Narratives of resistance and political activism in post-1980 Turkish literature

Reimagining 1970s Turkey in Muzaffer Oruçoğlu’s Tohum and Latife Tekin’s Gece Dersleri

Bibliographic Data

ID21726583
AuthorsSercan Hamza Baglama (0000-0002-3361-6616, Çanakkale Onsekiz Mart Üniversitesi, corresponding author)
Year2024
Volume27
Issue3
Pages378-396
Publication date2024-09-01
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessNo
TypeARTICLE
VenueMiddle Eastern Literatures (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 1475-262X • E-ISSN: 1475-2638
PublisherInforma UK Limited (PUBLISHER • GB)
DOI10.1080/1475262x.2025.2574285
OpenAlexW4415438933
LanguageEN
References cited5

This article offers a comparative critique of Latife Tekin’s Gece Dersleri (1986) and Muzaffer Oruçoğlu’s Tohum (1992) as antithetical engagements with the crisis of leftist militancy in 1970s Turkey. Framing post-1980 literature as a site of epistemological struggle, the study interrogates how these texts mobilize divergent aesthetic paradigms to reconfigure the memory of political defeat. Gece Dersleri disarticulates revolutionary grand narratives through fragmentation, interiority, and feminist critique, exposing the patriarchal structures embedded within leftist praxis, whereas Tohum reasserts testimonial authority through a masculinist ethic of endurance and ideological absolutism. Through close attention to narrative form, temporality, and voice, the article argues that these novels instantiate competing modes of remembering and theorizing resistance, and that their juxtaposition reveals not simply a literary divergence, but a broader contestation over the gendered logics, aesthetic norms, and political afterlives of revolutionary discourse in post-coup Turkish memory

Narrative · Political activism · Politics · Turkish · Balkans: History, Politics, Society · Hong Kong and Taiwan Politics · Turkey's Politics and Society

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