Gender and National Fantasy: Early Turkish Radio Drama

In: New perspectives on Turkey: NPT, Band 22, S. 25-60

Abstract

Women figure centrally in representations of modernity and of nations. This has caught the attention of researchers both in the West and in the context of "Third World" nationalisms. Yuval-Davis states: "[I]t is women –not just (?) the bureaucracy and intelligentsia—who reproduce nations, biologically, culturally and symbolically" (1997, p. 2). However, an analysis of "women" as the subjects of the nation differs from a perspective that dwells on the representations of women produced by a (mostly) male elite. Jordanova argues that the Enlightenment in the West was a set of mental and practical activities of the male elite "who gained influence because of their ideas and 'knowledge'" (1995, p. 64), and whose concern was "to establish the validity of their vision of the world" (p. 64). She shows convincingly that these activities were "sexual" in nature.