Hostname: page-component-586b7cd67f-t7fkt Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-26T12:59:23.081Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

The Aesthetics of Public Visibility: Alevi Semah and the Paradoxes of Pluralism in Turkey

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  18 June 2010

Kabir Tambar
Kabir Tambar*
Affiliation:
University of Vermont
*
[email protected]
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Extract

Efforts to theorize pluralism have often explored the challenges posed by the public visibility of ethnic, linguistic, and sectarian differences to modernist imaginaries of a homogeneous national body. In this essay, I examine a context in which public expressions of communal differences re-inscribe the categories of the nation they were meant to contest. The situation reveals what I call a paradox of pluralism.

Type
Research Article
Information
Comparative Studies in Society and History , Volume 52 , Issue 3 , July 2010 , pp. 652 - 679
Copyright
Copyright © Society for the Comparative Study of Society and History 2010

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

REFERENCES

Appadurai, Arjun. 1996. Number in the Colonial Imagination. In Modernity at Large: Cultural Dimensions of Globalization. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 114–35.Google Scholar
Asad, Talal. 1993. Multiculturalism and British Identity in the Wake of the Rushdie Affair. In Genealogies of Religion: Discipline and Reasons of Power in Christianity and Islam. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 239–68.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Bakhtin, Mikhail. 1986. The Problem of Speech Genres. In Speech Genres and other Late Essays. McGee, Vern W., trans. Austin: University of Texas Press, 60–102.Google Scholar
Balibar, Étienne. 2004. We, the People of Europe? Reflections on Transnational Citizenship. Swenson, James, trans. Princeton: Princeton University Press.Google Scholar
Bauman, Richard. 1999. Genre. Journal of Linguistic Anthropology 9, 1–2: 84–87.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Bora, Tanıl and Can, Kemal. 2004. Devlet, Ocak, Dergah: 12 Eylül'den 1990'lara Ülkücü Hareket. Istanbul: İletişim Yayınları.Google Scholar
Bozarslan, Hamit. 2002. L'alévisme et l'impossible équation du nationalisme en Turquie. In Diekhoff, Alain and Kastoryano, Riva, eds., Nationalismes en mutation en Mediterranée orientale. Paris: CNRS Editions, 133–52.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Bozkurt, Fuat. 1990. Semahlar. Istanbul: Cem Yayınevi.Google Scholar
Briggs, Charles and Bauman, Richard. 1992. Genre, Intertextuality, and Social Power. Journal of Linguistic Anthropology 2, 2: 131–72.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Brown, Wendy. 2006. Regulating Aversion: Tolerance in the Age of Identity and Empire. Princeton: Princeton University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Bryant, Rebecca. 2005. The Soul Danced into the Body: Nation and Improvisation in Istanbul. American Ethnologist 32, 3: 222–38.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Buck-Morss, Susan. 1992. Aesthetics and Anaesthetics: Walter Benjamin's Artwork Essay Reconsidered. October 62: 3–41.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Çamuroğlu, Reha. 2005. Değişen Koşullarda Alevilik. Istanbul: Kapı Yayınları.Google Scholar
Casanova, José. 1994. Public Religions in the Modern World. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Chatterjee, Partha. 2004. Politics of the Governed: Reflections on Popular Politics in Most of the World. New York: Columbia University Press.Google Scholar
Çınar, Alev. 2005. Modernity, Islam, and Secularism in Turkey: Bodies, Places, and Time. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.Google Scholar
Comaroff, John and Comaroff, Jean. 2004. Criminal Justice, Cultural Justice: The Limits of Liberalism and the Pragmatics of Difference in the New South Africa. American Ethnologist 31, 2: 188–204.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Crapanzano, Vincent. 1996. ‘Self’-Centering Narratives. In Silverstein, Michael and Urban, Greg, eds., Natural Histories of Discourse. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 106–27.Google Scholar
Eagleton, Terry. 1990. The Ideology of the Aesthetic. Oxford: Blackwell Publishing.Google Scholar
