Excavating Memory: Bilge Karasu’s Istanbul and Walter Benjamin’s Berlin

289 Pages·2020·12.627 MB·English

by  Ülker Gökberk

Excavating
Memory
Bilge Karasu’s
Istanbul and
Walter Benjamin’s
Berlin
Ottoman and Turkish Studies
Series Editor
Hakan T. Karateke (University of Chicago)
Other Titles in this Series
The Ottoman Twilight in the Arab Lands: Turkish Memoirs and
Testimonies of the Great War
Selim Deringil 
Disliking Others: Loathing, Hostility, and Distrust in Premodern Ottoman Lands
Edited by Hakan T. Karateke, H. Erdem Çıpa, and Helga Anetshofer
Waiting for Müteferrika: Glimpses of Ottoman Print Culture
Orlin Sabev
Investigating Turkey: Detective Fiction and Turkish Nationalism, 1928–1945
David Mason
For more information on this series, please visit:
academicstudiespress.com/ottomanandturkishstudies
Excavating
Memory
Bilge Karasu’s
Istanbul and
Walter Benjamin’s
Berlin
ÜLKER
GÖKBERK
BOSTON
2020
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Names: Gökberk, Ülker, 1947- author.
Title: Excavating memory : Bilge Karasu’s Istanbul and Walter Benjamin’s
Berlin / Ülker Gökberk.
Description: Boston : Academic Studies Press, 2020. | Series: Ottoman and
Turkish studies | Includes bibliographical references and index.
Identifiers: LCCN 2020019141 (print) | LCCN 2020019142 (ebook) | ISBN
9781644694428 (hardback) | ISBN 9781644694435 (pdf)
Subjects: LCSH: Karasu, Bilge--Criticism and interpretation. | Benjamin,
Walter, 1892-1940--Criticism and interpretation. | Identity
(Philosophical concept) in literature. | Beyoğlu (Istanbul, Turkey)--In
literature. | Berlin (Germany)--In literature.
Classification: LCC PL248.K33 Z64 2020 (print) | LCC PL248.K33 (ebook) |
DDC 894/.3533--dc23
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2020019141
LC ebook record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2020019142
Copyright © 2020 Academic Studies Press
All rights reserved.
ISBN 9781644694428 (hardback)
ISBN 9781644694435 (adobe pdf)
ISBN 9781644694442 (ePub)
Book design by Lapiz Digital Services
Cover design by Ivan Grave
On the cover: Tan Oral, “Balıkçı ve Kediler” (Fish Vendor with Cats), an illustration for
Bilge Karasu’s “Beyoğlu Üzerine Metin” (“Text on Beyoğlu”), from the book and exhibit
“Beyoğlu’dan Esintiler,” 2008.
Published by Academic Studies Press
1577 Beacon Street
Brookline, MA 02446, USA
[email protected]
www.academicstudiespress.com
To my beloved family

Contents
Acknowledgments x
Introduction 1
1. Beginnings: Reading Memory 19
2. From Berlin’s Old West to Istanbul’s Beyoğlu: Narratives of
Memory, Narratives of Lost Topographies 53
3. Incompleteness as Anti-Autobiography: The Production
and Publication Histories of Benjamin’s and Karasu’s
Memory Narratives 85
4. Bilge Karasu in Historical Context: Identity Formation
in the Shadow of “Turkification” 106
5. Forgetting, Remembering, and the Workings of Collective
Memory: Survival and the Retrieval of Memory Traces 128
6. “Dialectical Images” in Beyoğlu’s Black Waters: The Photograph
as Testimony 157
7. Remembering as Distortion: Visual and Aural Traces of Alterity 175
8. Spatiality as the Inscription of the Past 199
9. Crazy Meryem as the Saint of Beyoğlu’s Marginalized:
Toward a Final Reading of Difference 227
Conclusion 246
Addendum: Biographical Notes on Bilge Karasu 257
References 260
Index 271
Beyoğlu’nun sayısız sokaklarının herbirinde görüldüğü, görülebileceği gibi,
burada da kediler. . .
sokağa inerler, balıkçının ardından yürüyen ke-
diler ordusuna katılırlar sessizce. Hiçbiri saldır-
gan değildir. Balıkçı bir kapının önünde durdu
mu hepsi durur, kıçını yere kor, sıralandığı çem-
bersel çizgiden balıkçının ellerine diker gözlerini.
(As they are seen, can be seen in each of the countless streets of Beyoğlu, so
here, too, cats. . .
they go down the street, they join quietly the army of cats
walking behind the fish vendor. None is aggressive. When the
fish vendor stops at a door they all stop, put their ass down,
forming a circle they fix their gaze on the fish vendor’s hands.)
—Bilge Karasu, “Beyoğlu Üzerine Metin” (“Text on Beyoğlu”)
So zittert durch durch die schmetterlingserfüllte Luft das Wort
“Brauhausberg.” Auf dem Brauhausberg bei Potsdam hatten wir unsere
Sommerwohnung. Aber der Name hat alle Schwere verloren, enthält von
einem Brauhaus überhaupt nichts mehr und ist allenfalls ein von Bläue
umwitterter Berg, der im Sommer sich aufbaute, um mich und meine Eltern
zu behausen. Und darum liegt das Potsdam meiner Kindheit in so blauer
Luft, als wären seine Trauermäntel oder Admirale, Tagpfauenaugen und
Aurorafalter über eine der schimmernden Emaillen von Limoges verstreut,
auf denen die Zinnen und Mauern Jerusalems vom dunkelblauen Grunde
sich abheben.
(Thus, through air teeming with butterflies vibrates the word “Brauhausberg,”
which is to say, ‘Brewery Hill.’ It was on the Brauhausberg, near Potsdam,
that we had our summer residence. But the name has lost all heaviness,
contains nothing more of any brewery, and is, at most, a blue-misted hill that
rose up every summer to give lodging to my parents and me. And that is why
the Potsdam of my childhood lies in air so blue, as though all its butterflies—
its mourning cloaks and admirals, peacocks and auroras—were scattered
over one of those glistening Limoges enamels, on which the ramparts and
battlements of Jerusalem stand out against a dark blue ground.)
—Walter Benjamin, “Schmetterlingsjagd” (“Butterfly Hunt”)