Dangerous bodies, a corrupted tongue: tracing the queer Persianate in late Ottoman literature

Abstract

ABSTRACT For authors of the early twentieth century Millî Edebiyat [National Literature] movement like Ömer Seyfettin (1884-1920) and Halide Edip Adıvar (1884-1964), the notion of a pernicious Ottoman ‘Persophilia’ served as a crucial negative ground against which a new Turkish literary modernity could be defined. In their writings before the outbreak of the First World War, these two authors established a direct link between the construction of a ‘healthy’ language purged from Persianate influence, and the inculcation of a vital, productive, and patriotic heteronormativity. The influence of Persophilia was typified by two abject figures: the court poet entranced by the hat-âver, çar-ebru [thinly-moustached, four-browed] young male beloved, and the Persianate woman, oppressed by the customs of pederşahilik [father-kingship]. This article traces the genealogy of these two motifs in Ottoman discourse, to explore why these particular figures became so problematised, constituted as a locus of gendered and sexual anxiety, and ultimately deemed so threatening by these authors as to demand a total break with the heritage of the Ottoman past. It concludes by discussing the political possibilities of the queered Persianate, and how motifs like the şahmeran [serpent-queen] have been deployed as a symbol of queer and minoritarian resistance in contemporary Turkey.