Circulation of Orhan Pamuk’s Benim Adım Kırmızı [My Name is Red] in contemporary Chinese-Indonesian literature

Abstract

This article is an exploration of contemporary Turkish and Chinese-Indonesian literatures with regards to a mid to late 18th Century literary niche: the it-narrative. Thinking (noesis) back and forth between centuries and different literary genres makes (poiesis) the conversation possible, which addresses the socio-literary imagination of the last four centuries. The authors re-examine the genre of it-narrative outside 18th Century studies and reassess the encounter of Turkish author Orhan Pamuk and Chinese-Indonesian author Alberta Natasia Adji within the socio-cultural and historico-political context of modern Turkey and Indonesia. The question is how Pamuk’s use of prosopopoeia in his 1998 novel Benim Adım Kırmızı (My Name is Red) influences Adji’s decision to use the 18th Century it-narratives in her 2019 short story I am Her Bracelet. Image by H005 from Wikimedia Commons: ‘Plates for sale on the Grand Bazaar (Kapalı Çarşı) in Istanbul’, CC BY-SA 3.0