This panel examines the discourses and practices of late Ottoman transgression in various urban centers of the empire. The historiography of late Ottoman bourgeois modernity has confined its analysis to the introduction of new disciplinary practices, technologies of the self, processes of "othering" and normative discourses of hierarchy, as well as the concomitant attempt of emerging middle-class groups to reshape local societies in their own image. This panel offers an alternative approach to reconceptualizing Ottoman bourgeois modernity from the vantage point of social fluidity, alternative individual and collective self-fashioning, and the disruption of a bourgeois order-in-the-making. It will investigate how individuals and larger collectivities challenged the normativization of social identities and practices being imposed and constituted by imagining the self, the social, political and communal practices in alternative ways. How can we move the conversation about late Ottoman bourgeois modernity beyond a consideration of the hegemonic strategies of middle class groups. Taking this question as its starting point, this proposed collection of papers aims to understand late Ottoman bourgeois modernity as a fluid, diverse, and conflicting project by exploring historical examples of transgressive practices and discourses.
The papers in this collection are brought together to address a variety of interconnected forms of transgression that challenged the established norms of gender, class and ethnic respectability. They connect two major cities (Istanbul and Salonica) and investigate three major Ottoman millets (Greek Orthodox, Muslims, and Sephardic Jews) approaching them as both interrelated and deeply ingrained within the broader Ottoman society. The first paper investigates the creation of a new bourgeois masculine physical aesthetic in Istanbul that diverged from the accepted forms of corporeal respectability. All three other papers refer to the Second Constitutional Period. The second paper explores the rapid emergence of a male Zionist youth, whose self-presentation challenged the established social hierarchies and dominant representations of respectable male, bourgeois Jewishness in Salonica. The third paper examines depictions of women (Muslim or non-Muslim) in erotic novels of the era and how representations of them experiencing and enjoying their sexuality to its fullest challenged the early Ottoman novels' fear of women's sexuality. Finally, the fourth paper discusses satirical journals and almanacs published in Greek in Istanbul, highlighting narratives and images that challenge the political and cultural hegemony both within the community and in the Ottoman capital at large.
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Dr. Burcu Karahan
Following the proclamation of the Second Constitution in 1908, the Ottoman Empire witnessed the advent of new publications and the emergence a new literary genre: erotic fiction. In the aftermath of strict Hamidian censorship, dozens of novels representing sexuality freely and openly were published anonymously, under pseudonyms, or solely with the initials of their writers. Among many are anonymously published Kaymak Tabağı (A Plate of Cream) (1910), Ebü’l Burhan Nedim’s Bir Çapkının Hikayesi (Story of a Casanova) (1910), M. S.’s Zifaf Gecesi Harem Ağasının Muaşakası (Love Making of an Eunuch on Wedding Night) (1913), A. Ali’s Anahtar Deliğinde (Through the Keyhole) (1914), etc. These Second Constitutional Era erotic novels, marginalized and left out of scholarly anthologies or bibliographies for decades, feature scenes of adultery, defloration, extramarital sex, lesbianism, voyeurism, and female characters who were as debaucherous as their male counterparts.
I argue that although some of these erotic novels, such as Mehmet Rauf’s Bir Zanbağın Hikâyesi (1910), possibly the first erotic novel of the time, reproduces the highly repeated, message-loaded love triangle theme of early Tanzimat novels, the femme fatale, the concubine, and the spoiled Westernized young man in an erotic context, the majority of them with their female characters who explore their sexuality to its fullest challenge the assumed mission and instructions of the late nineteenth century early Ottoman novels. Early Ottoman novelists such as Ahmet Mithat, Namık Kemal, Mizancı Mehmet Murat and Şemsettin Sami, who believed that the role of the novel was moral and pedagogical, tried to indoctrinate in their works a sense of discipline and social responsibility. Their novels display shared fear of women’s sexuality and young women who pursue their romantic or sexual desires are either killed or commit suicide. Erotic novels of the Second Constitutional Era defy the tragic condemnations of romantic and sexual pursuits in early novels with their depiction of female characters (Muslim or non-Muslim). This paper explores how the Second Constitutional Era erotic novels through erotic, and also humorous and playful, narratives challenged and invalidated fear of women’s sexuality in early Ottoman novels and highlights the contribution of these texts, whether written for the sake of money, for moralizing, or with the purpose of pushing the boundaries, to the discussion of women’s issues.
