Female Historiography: Re-writing Armenian-Turkish Conflict from a Historical and Meta-fictional Point of View in Elif Shafak’s The Bastard of Istanbul (2007)

• Published in: Dil ve edebiyat egitimi Dergisi 2014-03, Vol.3 (10)
• Main Authors: Baktır,Hasan, Demir,Tuba
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Subjects: Edebiyat; Türk Dili
• ISSN: 2146-6971; 2146-6971
• DOI: 10.12973/jlle.11.237

The aim of the present paper is to discuss and explain how Shafak in The Bastard of Istanbul uses fiction to challenge patriarchal views of history. She starts with already-known ideas reflected in history and supported by ‘facts’. She creates a fictional context and hybrid identities to blur the clear-cut line between the opposite world of Armenians and Turks. She first celebrates and plays with the traditional idea of the Armenian-Turk conflict. Then, she develops a female perspective allowing the female characters to create their alternative worlds. Through parody, intertextuality and polyphony, Shafak relocates and questions the objectivity of history. She mingles facts and fiction in The Bastard of Istanbul based on postmodern and feminist reading of history as his/story. History and story are taken as no more than ideological constructs. Since there is as much truth as the number of narratives (history and story), history is not a reliable source for the past. As a result, it is