Cover Image

“Anonymous collectivity” and “sly civility”: postcolonial defiance in a satirical short story by Aziz Nesin

Until a few years ago, Turkey was usually seen as irrelevant to colonial studies owing to its non-colonial status. More recently, however, there has been a more flexible approach to considering the possibility of studying modern Turkey under the heading of postcolonial studies. By acknowledging t...

Full description

Saved in:
Bibliographic Details
Main Authors: Mehrvand, Ahad, Khorsandi, Javad
Format: Article
Language:English
Published: Penerbit Universiti Kebangsaan Malaysia 2018
Online Access:http://journalarticle.ukm.my/13768/1/21513-76294-1-PB.pdf
http://journalarticle.ukm.my/13768/
http://ejournal.ukm.my/gema/issue/view/1087
Tags: Add Tag
No Tags, Be the first to tag this record!
id my-ukm.journal.13768
record_format eprints
spelling my-ukm.journal.137682019-12-05T12:43:33Z http://journalarticle.ukm.my/13768/ “Anonymous collectivity” and “sly civility”: postcolonial defiance in a satirical short story by Aziz Nesin Mehrvand, Ahad Khorsandi, Javad Until a few years ago, Turkey was usually seen as irrelevant to colonial studies owing to its non-colonial status. More recently, however, there has been a more flexible approach to considering the possibility of studying modern Turkey under the heading of postcolonial studies. By acknowledging the socio-political similarities between Turkey and colonized countries, the current study employs a postcolonial framework to analyze a short story by a Turkish author. In doing so, Aziz Nesin’s “Don’t you have any Donkeys in your Country?” is studied to show how Nesin contributes to the political and socio-economic status of Modern Turkey and the highlighted controversy over the applicability of postcolonial perspectives to the Turkish context. The present study draws upon Albert Memmi’s notion of “anonymous collectivity” and Homi K. Bhabha’s “sly civility” as postcolonial means of indirect defiance, to identify the ways in which the narrative contributes to its contemporary milieu. We argue that throughout the story Nesin satirizes the so-called expert colonizer for his fundamentally false assumption about the naïveté of the colonized nation. The story reflects that although the Turkish peasant has unconsciously internalized the colonialist ideology of “anonymous collectivity,” the very same indirect means of defiance is consciously used by the peasant to overcome inequality and white supremacy in the sphere of selling Turkish carpets as one of the most prestigious products to the Western world. This study contributes to the literature on postcolonialism, first by raising the possibility of including modern Turkey in postcolonial studies, and then by examining Nesin’s response towards the postcolonial-like ideology whereby it is concluded that oppression creates contradictions in the ostensible colonized/colonizer, impairing and reversing both groups’ identity and humanity. We also conclude that the narrative reverses the dominant ideologies of clever and knowledgeable Americans by giving voice to a subaltern Turkish peasant whose goal is to resist the enduring effects of economic and cultural oppression. Penerbit Universiti Kebangsaan Malaysia 2018-05 Article PeerReviewed application/pdf en http://journalarticle.ukm.my/13768/1/21513-76294-1-PB.pdf Mehrvand, Ahad and Khorsandi, Javad (2018) “Anonymous collectivity” and “sly civility”: postcolonial defiance in a satirical short story by Aziz Nesin. GEMA: Online Journal of Language Studies, 18 (2). pp. 31-45. ISSN 1675-8021 http://ejournal.ukm.my/gema/issue/view/1087
institution Universiti Kebangsaan Malaysia
building Tun Sri Lanang Library
collection Institutional Repository
continent Asia
country Malaysia
content_provider Universiti Kebangsaan Malaysia
content_source UKM Journal Article Repository
url_provider http://journalarticle.ukm.my/
language English
description Until a few years ago, Turkey was usually seen as irrelevant to colonial studies owing to its non-colonial status. More recently, however, there has been a more flexible approach to considering the possibility of studying modern Turkey under the heading of postcolonial studies. By acknowledging the socio-political similarities between Turkey and colonized countries, the current study employs a postcolonial framework to analyze a short story by a Turkish author. In doing so, Aziz Nesin’s “Don’t you have any Donkeys in your Country?” is studied to show how Nesin contributes to the political and socio-economic status of Modern Turkey and the highlighted controversy over the applicability of postcolonial perspectives to the Turkish context. The present study draws upon Albert Memmi’s notion of “anonymous collectivity” and Homi K. Bhabha’s “sly civility” as postcolonial means of indirect defiance, to identify the ways in which the narrative contributes to its contemporary milieu. We argue that throughout the story Nesin satirizes the so-called expert colonizer for his fundamentally false assumption about the naïveté of the colonized nation. The story reflects that although the Turkish peasant has unconsciously internalized the colonialist ideology of “anonymous collectivity,” the very same indirect means of defiance is consciously used by the peasant to overcome inequality and white supremacy in the sphere of selling Turkish carpets as one of the most prestigious products to the Western world. This study contributes to the literature on postcolonialism, first by raising the possibility of including modern Turkey in postcolonial studies, and then by examining Nesin’s response towards the postcolonial-like ideology whereby it is concluded that oppression creates contradictions in the ostensible colonized/colonizer, impairing and reversing both groups’ identity and humanity. We also conclude that the narrative reverses the dominant ideologies of clever and knowledgeable Americans by giving voice to a subaltern Turkish peasant whose goal is to resist the enduring effects of economic and cultural oppression.
format Article
author Mehrvand, Ahad
Khorsandi, Javad
spellingShingle Mehrvand, Ahad
Khorsandi, Javad
“Anonymous collectivity” and “sly civility”: postcolonial defiance in a satirical short story by Aziz Nesin
author_facet Mehrvand, Ahad
Khorsandi, Javad
author_sort Mehrvand, Ahad
title “Anonymous collectivity” and “sly civility”: postcolonial defiance in a satirical short story by Aziz Nesin
title_short “Anonymous collectivity” and “sly civility”: postcolonial defiance in a satirical short story by Aziz Nesin
title_full “Anonymous collectivity” and “sly civility”: postcolonial defiance in a satirical short story by Aziz Nesin
title_fullStr “Anonymous collectivity” and “sly civility”: postcolonial defiance in a satirical short story by Aziz Nesin
title_full_unstemmed “Anonymous collectivity” and “sly civility”: postcolonial defiance in a satirical short story by Aziz Nesin
title_sort “anonymous collectivity” and “sly civility”: postcolonial defiance in a satirical short story by aziz nesin
publisher Penerbit Universiti Kebangsaan Malaysia
publishDate 2018
url http://journalarticle.ukm.my/13768/1/21513-76294-1-PB.pdf
http://journalarticle.ukm.my/13768/
http://ejournal.ukm.my/gema/issue/view/1087
_version_ 1654961127728087040
score 13.211869

Similar Items