October 13, 2006

• 
  A turkish novelist Orhan Pamuk has won the nobel prize for literature. I saw his old interviews and his ideas and idealisms resonate with your (masculine) dreams of nationhood and democracy.

  He said:

  “Art of the novel, if it’s used cleverely, can be a good way to explore a nation’s inner contradictions; its self-tormenting ideas about its identity.The heart of the novel is an attempt to identify yourself with someone who is not like you. A nation is defined by this kind of identification; with people who we share the same land but may not share the same sentiments.But once we attempt to put all the people in the same land, in a same story, then we begin to form a nation; an “imaginary community.”"

  I am certain that he is quoting Benedict Anderson’s Imagined Communities when he says “Imaginary Community.” But what’s interesting is how he adds a positive interpretation to the creation of the imaginary, or imagined community, which we call “nation.”

   

   

  set the standard of a national identity

  art of the novel
  

  • 12:16 pm
  • 1 Comment