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Dr. Murat C. Yildiz
During the late nineteenth and early twentieth century, the male body emerged as a popular subject of discussion among educated circles in Istanbul. It also served as a focus around which Ottomans established voluntary associations, events, and public venues. Ottoman Muslim, Armenian, Greek, and Jewish subjects stressed that in order for young men to be ideal members of their respective communities and ideal citizens of the Ottoman Empire they had to train and discipline their bodies. This paper investigates the ways in which Ottoman Muslim, Christian, and Jewish subjects created a new bourgeois masculine corporeal aesthetic and challenged an older one. The defining characteristics of this new look were a slim waist, muscular biceps, a straight back, and a broad chest. This body was considered beautiful, healthy, and civilized, as well as a defining component of a novel vision of bourgeois masculinity.
The argument advanced is based on multi-lingual archival research, and is part of a broader doctoral dissertation project, which examines the interconnection of national and imperial identity, the body, masculinity, and nation building through the lens of a shared physical culture in late Ottoman Istanbul. This paper seeks to accomplish three goals: first, to trace the spread of a new corporeal aesthetic and look among elite Muslims, Christians, and Jews; second, to demonstrate how this novel corporeal aesthetic diverged from ‘traditional’ notions of bourgeois masculinity; and, three, to explore how educators and writers attempted to spread and popularize this new bourgeois among the emerging Ottoman middle class. The paper will draw from a diverse array of sources in Ottoman, Turkish, Armenian, French, German, and English from a number of private and public archives. These sources include journals, newspapers, memoirs, and vernacular photographs.
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Meltem Toksoz
Most literature on Ottoman socialism, past and present since the 1908 revolution, revolves around its failure if not outright absence. Moreover this claim is based on the assumed fact that the Ottoman Empire did not possess a proletariat hence it could not really give way to a proletarian ideology which was accepted as synonymous with socialism. So without such a class the so-called Ottoman socialists, went the charge, could not be anything more than adventurous and hence disastrous. The tone that can still be found in the literature was best answered by Hilmi himself back in the day, as he published much about workers and unionism in numerous journals that he himself established and managed, primarily Iştirak. His and others’ writings tackled three primary issues; defining and understanding socialism, attempting to adapt this theoretical framework to the Ottoman scene both in terms of the peasantry and the urban working classes as well as reporting on and supporting trade unionism across the cities of the region from Istanbul to Salonica. With this particularity, Hilmi’s socialist opposition to the CUP diverged from others that have so far been studied collectively. Moreover, through these publications we can look anew at the print movement of post-1908 revolution that has so far been dubbed as profiteering and print capitalism. Socialist publishing may then be viewed as a transgression from urban bourgeois culture of print capitalism. I may even suggest a universal tone of such transgression in these publications as they gave ample space to the news and biographies of world socialists and their movements, as well as translations. Besides the reports from abroad as far as the strikes in India, news of workers in Europe came next and not only for equating socialism with the movement of a proletariat but as discussions of socialism at large. Reports on Ottoman workers movements also followed clearly setting a different tone of anti-imperialism: For instance, the socialist view on the need to abolish the Régie was not just about the national economy argument of the CUP, but more about how the peasantry suffered through it. Such views also signaled a critical discussion of nationalism which was frequently identified as one of the problems that socialism was to solve. All of these clearly put Hilmi and his socialist publications beyond the contours of what a liberal opposition to the CUP would and did mean in the 1910s.