Eickelman, Dale and Piscatori, James. 1996. Muslim Politics. Princeton: Princeton University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Eickelman, Dale and Salvatore, Armando. 2002. The Public Sphere and Muslim Identities. European Journal of Sociology 43, 1: 92–115.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Ellington, George. 2004. Urbanization and the Alevi Religious Revival in the Republic of Turkey. In Shankland, David, ed., Archeology, Anthropology and Heritage in the Balkans and Anatolia: The Life and Times of F. W. Hasluck, 1878–1920. Vol. 1. Istanbul: The Isis Press, 369–401.Google Scholar
Erdemir, Aykan. 2005. Tradition and Modernity: Alevis' Ambiguous Terms and Turkey's Ambivalent Subjects. Middle Eastern Studies 41, 6: 937–51.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Erseven, İlhan Cem. 1990. Aleviler'de Semah. Ankara: Ekin Yayınları.Google Scholar
European Commission. 2008. Turkey 2008 Progress Report. Brussels: Commission of the European Communities.Google Scholar
Gal, Susan. 2003. Movements of Feminism: The Circulation of Discourses about Women. In Hobson, Barbara, ed., Recognition Struggles and Social Movements: Contested Identities, Agency and Power. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 93–118.Google Scholar
Gaonkar, Dilip Parameshwar and Povinelli, Elizabeth. 2003. Technologies of Public Forms: Circulation, Transfiguration, Recognition. Public Culture 15, 3: 385–97.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Göle, Nilüfer. 2002. Islam in Public: New Visibilities and New Imaginaries. Public Culture 14, 1: 173–90.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Göner, Özlem. 2005. The Transformation of Alevi Collective Identity. Cultural Dynamics 17, 2: 107–34.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Gültekin, Ahmet Kerim and Işık, Yüksel. 2005. Diyanet İşleri Başkanı Prof. Dr. Ali Bardakoğlu'yla Söyleşi. Kırkbudak: Anadolu Halk İnançları Araştırmaları 1, 3: 4–23.Google Scholar
Habermas, Jürgen. 1998. Between Facts and Norms: Contributions to a Discourse Theory of Law and Democracy. Rehg, William, trans. Cambridge: MIT Press.Google Scholar
Hanks, William. 1987. Discourse Genres in a Theory of Practice. American Ethnologist 14, 4: 668–92.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Hart, Kimberly. 2009. The Orthodoxization of Ritual Practice in Western Anatolia. American Ethnologist 36, 4: 735–49.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Hefner, Robert. 2000. Civil Islam: Muslims and Democratization in Indonesia. Princeton: Princeton University Press.Google Scholar
Hefner, Robert. 2001. Public Islam and the Problem of Democratization. Sociology of Religion 62, 4: 491–514.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Henkel, Heiko. 2007. The Location of Islam: Inhabiting Istanbul in a Muslim Way. American Ethnologist 34, 1: 57–70.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Hirschkind, Charles. 2006. The Ethical Soundscape: Cassette Sermons and Islamic Counterpublics. New York: Columbia University Press.Google Scholar
Keane, Webb. 1997. Signs of Recognition: Powers and Hazards of Representation in an Indonesian Society. Berkeley: University of California Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Kymlicka, Will. 1995. Multicultural Citizenship: A Liberal Theory of Minority Rights. New York: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Larkin, Brian. 2008. Signal and Noise: Media, Infrastructure, and Urban Culture in Nigeria. Durham: Duke University Press.Google Scholar
Lee, Benjamin and LiPuma, Edward. 2002. Cultures of Circulation: The Imaginations of Modernity. Public Culture 14, 1: 191–213.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Livaneli, Zülfü. 2005. Bu Ülkede Alevi Olmak. Vatan Gazetesi, 8 June: 6.Google Scholar
Mandel, Ruth. 2008. Cosmopolitan Anxieties: Turkish Challenges to Citizenship and Belonging in Germany. Durham: Duke University Press.Google Scholar
Markoff, Irene. 1986. The Role of Expressive Culture in the Demystification of a Secret Sect of Islam: The Case of the Alevis of Turkey. The World of Music 28, 3: 42–56.Google Scholar
Massicard, Elise. 2006. Claiming Difference in a Unitarist Frame: The Case of Alevism. In Keiser, Hans-Lukas, ed., Turkey beyond Nationalism: Towards Post-Nationalist Identities. New York: I. B. Tauris, 74–82.Google Scholar
Meyer, Birgit. 2008. Religious Sensations: Why Media, Aesthetics, and Power Matter in the Study of Contemporary Religion. In de Vries, Hent, ed., Religion: Beyond a Concept. New York: Fordham University Press, 704–23.Google Scholar
