Picturing National History: Turkey’s Popular Nationalism on the Rise Through the 1950s New Print Culture

Abstract

Abstract This article interrogates the role of print culture and visual communication design in the permeation of Turkish national consciousness into everyday practices. It seeks to understand the phenomenon of “banal nationalism,” argued by Michael Billig, in a broader context of cultural production advocated by Tim Edensor. It does this by looking into Turkey’s first liberalization period in the 1950s where a boosting print industry, a standard print language, and high literacy contributed to the daily reproduction of a collective historical past through representations. This period is analyzed through publications like Sunday comic strips, advertorial giveaways, and illustrated history journals that emulate popular American formats in the commodification of history. These are treated as material tools to present and disseminate an imaginary reconciliation of secular modernism with imperial history in a new print culture. This analysis reveals how representations in the foreground of everyday cultural artifacts are used to produce and reproduce difference that designates a distinct national consciousness detached from the realm of state. It also sheds light on the prevalence of identity negotiation and the commoditization of culture in the professionalization of visual communication disciplines in non-Western design paradigms.