Akademik Veri Yönetim Sistemi
16th INTERNATIONAL IDEA CONFERENCE: STUDIES IN ENGLISH, Nevşehir, Türkiye, 24 - 26 Nisan 2024, ss.25
This study analyzes the works of Ralph Ellison’s Invisible Man (1952) and Ahmet Hamdi Tanpinar’s The Time Regulation Institute (1961) within the context of Jacques Lacan’s theory on identity formation. Apart from being published within the same period, these two distant literature works that focus on different themes that specifically portrays the trauma of the modern man. While Ellison’s work criticizes the race inequalities in American society, Tanpinar focuses on the issues that Turkish people face due to modernization. This study analyzes the mentioned literary works while making use of the Imaginary and Symbolic orders. By going over these stages, the study aims to show how the characters alienate themselves and decolonize their minds by going through similar experiences of betrayal and loss. More specifically, both works are examined in terms of depiction of the concepts of time, body and loss in terms of alienation and decolonization of the characters within a reading of Lacan.
Keywords: identity, trauma, alienation, race, modernization