Zamanın İzinde Kenti Deneyimlemek: Kent ve Bellek Üzerine Oto-Etnografik Bakışlar

Abstract

This text consists of an auto-ethnographic narrative, which combines the experiences and memories of three characters in two cities. The auto-ethnographic method includes personal writings, and embraces subjectivity and the influence of the researcher. The characters trace their own experiences and memories in their historicity, and reveal their emotions in the process of a traumatic transformation of their society. The three writers of this text kept separate field notes independently from December 2015 to March 2016, and combined and thematized them later. The field notes consisted of recent observations of the present phase of the cities, and the writers’ former urban experiences in those cities. The urban experience and feelings of personal loss belonging to Eskisehir (middle-sized city) and Ankara (capital city) have been handled with an inherent perspective. The memories and field notes of the three characters intersect in their urban experience, where the transformation of market conditions, neoliberal conservatism dominate. Their experiences are determined by their subjection to such fast and powerful transformation without their will and control, and the intense penetration of power into the cells of urban ecology. Auto-ethnography does not only demonstrate the personal, but also reveals the political in it. The self-writing process helps an apprehension of the transformation, which is otherwise felt but not grasped. The field notes work as a means to reveal the urban images in a personal and political way.