Mouffe, Chantal. 2005. On the Political. New York: Routledge.Google Scholar
Neyzi, Leyla. 2002. Remembering to Forget: Sabbateanism, National Identity, and Subjectivity in Turkey. Comparative Studies in Society and History 44, 1: 137–58.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Ocak, Ahmet Yaşar. 1996. Türk Sufiliğine Bakışlar. Istanbul: İletişim Yayıncılık.Google Scholar
Öztürkmen, Arzu. 2002. ‘I Dance Folklore.’ In Kandiyoti, Deniz and Saktanber, Ayşe, eds., Fragments of Culture: The Everyday of Modern Turkey. New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press, 128–46.Google Scholar
Öztürkmen, Arzu. 2005. Staging a Ritual Dance Out of Its Context: The Role of an Individual Artist in Transforming the Alevi Semah. Asian Folklore Studies 64: 247–60.Google Scholar
Povinelli, Elizabeth. 2002. The Cunning of Recognition: Indigenous Alterities and the Making of Australian Multiculturalism. Durham: Duke University Press.Google Scholar
Rawls, John. 1993. Political Liberalism. New York: Columbia University Press.Google Scholar
Şahin, Şehriban. 2005. The Rise of Alevism as a Public Religion. Current Sociology 53, 3: 465–85.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Scott, David. 1999. Refashioning Futures: Criticism after Postcoloniality. Princeton: Princeton University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Seremetakis, C. Nadia. 1994. The Memory of the Senses, Part I: Marks of the Transitory. In Seremetakis, C. Nadia, ed., The Senses Still: Perception and Memory as Material Culture in Modernity. Boulder: Westview Press, 1–18.Google Scholar
Shryock, Andrew. 2004. Other Conscious/Self Aware: First Thoughts on Cultural Intimacy and Mass Mediation. In Shryock, Andrew, ed., Off Stage/On Display: Intimacy and Ethnography in the Age of Public Culture. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 3–28.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Silverstein, Brian. 2008. Disciplines of Presence in Modern Turkey: Discourse, Companionship, and the Mass Mediation of Islamic Practice. Cultural Anthropology 23, 1: 118–53.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Soileau, Mark. 2005. Festivals and the Formation of Alevi Identity. In Irene Markussen, Hege, ed., Alevis and Alevism: Transformed Identities. Istanbul: The Isis Press, 91–108.Google Scholar
Sökefeld, Martin. 2008. Struggling for Recognition: The Alevi Movement in Germany and in Transnational Space. New York: Berghahn Books.Google Scholar
Stokes, Martin. 1992. The Arabesk Debate: Music and Musicians in Modern Turkey. Oxford: Clarendon Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Stokes, Martin. 1996. Ritual, Identity and the State: An Alevi (Shi‘a) Cem Ceremony. In Schultz, Kirsten, Stokes, Martin, and Campbell, Colm, eds., Nationalism, Minorities and Diasporas: Identities and Rights in the Middle East. New York: I. B. Tauris Publishers, 188–202.Google Scholar
Sullivan, Winnifred Fallers. 2005. The Impossibility of Religious Freedom. Princeton: Princeton University Press.Google Scholar
Tambar, Kabir. 2009. Secular Populism and the Semiotics of the Crowd in Turkey. Public Culture 21, 3: 517–37.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Taylor, Charles. 1994. The Politics of Recognition. In Amy Gutmann, ed., Multiculturalism: Examining the Politics of Recognition. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 25–73.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Urban, Greg. 1996. Metaphysical Community: The Interplay of the Senses and the Intellect. Austin: University of Texas Press.Google Scholar
Vorhoff, Karin. 1998. ‘Let's Reclaim Our History and Our Culture!’ Imagining Alevi Community in Contemporary Turkey. Die Welt des Islams 38, 2: 220–52.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Warner, Michael. 2002. Publics and Counterpublics. New York: Zone Books.Google Scholar
Wedeen, Lisa. 2008. Peripheral Visions: Publics, Power, and Performance in Yemen. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
White, Jenny. 2002. Islamist Mobilization in Turkey: A Study in Vernacular Politics. Seattle: University of Washington Press.Google Scholar
Yavuz, M. Hakan. 2003. Media Identities for Alevis and Kurds in Turkey. In Eickelman, Dale and Anderson, Jon, eds., New Media in the Muslim World. 2d ed.Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 180–99.Google Scholar