Claiming modernity through aesthetics: A comparative look at Germany and Turkey
Item
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Title
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Claiming modernity through aesthetics: A comparative look at Germany and Turkey
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Identifier
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d_2009_2013:593e94cc99d2:10612
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identifier
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10915
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Creator
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Karaca, Banu,
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Contributor
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Vincent Crapanzano
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Date
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2010
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Language
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English
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Publisher
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City University of New York.
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Subject
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Cultural anthropology | European studies | Near Eastern studies | artworld | cultural policy | Germany | modernity | nationalism | Turkey
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Abstract
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Claiming Modernity through Aesthetics: A Comparative Look at Germany and Turkey examines how modern nationhood is established and consolidated through the arts in two locations that are generally conceptualized as fundamentally different from each other. Based on over fourteen months of fieldwork this dissertation traces parallels and divergences in cultural policies, artistic practices and patronage systems. The study tries to move away from the notion of 'lack' and belatedness in Turkish modernization by showing that in Germany similar preoccupations regarding the mutual expressiveness of art and modernity have existed. I argue that all historical specificities notwithstanding both the German and Turkish case exemplify struggles with the normativity of modern power, in which the interdependent projects of nationalism and modernity have impacted how the socio-political function of art is conceptualized. This approach allows for using art as a foil to discuss a variety of topics that range from the configuration of citizenship, national memory and censorship to the intertwinedness of economic dispossession and the composition of private and public art collections. At the center of this ethnographic interrogation are the paradoxes of modernity that manifest themselves in tensions between understandings of art as an universal human expression and a particularly national one; its role as a civilizing agent and its, at times, troubling uses in mass incitement; and between art as a deeply personal articulation, a common good -- and -- a commodity. I show that artworld actors in Berlin and Istanbul reconcile tensions arising from these contradictory understandings of art that comprise a variety of different commercial, private, public and political interests by referring to its purported civic impact. In this process sanctioned nationalized art histories and discourses of civic cultivation through the arts are frequently mobilized even by respondents who generally frame their (artistic) practices and understandings of art in opposition to these official discourses.
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Type
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dissertation
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Source
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2009_2013.csv
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degree
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Ph.D.
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Program
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Anthropology
