Abstract
Remembering the Ottoman Empire in the Shadow of the Rebuplic: Subject, Power and Identity in Zeytindağı
Falih Rıfkı Atay is among the founding elites of the Turkish Republic with his works and writings. This study is about the examination of Zeytindağı, one of his memoirs, within the framework of the concepts of subject, power and identity. Here, based on the idea that autobiographical narratives, like fictional texts, are produced within specific discourse practices, it is aimed to illuminate how the author constructs his own identity. In this direction, the text has been examined around historical, ideological and literary discourses. First, the connection between autobiographical narratives and the concept of power is discussed and it is shown that such texts are a means of establishing themselves as a subject of power. Later, it was discussed how Falih Rıfkı constructed his own identity, his distance from the power structures of the past, and his attitude towards the dominant ideology through his memories.
As a result, it was revealed that the work was coded, divided into themes and arranged in a way that would serve the purposes of the founding ideology of the Turkish Republic, through the arrangement of memories in Zeytindağı. Thus, it has been shown how memoirs are a part of the actuality in which they are written, even though they are a retrospective literary genre. In addition, based on Atay’s memoirs, it has been clarified that memories can be read both as identity narratives and how the author serve the continuity of the discourses of power.
Keywords
autobiographical narratives, memoirs, identity narratives, power, ideology
