tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10172595437601415192024-02-08T18:46:36.109+01:00INTELLECTUAL ENVIRONMENTSThis is a plattform for travellars in environments of the opening world between the East and West. (signatures, notes, sketches and longer texts)Samhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05040175908655672359noreply@blogger.comBlogger1125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1017259543760141519.post-74244382059974876162014-08-18T10:28:00.000+02:002014-08-29T09:19:32.613+02:00""Faruk Birtek: Post-script - Interstatiality and the gaze<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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--></style><span style="mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">The inspiration for this study came from our reading of Muhammed <br />
Assad`s Road to Mecca. We were struck by the beauty of his <br />
description of the desert, of the Berber, of the Arab. We were struck <br />
by his passion, his appreciative understanding, his love for these <br />
objects of his adoration as well as his undeclared, implicit distance <br />
from them that gives him his extraordinary gaze. We were struck by <br />
this double phenomenon of self-immersion as well as, and at the same <br />
time of his own self decontextualization, both from the origins of his <br />
journey, namely the Austrian occident, and from his new found nativity <br />
in his new abode, the Arabian desert and Islam.<br />
<br />
We wondered whether we could trace a similar gaze in the works of <br />
Ritter, Spitzer, Auerbach, and Fuchs. There already existed <br />
biographiıcal studies of the German speaking exiles in Turkey in the <br />
1930s. A very large number of academics, professionals, intellectuals <br />
found a new home in Turkey in their escape from the Nazi regime. They <br />
contributed immensely to the formation of the new Turkish Republic, <br />
whether in the legal profession, medicine, or in the academia. Some of <br />
their prominence continued after the War when they returned back to <br />
Germany and actively contributed to the formation of the new German <br />
Republic. Our concern here has been different. We were exclusively <br />
interested in what one would call in German, the work in the <br />
humanistics , or more roughly in Englısh, in the humanities to see <br />
how much ıf any infiuence we could detect in the works of these <br />
scholars, of their exile in Turkey. We could not have expected the <br />
same immersion we observed ın Assad of our scholars in Turkey, nor <br />
that gaze we noted emanating from his interstitial habitus. Istanbul <br />
was not the desert. İt was too cosmopolıtan to envelope its habitants. <br />
The only one who seem to display a gaze similar to Asad was perhaps <br />
Fuchs. Though a relatıvely minor actor among our four characters, we <br />
have gıven him more pages in the book, to include some of his <br />
paintings and sketches of the arid lands of Anatolia and some of ıts <br />
people because for us it paralleled Assad’s vivid descriptions of the <br />
desert and the desert people which we said had been our point of <br />
departure. Although Istanbul was no desert to envelope Fuchs or the <br />
others, it also had its particular nature to set the ground for the <br />
interstatiality we were pursuing to find in our authors. The <br />
interstatiality İstanbul yielded we thought best revealed in the two <br />
tempers of the cıty, in the very real sense of the word, not a <br />
metaphor at all, but the determinant of real, lived experiences. When <br />
the North wınd blew, which bore its Greek name, Poyrazhe the city <br />
Occidentalized, fresh in its nature, clear in its diction, straight in <br />
its direction; when Poyraz blew things worked better, ships more in <br />
time, people more industrious. For that we called it ın the book the <br />
west wind. Its influence in the works of the state spread from <br />
Istanbul all the way to Aleppo. When the south wınd blew, lodos from <br />
the Greek nodos wills melted, people spread, lethargy and bad-humour <br />
got coupled, ships appeared to need more effort to keep their <br />
schedule. Trains did not want to move. People did not want to <br />
converse. Chıldren became more iritent. This was Istanbul’s particular <br />
orient and was felt as far as Macedonia as Skopje orientalized. Dıd
<br />
our authors find this duality of their habitus a hidden source for <br />
their scholarly vision that had such major impact in their realms of <br />
scholarship ?. The only specific mention of their peculiar situ for an <br />
influence on their work could be found in something most unrelated to <br />
our depiction of the duality we observed for İstanbul. Adorno on <br />
wrıtıng on Auerbach mentions how the conditions of Istanbul being <br />
left without a real library might have helped him to write the Mimesis <br />
in its undivided focus. That very material condition Adorno describes <br />
however for us is a good metaphor for the particular duality Istanbul <br />
in its weather constanly bears. Here we were ınterested in the space
<br />
between the orient and the occıdent, the ınterstatıal gap whıch we <br />
observed ın Assad’s self-decontextualızatıon but now in a very <br />
particular and real sense. We thought this very real climatological <br />
duality peculiar to Istanbul, where neither the southwind nor the <br />
northwind can ever fully dominate, and that in each occassion its <br />
antithesis only remains at bay waiting to pervail momentarily sets the <br />
context of a peculiar type of decontextualization. Istanbul, a
<br />
geography where both the east and the west are both emphemeral, a <br />
geography where the winds constantly decenter its logic might have <br />
given a particular autonomy to its occidental visitors who can remain <br />
alien and native at the same time.<br />
<br />
We wondered whether this in-between space might have privileged our <br />
authors for the outstretch of theır scholarly vision. The artıcles <br />
above by Stauth, Violan, Ozbek and to a degree Berman touch upon that
<br />
issue.""</span></div>
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<span style="mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">(This text was published as an introduction to a collection of articles on "Instanbul (eds. Faruk Birtek, Georg Stauth, Transkript, Bielefeld 2007) " in German .)</span></div>
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Samhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05040175908655672359noreply@blogger.com0