A Research on the Novel Gölgeler ve Hayaller Şehrinde by Murat Gulsoy with Reference to the Orientalism Theory of Edward W. Said

Abstract

Orientalism, shaped by the dialogue between the West and the Eastern civilization, is a Western-oriented epistemological approach based on the forms of the West’s uptake of the East. It is seen that orientalism, which has attracted attention as an institutional field of information for centuries, has turned into a form of theoretical discourse formed by texts in a fictional atmosphere rather than being an institutional field with the book of Orientalism Western Conceptions of the Orient of Edward W. Said published in 1978. Said, based on the philosophy of Michel Foucault, that knowledge is not an objective but producible phenomenon and that it has a close relationship with power, deconstructs the orientalist approach of the West, which is focused solely on its imperialist performance. What makes Said different from the previous orientalists is that he defends that orientalism is a discourse formed as a part of the narrative in a fictional plane, just like a narrative, by making the West and the East necessary for each other with the effect of the humanist worldview he adopted. In this study, the novel called Gölgeler ve Hayaller Şehrinde (2014) of Murat Gülsoy (1967), one of the prominent writers of today’s Turkish literature, will be subjected to a theoretical analysis and in the context of orientalism, the position of the author in the postmodern narrative tradition will be determined.