Modernity , it seems, can do neither with nor without religion . The âreturn of religionâ, which has already marked the contemporary political and cultural imagination , only accentuates this paradox. Thus, although the criticism of religion was once considered to be âcompletedâ with modernity (Marx 1957), religion today seems to have become indispensible to truth and truth-telling procedures (Thwaites Diken 2015: 393).
A country governed by neo-liberal Islam, Turkey is deeply affected by different versions of the âreturn of religionâ , not only politically, but also culturally (see Thwaites Diken 2015: 393). And contemporary Turkish cinema is paradigmatic in this respect. But the increasing visibility of religion in Turkish cinema is not equally apparent in social and cultural analyses.
This book investigates how the three different fieldsâpolitics, religion and cinemaâproblematize and reinvent each other in the context of contemporary Turkish cinema. I focus on the relationship between politics, religion and cinema in terms of their common origins. In this context, I find the concept of the âspectacleâ especially interesting. This is grounded in the fact that, in contemporary societies, the mediation of religion and politics is increasingly cinematized. Following this, the aim of the book is to contribute to an understanding of how the cinematic nature of politics and religion unfolds in the context of Turkish cinema. While doing so, it explores the capacity of cinema, as an art form, to generate political and religious statements, sensations, affections and truths.
Powerâin politics and religionâalways relies on visual mechanisms (Thwaites Diken 2017: 128). Religious rituals and political ceremonies have historically been designed as spectacles . And today, cinema holds a privileged position with respect to spectacle . It is the most obvious art form to observe the spectacle as a historical socio-economic condition (Thwaites Diken 2017: 128). In this sense, insofar as it is a mass art , cinema shapes the collective unconscious with reference to which subjectivity is produced (Reine 2014). Thus, to think about politics and religion in terms of spectacle , cinema functions as a focal point for this book.
Importantly, at first glance, cinema, politics and religion seem to be autonomous spheres. Each, after all, operates with different rules which organize its internal hierarchies. Nevertheless, they have homologies in terms of how subjectivity is created through spectation. In other words, all three fields have a structural and a genealogical relationship with the concept of the âspectacleâ . The term âspectacleâ expresses a totalizing effect of power which uses non-coercive means in contemporary capitalism (Debord 1983). It dominates social consciousness in every domain of social life by entertaining, passifying, and distracting. In this sense, it serves as the illusory âopiumâ of the masses, which has taken the place of religion in modernity (Debord 1983). Just as religion consists in transferenceâin that humans transfer their own good attributes, such as love, friendship and justice, to an external Other and objectify an ideal conception of themselves as âGodâ (Feuerbach 1841)âin modernity , humans are objectified (and thus alienated) through spectacular technology (Debord 1983, 20).
Power constructs itself, operates and accumulates through specular mechanisms. The way in which vision is mediated is central to the making of modern power (Crary 2002). Power involves seeing and being seen. The front cover of Thomas Hobbesâ (1651) famous book The Leviathan is a classic example that illuminates the constitution of power through the gaze (see Thwaites Diken 2017: 130). The picture shows a gigantic human figure who overlooks a town. We see only the upper part of the Leviathanâs body, which is made up of smaller human figures who look up at its face. While the Leviathan , holding a sword and a wand in its hands, represents the sovereign power, the state; the people who comprise its body are the citizens of the modern state.
The picture illustrates that the sovereignâs power comes from the governed. The peopleâs gaze is what constitutes the source of the Leviathanâs authority. Hobbes suggested that people can live in peace only if they give up their freedom and transfer their rights to a supreme authority in return for security. The social contract indicates that the sovereignâs legitimacy depends on the fact that the people see the sovereign as sovereign . If they stop seeing, sovereignty cannot survive. Yet, at the same time, from whichever angle one looks at the picture, the viewer is faced with the inspecting gaze of the Leviathan , which stares back, constantly reminding her of her subjection to its authority. âWhat we see in the eye of the sovereign is the locus of oneâs own seeing in the alien form of blind spectacle âas artificeâ (Pye 2015, 172).
Religion, too, is a specular phenomenon. Belief relates to spectation. Anthropological studies show how rituals as spectacles constitute God as a reality by impersonating it (see Kennedy 2009, 207). The spectator is actively involved in the creation of meaning in such rituals, which is to say that, if it were not for the spectating subject , God would not exist. But the crucial point in this respect is that it is not important whether the subject participating in the spectacle believes in it. It is enough that she participates, the paradox being that the miracle can occur as long as one spectates while at the same time the miracle can seem independent of oneâs gaze . Belief , in this sense, is grounded in seeing.
Against this background, I am particularly interested in how cinema assists belief and politics in the context of recent Turkish films. In the last two decades, Turkish cinema has become increasingly visible in the global art scene. Many Turkish films have featured in international festivals and more than a few have returned home with significant prizes. Many others have received critical acclaim.
There is also a wide consensus that a paradigmatic shift has taken place in Turkish cinema over the same period. First, cinematic production in Turkey has become more compatible with post-industrial art production mechanisms. Second, new themes have been deployed by recent films which has contributed to the thematic and aesthetic diversification in contemporary Turkish cinema. The new themes generally revolve around reinterpretations of modernity , the reconstruction of identities , the reconfiguration of womenâs role in politics and so on. Against this background, many film studies scholars in Turkey prefer the term âNew Cinema of Turkeyâ, which broadly covers the period after 1996 (Akser and Bayraktar 2014, xviiiâxx). This term encompasses both popular and art house films of different genres. Yet all of these works share a common thematical problematiqueâan increasing engagement with âhomeâ and âbelongingâ (Suner 2010).
Significantly, in this context, Turkish cinema has also made a religious turn in ...