A PHENOMENOLOGICAL READING OF ORHAN PAMUK`S NEW LIFE

Yaşar University Department of English Language and Literature, English Language and Literature Seminar Series presents
THE EASTERN FLÂNEUR:
A PHENOMENOLOGICAL READING OF
ORHAN PAMUK’S NEW LIFE
Assoc. Prof. Cihan Camcı, Akdeniz University, Philosophy Department
Ciha n Cam cı received his PhD from the department of
philosophy, METU in 2005. He studied at the University of
Essex for an academic year through the TUBA United PhD
scholarship in 2003-2004. He is teaching as an Assoc. Prof
of Philosophy in the Department of Philosophy at the
Akdeniz
University,
mainly
on
phenomenology,
existentialism, philosophy of language, philosophy of art,
philosophy of identity and occasionally writes on identity,
politics and ethics in the daily newspaper Radikal. His
current interests are early Heidegger, phenomenological
interpretation of modern Turkish literature by writers like
Edip Cansever, Cemal Süreya, and Orhan Pamuk.
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Orhan Pamuk’s New Life is based on a character,
a wanderer who reminds us of Karl Jaspers’s wellknown sentence: “philosophy is being on the way
to.” Existentialist postmodern philosophy, which
can well be named post-romantic philosophy,
seeks the meaning of life as a whole that is left
aside by modernism. In this paper, I will try to
read the main character of Orhan Pamuk’s New
Life, Osman, as an eastern flâneur seeking the
meaning of life as such throughout his odyssey. I
will refer to Heidegger’s notion of temporality
and everydayness as a possibility of the tacit
understanding of the meaning of life and discuss
Osman with reference to his obsession with
Canan. I will mention the etymological
connotations of Canan in tasavvuf and its
attribution to Osman’s ignorance of the everyday
life, and argue that his dalgın, absent-minded,
dreamy mood is not only due to his beloved girl
but also due to the hak, which means oneness,
the undivided unity of man and god, being,
beyond earthly property and satisfaction, beyond
daily goals, the final goal, the goal of being in
the world, god. Oneness, which Osman seeks in
his journey, can be thought as the undivided
unity of temporality in a Heideggerian sense.
THURSDAY, APRIL 30 TH AT 17:00
SELÇUK YAŞAR KAMPUS Y615
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