Speaker
Description
This paper explores how crisis reshapes humanism in literature through the works of Ahmet Hamdi Tanpınar, Doris Lessing, and Tezer Özlü. Although seemingly unrelated, these authors depict crisis as a generative force that opens up a new way of existential humanism. In Tanpınar’s case, the cultural crisis (buhran) opens a space where one can connect beyond the borders of one’s culture and bond with humanity. Lessing’s The Golden Notebook provides a lens to analyze gendered crises and feminist existential humanism, showing how literature transforms crisis into a space for reflection, ethical awareness, and imaginative renewal. Tezer Özlü’s works are marked by personal, social, and political upheavals, revealing how experiences of fragmentation and marginality challenge conventional understandings of identity. For Özlü, the act of writing becomes a response to precarity, heteronormative society and a means to construct authenticity under crisis. This paper will argue that, through their literary works, these authors demonstrate that literature itself is a space where humanism can be explored and reimagined, making visible both the vulnerability and the resilience of the human condition in times of crisis.
| Keywords | existential humanism, crisis, buhran, precarity, worldliness |
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