Rebecca Bryant and Mete Hatay, Sovereignty Suspended: Building the So-Called State. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2020. xviii + 324 pp.

Abstract

Aral, Nazlı Eray, Ahmet Hamdi Tanpınar, Yusuf Atılgan, Peyami Safa, Oğuz Atay, and Orhan Pamuk) also reflect a cursory diversity. They are top-notch secular writers of the Turkish literary canon, critics of Kemalism at times, but still to a great extent supporters of the Republican ideals, and there is also “a certain degree of Eurocentricism” (p. 17) in their works. Almond refers, for example, to Ahmet Hamdi Tanpınar’s devotion to French literature. He considers Yusuf Atılgan’s “critique of Kemalist project” as “a secular attack upon the secular” (p. 57). In other words, this book is a successful challenge to theWest-centeredWorld Literary canon, but it leaves a powerful question mark in terms of the challenge to be performed locally and against the national canons. Almond is aware of this shortcoming in the focal interest of the book; that is why he says, in the Introduction, that he fights “one battle at a time” (p. 20). He discusses the problem of diversity in local literatures in the Methodology section of the book and, in the context of the literary panorama of Turkey, he refers to Kurdish writers who refuse to write in Turkish, bilingual authors who use both languages, and he also reminds us of the “slow but steady” (p. 18) call by literary critics and historians in Turkey on Armenian writers. In this section, there are also references to indigenous writers within Mexican literature, and Dalit and Muslim writers in Bengali literature to stress the diversity of the local literatures that are the target of this book. The added emphasis that “we have to collude with local hegemonies regionally” (p. 20) as well, issues an invitation to scholars worldwide to further the project of this book. In a valid final note, Almond says that “the politics of representation is often an inclusive project, not a revolutionary one” (p.220), which is a powerful reminder that skindeep diversity in representation will simply not lead us to democratization, as it will inescapably end up being an affirmation of the status quo. World Literature Decentered: Beyond the “West” through Turkey, Mexico and Bengalmakes it manifest that for this challenge to turn into a revolutionary project, an internalized mentality of collectivity is required all around the globe.