Sexual politics in women's writing

Abstract

This study aims to investigate the construction of female identity and sexuality in Turkey by making use of the literary realm. Bearing in mind the fact that the literary production in Turkey, especially in the late Ottoman and early Republican periods, incorporates the prevailing social and political concerns into itself, it relies on the view that an investigation of the literary realm from a feminist point of view would provide analytical tools to decipher the hegemonic discourses applying to female sexuality in Turkey along the major social and political transformations. In this framework, this study mainly focuses on the canonical women's writing rising with the late 1960s and tries to distinguish the approach of this writing to female sexuality from earlier literary traditions. In other words, it undertakes an investigation as to whether it is possible to label this particular writing as 'feminist'. In the light of this discussion, this study proposes the view that the women's writing in question is an apparent reflection of the rising radical feminist discourse in the West in the 1960s and 70s and also a close ally of the second wave feminist movement flourishing in the 1980s at home.