In Infancy and History Agamben (1993) suggests, following Benjamin’s footsteps, that true experience is only possible in infancy, a time that has not yet been expropriated by the bareness of modern life. The kind of potentiality that he attributes to infancy signifies the emergence of a new self, which, rather than moving into the mechanical domain of “work,” prefers to remain in the creative territory of “play,” where it is possible to transform old societal structures into new ones.

Agamben’s approach to play and its non-chronological temporality offers useful clues in revealing the dynamics of the increasing number of contemporary childhood narratives in Irish and Turkish literature, where characters resist the linear structure of the bildungsroman and the corresponding model of progress, eventually forming a culture of adolescents resistant to maturity. Focusing on some common features of these novelistic characters, such as playfulness, self-experimentation, and messianic idealism, this paper argues that the return of children to contemporary Turkish and Irish novel opens a new terrain of possibilities that offer liberation from the poverty of experience Agamben attributes to modern society.

Widely recognized by nationalists, Islamists and conservatives as the heroine of the Turkish Right in the twentieth century, Sâmiha Ayverdi influenced the renaissance of right-wing politics in Turkey as an important leader of the Rifaȋ order, a prolific author, an unyielding anti-communist, and finally as an institution-builder for right-wing causes. This article focuses on the apparent paradoxes in Ayverdi's long career, such as her modernist interpretation of Islam, her relationship with her sufi master, preference for memoirs, and her unabashed elitism. Such characteristics defy clichés associated with the stereotypical conservative/nationalist/Islamist intellectual in Cold War Turkey. Our in-depth study of Ayverdi's works thus reveals the complexity of right-wing identities, and the fact that our protagonist is an outspoken woman intellectual also adds an important twist to the story.

The aim of this study is to explore the nature of Turkish literary utopias written in the early republican period. As a study in history and literature, it contextualizes the ideal social order envisioned in these works. My main argument is twofold: First, I claim that these works reflect Kemalism as an ideal system. They presuppose that the present regime has in itself the dynamics that enables an ideal social order and that this ideal social order can be attained by getting rid of the practical irregularities that prevent a full-fledged realization of the present regime. With these presuppositions, they serve the efforts to turn Kemalism into a hegemonic discourse. Secondly, through a detailed analysis of these texts, I argue that Kemalism has not been a monolithic discourse, but rather that it contained different and sometimes competing currents.