Hafıza Kazısı

Could there be a connection between Bilge Karasu and Walter Benjamin? Are there any common points between these two names that seem different and distant from each other? Is it possible to compare the two?

Memory Excavation is a study that reads Bilge Karasu's texts collected under the title of Sewers or Beyoğlu together with Walter Benjamin's other texts about Childhood and memory in Berlin at the Beginning of the Nineteen Hundreds, and investigates the layers of historical memory in Karasu's texts. While Ülker Gökberk tries to find and extract the pieces of reality that exist together with fiction in the narratives of Bilge Karasu, whom she also knows personally, she reads Lağımlaranası as a Beyoğlu narrative in which personal and collective memories may be reflected. While putting the "memory excavation" into its context, Gökberk benefits from the approaches developed by thinkers such as Freud, Bergson, Ricoeur and Barthes, as well as Benjamin, and also addresses important issues in Turkey's recent history, such as the Wealth Tax and the September 6-7 Events.

Interpreting Bilge Karasu, who put him in dialogue with Walter Benjamin, as a part of world literature, Memory Excavation is a comprehensive contribution to the critical literature about Karasu.