Organized by ASULIS Discourse, Dialog and Democracy Laboratory of Hrant Dink Foundation, the talk titled 'Conceptual Discussions: Literature and Discourse', which is the second session of the conceptual discussion series, was held on January 15, 2018 in Anarad Hığutyun Building. It was moderated by Murat Cankara and speakers Sibel Irzık and Seval Şahin discussed the relationship between literature and discourse.

Opening the talk, Murat Cankara pointed out that discourse is born where what is linguistic and non-linguistic come into contact and literature is one of the most convenient domains for talking about this contact.

The first speaker Sibel Irzık stated that with discourse we seek to understand what language produces, what it affects and how it affects them, and what it enables. She also stated that signifying structures which Foucault terms discursive orders aim to examine conditions of existence and historical specificity of the modes of using language. She added that according to Foucault discourses systematically shape, create and build the objects about which they talk. Stating that Edward Said’s notion of orientalism is one of the best examples to possibilities that a discourse-based approach provides for the domain of literature and culture, Irzık said that Said tries to analyze forms of knowledge, representation and subjectivity peculiar to imperial and colonial cultures by using Foucault’s discourse theory. According to Irzık, the most important point that we can learn from Foucault and Said in terms of the function of literature and discourse in literature is the contribution that literature makes to the processes of building reality and knowledge and to the creation of subjectivities in conformity with those processes. Stating that Mihail Bakhtin is another name who emphasizes the importance of discourse in literature, Irzık noted that Bakhtin’s central concern is how the voices of speaking subjects is structured in social context and how they relates to other voices. Irzık stated that Bakhtin, through the notion of discourse, seeks to understand how and to what extent a voice can dominate other voices and the role of social groups, power and institution in this competition of voices.

Second speaker Seval Şahin noted that with the emergence of novel in Turkish as a new narration genre the authors encountered the problem of creating and forming their own discourse. Şahin stated that, before the introduction of novel into Turkish, authors’ effort of making themselves visible in there and constantly-heard voice of the author started with the experience of modernity. Stating that reckoning with the old discourse is necessary for understating the experience of modernity, Şahin said that reason was the first thing that crushed the spiritual and religious discourse. She also added that the experience of modernity introduced the problem of representation of God to novel literature.