This thesis presents a comparative and interdisciplinary investigation into the relationship between politics and the Turkish and Kurdish novels, which are treated not only as artistic constructions but also as socio-cultural and historical artefacts. The primary objective of this investigation is to understand the principle social, political, and historical reasons and root causes behind the close relationship between politics and literatures in Turkey and the principle socio-political and literary ramifications of such strong relationship. Towards this end, the thesis focuses on four main themes: language, love, religion, and history. Besides being the most common novelistic themes in the Turkish and Kurdish literary institutions, these are inherently heavily politicised and ethno-nationalistically charged themes - thus especially suitable for such inquiry. In line with this politico-historical and literary vein, the thesis also discusses some of the main political questions in Turkey, viz., the reasons behind the failure of Turkish democracy, its maladies and the resultant deadlock on some of the most important issues of the modern history of the country such as the Kurdish imbroglio and the conflict of secularisation and Islam. As the discussions on politics of love, language, religion, and history show, profound ideological competitions and antagonisms do not necessarily mean divergent political and literary structures. As such, the strong links between the Turkish and Kurdish literary institutions, as well as the ordeal of the Kurdish question and democratisation in Turkey, is as much caused by rival nationalisms, hostile ideological positions, and the like as by congruity, parallel political visions, and similar power structures. The main argument of the thesis, thus, is that the Kurdish and Turkish literary, political, and intellectual actors could not contribute towards the solution of the persistent political and literary questions in Turkey because of their failure in adopting a transformative politics and developing fully autonomous literatures. The future of the two literatures, as was in the past, this thesis argues, will remain intrinsically bound to the political structures and developments and the future of democracy in Turkey.

Submitted by Fabio Sobreira Campos da Costa (fabio.sobreira@ufpe.br) on 2017-07-24T14:26:35Z No. of bitstreams: 2 license_rdf: 811 bytes, checksum: e39d27027a6cc9cb039ad269a5db8e34 (MD5) Dissert_PedroGabriel-BC.pdf: 1232641 bytes, checksum: 412fd48bc37912abb56335cbc5e00e45 (MD5) / Made available in DSpace on 2017-07-24T14:26:35Z (GMT). No. of bitstreams: 2 license_rdf: 811 bytes, checksum: e39d27027a6cc9cb039ad269a5db8e34 (MD5) Dissert_PedroGabriel-BC.pdf: 1232641 bytes, checksum: 412fd48bc37912abb56335cbc5e00e45 (MD5) Previous issue date: 2016-08-31 / CAPES / Este trabalho tem por objetivo analisar as dinâmicas estruturais do fenômeno sociopolítico conhecido como coronelismo, tais como representadas nas obras que compõem o ciclo da cana-de-açúcar de José Lins do Rego. Para tanto, além da densa fortuna crítica sobre o autor, empregamos a análise histórica pautada no conceito de inconsciente político tal como exposto por Fredric Jameson (1992), associada a estudos específicos na área de literatura e história social que detalhem as estruturas de poder político, social e econômico ligadas ao patriarcado rural, assim como a ficcionalização dessas estruturas. A representação do coronel ou senhor de engenho nas obras referidas é observada através da perspectiva oferecida pela problematização entre estudos que focam em questões como a representação do espaço regional na literatura, o fictício e o imaginário, entre outros. / This dissertation aims to analyze the structural dynamics on the sociopolitical phenomena known as coronelism, as they are represented in the literary works that comprises José Lins do Rego‟s sugar cane cycle. In order to do this, besides the massive critical fortune regarding the author, we applied the historical analysis embedded on the concept of political unconscious as exposed by Fredric Jameson (1992), associated to specific studies both on literature and social history that detail political, social and economic power structures related to rural patriarchy, as well as the fictionalization of these structures. The representation of the coronel or plantation owner in the referred novels is observed through the perspective offered by the problematization between studies that focus on issues like representation of regional spaces in literature, fictitious and imaginary, among others.

This thesis is meant to give an explication on Fredric Jameson¡¦s Utopian thinking through transcoding, establishing homologies between Lacan¡¦s Imaginary/Symbolic/Real registers, Althusser¡¦s ideology/History binary and Jameson¡¦s ideology/cognitive mapping/History orders. I think Jameson¡¦s Utopian thinking is a mechanism of praxis to induce change for a classless and human-friendly society through theoretical education on desire and formation of consciousness of the capitalistic alienation and exploitation. It is a process of signifying, with no signified. It aims at the construction of a map of the social totality, not at that of an imaginary blueprint. It stresses consciousness-raising, not goal achievement. Traditionally, Utopia features an imaginary blueprint. Nevertheless, for Jameson, the Utopian blueprint is problematic in that it is ideologically enclosed so that it is far from qualified to serve as the goal of praxis. At best, a Utopian blueprint can only be viewed as a ¡§figure¡¨ waiting for the interpretation of theory, or to put it psychoanalytically, it is a symptom of the (political) unconscious awaiting the diagnosis of a psychoanalyst. But Jameson does endorse Utopists¡¦ ¡§Utopian praxis¡¨ to map and criticize their respective social context. The critic applies the practice to the postmodern, in which time is spatialized and the individual is fragmented and deprived of the ability to think historically and to imagine an alternative future. Jameson proposes the approach of ¡§cognitive mapping¡¨ to help people to obtain a map of the postmodern hyperspace, to locate their positions in it, and to finally reconstruct in them class consciousness, which Jameson believes is the basis of praxis for a Utopia. This task has to be done through the construction of the collective subject, because of the death of the subject and the growing abstraction of postmodern hyperspace. And certainly in this undertaking, Marxist critics like Jameson play an important role. They, like a psychoanalyst, are entitled to diagnose and interpret what the current world is suffering from and to offer prescriptions. In conclusion, Fredric Jameson¡¦s Utopian thinking is a persistent process of praxis at present to form collective consciousness and subjectivity in the hope of an unspecified Utopia in the future, which is supposed to be a communist one.