"THE PAST IS A FOREIGN COUNTRY" THE POLITICS OF MEMORY AND FORGETTING IN ELIF SHAFAK'S SELECT NOVELS

Abstract

The politics of memory and forgetting has emerged as a fertile ground around which the notion of cultural memory studies and its convergence with history, sociology, literature and arts has been constructed and reconstructed over the recent decades. This surge in the interdisciplinary approach has not only offered mutual stimulation(s) and enrichment within the domain of memory studies but has also opened up new directions around which the material, cultural, and historical aspects of ‘memory’ can be reimagined and reexamined. The broad spectrum of concepts available at the intersection of cultural memory studies, historical studies and literary studies has further provided the framework to analyse the multilayered role of literature in shaping and reshaping the memory culture of a society, community or nation. Moreover, in countries where the establishment of a nation is often founded on the principle of inclusions and exclusions, presence and absence, and most importantly, remembering and forgetting, literature plays an important role in representing multiple facets of cultural memory through various forms, genres, symbols, motifs and techniques. In this context, by fulfilling its critical and reflexive function, literature contributes to “challenging the firmly drawn border between what is remembered and what is forgotten,” specifically when it comes to a nation's ‘haunted’ past (Erll 79). The present thesis delves into the intricate ways in which the selected fictionalised narratives rooted in the mnemonic culture of the Republic of Turkey and Cyprus grapple with the themes of memory, forgetting, heritage, past, and historical discourse. It further attempts to investigate the numerous possibilities offered by fictional narratives in understanding the way material symbols, historical frameworks, social institutions, and political ideologies shape our subjective versions of the past. This doctoral research seeks to examine Shafak’s The Bastard of Istanbul, The Architect’s Apprentice and The Island of Missing Trees by probing the ways in which these texts engage with the selectively remembered and forgotten memories of the violent past. It further explores how these fictionalised narratives about the “nightmares of history” attempt to represent the past in ways that counter ‘official’ history and provide space for the emergence of repressed ‘historical injustices’ upon which the nations are founded (Cheng viii). By focusing on the gaps and voids in the cultural memory and historiography of the Republic of Turkey and Cyprus, this research undertakes a close textual analysis of the select novels to establish how Shafak brings the forgotten and suppressed aspects of the past to the surface. Moreover, the researcher will also take into account Shafak’s non-fictional writings, interviews, and Instagram posts to fully understand her perspectives on gender, politics, history and memory in Turkey and the Middle East. The thesis draws insights from Jan Assmann, Aleida Assmann, Astrid Erll, Pierre Nora, and Marianne Hirsch, among others, to foreground how the mutual interaction between memory, forgetting and history shape the process of identity formation at the individual and collective level. Moreover, since the historical wounds and historical violence have an impact that transcends the boundaries of time and space, this study aims to investigate the intergenerational and transgenerational aftereffects of trauma and the way it forces the survivors to use silence and forgetting as a protective shield to protect the postgenerations from the burdens of the past.