Creativity, Counterpublics and Çapulcu [looters] Cosmopolitics in Beyoǧlu (Istanbul)

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Published: Jan 16, 2018
DOI: https://doi.org/10.12681/grsr.15815
Keywords:
Istanbul creative city counterpublics authoritarian rule new Islamist ethics Ҫapulcu cosmopolitics
Fotini Tsibiridou
University of Macedonia
https://orcid.org/0000-0002-6023-3768
Abstract

The Gezi exodus in 2013 challenges us to examine retrospectively the synthesis and the dynamics of the main actors of the Gezi protest who were discriminated against after being characterized as ‘Çapulcu’ (looters) by R.T. Erdoğan. Since 2008, systematic ethnographic fieldwork has been conducted among feminist activists, artists, architects, writers and academics in the broader area of Beyoǧlu, the modern heart of the current Global city of Istanbul. It is this ethnographic fieldwork that permits us to study the broader practices, aesthetics and agency of ‘counterpublics’. These ethnographic encounters with the local critical voices producing reflexive ‘texts’ directed the focus of the study presented in this paper on the impact of the cultural turn as priority for social protests, i.e. identities’ activism and artistic creativity in interaction with broader counter-publics. The latter seems to correspond with authoritarian rule, Islamist conservative ethics, fantasies and governmental police control technologies, applied in accordance to the neoliberal projects of gentrification and Istanbul’s transformation into a creative city since the end of the 20th century. Pamuk’ project, The Museum of Innocence, a case study on which this paper focuses, describes ironically and metonymically the process of transformation of dynamic counterpublics into significant looters’ (Ҫapulcu) cosmopolitics.


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Author Biography
Fotini Tsibiridou, University of Macedonia
Phd in Ethnology and Social Anthropology, Professor, University of Macedonia
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