An Examination of Cultural Tensions between Secularism and Islamism in Pamuk's Snow and My Name is Red

Abstract

This thesis explores cultural tensions between secularism and Islamism, modernism and traditionalism in Pamuk's Snow and My Name is Red. It analyzes representation of cultural, linguistic and religious tensions faced by the Turkish and the author himself who has inhabited Western world and Eastern world. It argues that Pamuk problematizes memory and identity within and without the borders of the state of modern nation. Modernity through non-democratic suppression of Islam can only cause the decline of nation's identity, so Pamuk through his above mentioned novels states his self position--a bridge between the two shores--East and West with appreciation of these two civilizations and histories. The dissertation proposes that Pamuk accommodates the ever shifting ways of interaction on the level of both content and form.He offers examples of grafted genre that highlights the resemblances in difference across various generic forms. The grafted narratives that he constructs supersede and re-formulate the holey boundaries between self and other, and pay attention to the Eastern and Western world getting intertwined to one another.Thus,this research endeavors to find out national identity by using cultural hybridity as a theoretical approach.