Dept. of Architecture - Ph.D. / Sc.D.
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Item Open Access Ottomentality: neoliberal governance of culture and neo-Ottoman management of diversity(Bilkent University, 2017-09) Yang Erdem, ChienSince the 2000s Turkey has witnessed a growing array of cultural productions and sites ranging from television series to history museums featuring the magnificence of the Ottoman legacy. Contemporary cultural analyses often interpret this phenomenon as cultural expressions of the Justice and Development Party’s (Adalet ve Kalkınma Partisi; AKP) Islamist ideology and foreign policy known as neo-Ottomanism. Nonetheless, this interpretation tends to overlook the complexity and underestimate its socio-political implications. This study draws attention to the analytical limitations of neo-Ottomanism and develops an alternative concept—Ottomentality—in order to more adequately assess Turkey’s renewed Ottoman motto. By incorporating the Foucauldian perspective of governmentality, the study proposes to look beyond the “ideology” and “foreign policy” interpretations and reconceptualize neo-Ottomanism not only as a distinct form of governmentality, but also in collaborative terms with neoliberal governmentality. Ottomentality is deployed here to underscore the discursive governing practices that are generated by the convergence of neoliberalism and neo-Ottomanism as a means of cultural intervention. By critically engaging with the areas of history museums, television, and cinema, this study aims to examine the AKP’s neoliberal approach to culture and neo-Ottoman management of diversity. The study contends that the convergence of these two rationalities has significantly transformed the state’s approach to culture as a way of governing the social, produced a particular knowledge of Ottoman-Islamic multiculturalism, and constituted a citizen-subject who is increasingly subjected to exclusion and discipline for expressing critical views of this knowledge.Item Open Access Cyberspace as a locus for urban collective memory(Bilkent University, 2013) Sak, SegahHowever salient the concept of cyberspace is, this study is an exploration of the relationship of people with their places. With a socio-spatial approach, this work sets forth a theoretical plexus between collective memory, cyberspace and urban space. This construction intrinsically relies on a conflation of associations and dynamics of memory, technology and place. Accordingly, the study explores analogies between cyberspace and memory, and between cyberspace and urban space. Merging qualities of the given concepts reveal that the cyberspace presents contemporary formations both of memory and of place. In the light of this premise, the study argues that cyberspace potentially constitutes an external urban collective memory and that it should be utilized to invent cyberplaces in this context. To understand the extent to which such potential is realized, a sample of the websites of existing location-based digital storytelling or oral history projects are investigated. To illustrate the means of projecting a cyberplace as a locus of urban collective memory, a model is established and a pilot website is created. Depending on the theoretical construction and the following propositions, a guideline for possible future implementations is generated. The intention is to bring cyberspace – the indispensible component of contemporary everyday life – to the light as a media that can be used to strengthen people’s relationship with cities rather than submitting our thought to the unavailing dystopia of digital culture.Item Open Access Representation and women : construction of gender-roles in computer games(Bilkent University, 1996) Özcivelek (Durlu), LeylaDevelopments in computer industry gave way computer games to become a popular entertainment agent for children as well as for adults. Interactive quality of computer games has displaced television and traditional games, however, they have become unattractive to women because of the fact that the pleasures offered by these games are gender-specific since they are offered into consumption with a male "Model Player" in mind. The purpose of this particular study is to illustrate the constitution of gender of the player by the discourse itself as a fact independent from the gender of the actual player. In this connection, topics such as gender-role socialization, representation of women in popular culture, computer as a gendered technology will be the main issues to be investigated in order to demonstrate the constitution of the player through an analysis of a group of role-playing games.Item Open Access "Servant Princess" of the modern home : domesticity and femininity in Turkey after electrification, 1923-1950(Bilkent University, 2014) Şavk, Bahar EmginThis dissertation deals with the question how modern domesticity and modern femininity were discursively constructed in the advertisements and other promotional texts of electric appliances published between 1923 and 1950 in popular women’s and family magazines in Turkey. The issue is framed within socio-historical technology studies and the feminist histories of the early republican period. Moving forward from the claim that electricity had to be first domesticated to enter the homes, the study searches for the gendered connotations of this process. Besides, it ponders over the ways women are interpellated as modern subjects by the representations in question. To this end the dissertation carries on a discourse analysis of the visual and textual representations of electricity and electric powered domestic appliances. The images are discussed in their potential to bring forth the ambiguities in the definitions of modern domesticity and femininity. Analysis revealed that neither the middle-class ethos of domesticity nor the chaste woman of this family was the only idealized form of domesticity and femininity by the official discourses. There were rather different modernities defined distinctly based on various class positions all of which were approved by the republican cadres.Item Open Access The Kantian theory of the sublime and humanist politics(Bilkent University, 2013) Ayas, TuğbaThe German philosopher Immanuel Kant’s rendition of cosmopolitanism and the sublime have been quite popular separately in various discussions on politics and aesthetics since the late 90s. In today’s political conjuncture the Kantian sublime is consulted in describing the social disasters that had broad repercussions in international public. This study argues that in this century, Kantian ideal of cosmopolitanism together with its close relevance to human rights stands in an unusual relation with the sublime due to the feeling of distant suffering caused by social disasters. Moreover, this relation indicates that Kant’s cosmopolitanism and sublime can be tools for contemplating contemporary world politics. The present study seeks to disclose this present relationship and the regained value of Kantian philosophy in the face of a new world order through examining a) Kantian cosmopolitanism normatively, as in its original version and; theoretically as in the discussions on its revival in late 90s; b) the transformation of the Kantian sublime after 1945; and c) the state of distant suffering in the face of social disasters of the 20th century interpreted as sublime and its relation to ideal of cosmopolitanism.Item Open Access Representing absence and the absent one : remembering and longing through mourning photography(Bilkent University, 2013) Aytemiz, PelinExploring different practices of photographing / representing the dead, this dissertation, deals with the question how the deceased loved ones are remembered and longed for through photography in the context of family. Approaching mourning as a long-term experience in the life of mourners, the primary objective of this dissertation is to analyze the alterations of the absence/presence of the mourned one in mourning photography, using photographs found from archives and antique markets as primary source material. In the light of the critical literature on photography, studies of material culture and memory in relation to photography and classical and contemporary mourning studies, this dissertation aims to expand the parameters of the discussion on the relationship between different types of photography and mourning, remembering, longing for, and bidding farewell to the dead and to refine a new area of study concerning death photography in Turkey