By SIU Press
“In Turkey the Beat message of dissent is being given renewed life as publishers, editors, critics, readers, and others dissatisfied with the conservative social and political trends in the country have turned to the Beats and other countercultural forebears for alternatives.
“Through an examination of a broad range of literary translations, media portrayals, interviews, and other related materials, this book seeks to uncover how the Beats and their texts are being circulated, discussed, and used in Turkey to rethink the possibilities they might hold for social critique today.
“Mortenson examines how in Turkey the Beats have been framed by the label ‘underground literature;’ explores the ways they are repurposed in the counterculture-inspired journal Underground Poetix; looks at the reception of Jack Kerouac’s On the Road and how that reaction provides a better understanding of the construction of “American-ness”; delves into the recent obscenity trial of William S. Burroughs’s novel The Soft Machine and the attention the book’s supporters brought to government repression and Turkish homophobia; and analyzes the various translations of Allen Ginsberg’s Howl to demonstrate the relevance Ginsberg still holds for social rebellion today.”
–
Erik Mortenson presentation in January.
“I argue that Beat concepts such as personal freedom, spatial mobility and the importance of the individual that may seem self-evident in a Western context become rearticulated when deployed in Turkey.
“This unexpected return of Beat nonconformity and protest into new cultural and temporal conditions offers a unique opportunity to rethink both the cultural logics that made the Beats possible in the first place, as well as the possibilities they might still hold for social critique in our globalized 21st century.”
–
More work by Mortenson.
–
Comments welcome.
Posted on May 9, 2018