The Dual Construction of Colonial Practices in Felâtun Bey ve Râkım Efendi

Abstract

19th-century Ottoman literature enables discussions of the ground on which Westernization practices and imperial experience are intertwined with the focus of colonial activities. The Westernized subject who re-establishes the order inherited from the West puts colonial practices into circulation bidirectionally. Ahmet Mithat Efendi’s novel Felâtun Bey ve Râkım Efendi contains signs of the permeability and duality of colonial practices. The novel embodies the attempt of the subject being watched and the object of observation to civilize the subject under domination with the same gaze and domination. This article analyzes colonial practices that shift between subjects by focusing on the distinction between the “outside” and the “inside.” It examines the functioning of the experience and domination inherited from the Western subject as a civilizing practice by moving it to the “inside,” that is, to the domestic order, through the representation of other nations under the Ottoman roof in the novel.