Explicating Selim İleri’s “Kapalı İktisat”: Melancholy, Politics and Intermediality

Abstract

This paper aims to situate the formalist and thematic qualities of Selim İleri’s “Kapalı İktisat” (Closed Economy) story in its historical context and within Turkish literature, by analyzing the text. In order to understand the subjectivity of the protagonist, the role of the concept of melancholy will be examined and personal, social and textual manifestations of melancholy in the text will be scrutinized. The concept of melancholy will cast lights on the cruxes in the closed and obscure narrative of the text. The intertextual and intermedial aspects of the story will be foregrounded, and the referents of the text will be identified. It will be shown how the story transformed and appropriated Ahmet Hamdi Tanpınar’s short story “Teslim”, the illustrations of an eighteenth century anatomist Frederik Ruysch, a news published on Milliyet in 1977 and some essays in Kadro journal. In its thematic and formal structure, “Kapalı İktisat” both signifies a turning point in Selim İleri’s authorship and has a pioneering role in the change in Turkish literature of 1980s.