winner recounts tumultuous writing career," Nov. 15). Nevertheless, both the panel and the reading turned out to be a great disappointment. It was sad to see the ultimate failure of Pamuk, who was unable to assume the responsibility of intellectual conscience. It was truly annoying to see his unwillingness to respond to questions in a way that reveals an inconsistent political stance. This was essentially a literary gathering, but Pamuk's literary accomplishments have never been free of political concerns. Nor has he distanced himself from similar struggles as a public intellectual figure.
For example, in 1995 Pamuk was one among the many to visit political prisoners on hunger strike, taking direct intellectual action to prevent any more deaths. Today his name is not even on the list of supporters of Behic Asci, a lawyer who has been on hunger strike since April 5 protesting the isolation of prisoners in the country's controversial maximum security F-type prisons. Unaddressed problems at F-type prisons have so far led to the death of 122 inmates and convicts and left behind more than 600 others crippled. Why is Pamuk all of a sudden reluctant to carry on the mission he so enthusiastically embraced once? How has he turned into a light-intellectual figure configured to fit the tastes of a neo-liberal diet?
Pamuk appeared on the Turkish literary scene during the turbulent 1980s with an explicit concern to avoid the so called social realist perspective that dominated Turkish novel writing until then. He endorsed a nearly class-free perspective in his novels and seemed to pursue creativity through a symbolic and mystical narrative style. Yet, this approach gradually carried him to the trap of orientalism as Pamuk started to write about his world heavily characterized by a particular form of Western perspective. Paradoxically, he found himself sitting in the very domain of politics he fiercely tried to escape in his novels. As he braided a specific selection of political themes in "Snow," Pamuk was already engaged in a form of cultural production a la West. He appeared to be very concerned about issues of fundamental political importance such as freedom of expression and human rights abuses. But neither his literary formulations, nor his other writings and public statements could offer a complex and provocative perspective. His analyses were blind to the multi-layered economic, political, social and cultural dimensions of the issues he claimed to be concerned with. Talking about the Kurdish issue or the Armenian massacre/genocide/forced exodus, Pamuk has generally formulated the problem in terms of identity and hid away what the neo-liberal world did not expect to see. As a consequence, Pamuk has fed himself out of the symbolic capital of pretentious remarks about what has been going on in the Turkish political arena.
For example, as Pamuk talks about the killings of Kurdish peoples, he problematizes the issue based only on a confrontation of identities: that is, the clash between national identity imposed by the state and the resistance to state oppression by the guerilla groups. However, he does not acknowledge adequately the abject poverty, inequality and daily suffering that have been going on in the southeastern part of the country for decades. Pamuk empties too much of the reality as he sticks to symbolic expressions of melancholia. In that regard, his consideration of the "virgin suicides" or imposed honor killings in the Kurdish-populated city of Batman, Turkey, appears very superficial at best. Of course, it is not fair to expect any literary figure to have a say on every single issue that may be of political relevance; however, at the very least, the minimum amount of responsibility requires a concerned writer not to disregard the interconnectedness of highly sensitive socioeconomic and political issues. An informed intellectual conscience is necessary to avoid a "content-free"-type analysis in the first place.
Overall, what came out of this sloppy terrain is a paradoxical outcome that requires careful disaggregation: by successfully emptying the content of politics, Pamuk redefines a light and non-disturbing form of expression as a political medium. It is only in this selective domain where freedom of speech could be defended, in his style. In this way, Pamuk has lightly assumed the image of a freedom fighter symbolizing the latest attempt to save the freedom of expression in the East by the West. Pamuk was nicely polished as an ideal candidate. Yet now he wants to abandon this role, pretty quickly demonstrating an increased willingness for seclusion and a sterile life devoid of political concerns. However, his coordinates on the symbolic map make his mission, if not Pamuk, far more important than he can ever imagine: in his own country he stands precisely against divisive nationalist groups who speak politics out of their totalitarian and self-obsessed agenda. One only has to assume this abandoned project of struggling against all forms of unwarranted dominance and refill the void Pamuk has (intentionally or unintentionally) created. This requires an intelligent redefinition of freedom without fetishizing it in the first place.
As he stands, Pamuk interestingly appears to be a great marketing success with an unresolved political appetite. Perhaps it is more useful to include him as a part of the required reading list for courses under business administration (or marketing) rather than comparative literature.
Fulya Apaydin GS and Feryaz Ocakli GS have too many questions.
