Faces of the State

Yael Navaro-Yashin is University Assistant Lecturer in the Department of Social Anthropology at Cambridge University.

• List of Illustrations ix Acknowledgments xi Introduction Semiconscious States: The Political and the Psychic in Urban Public Life 1 Entering the City 1 Secularism in Public Life 6 The Turkish Astronomer and the Little Prince 8 The Construction of "Turkish Culture" 10 "The Anthropology of Turkey" 12 The Not-Too-Native Anthropologist 13 Researching the Political 15 PART I: CULTURAL POLITICS 17 1. Prophecies of Culture: Rumor, Humor, and Secularist Projections about "Islamic Public Life" 19 "The Native" 19 Tales of Nightmare 22 Rumor or Reality? 29 The Issues at Stake 36 The Prophecy 40 Public Life and the Construction of "Local Culture" 42 2. The Place of Turkey: Contested Regionalism in an Ambiguous Area 44 "Turkey" as Sign 44 The History of "Region" 46 Beheadings in Saudi Arabia 51 Joining the Customs Union 55 The Place of Turkey 58 The Contest over "Region" 65 "The Middle Eastern Woman" 67 Undoing Area Studies 73 3. The Market for Identities: Buying and Selling Secularity and Islam 78 Consuming "Culture" 78 The Veil as a Commodity 82 Secularist Commodities 85 Istanbul's New Marketplaces 90 The Islamist Department Store 94 The Trademark of Islam 98 The Force of Symbols 107 The Market for Identities 111 PART II: STATE FANTASIES 115 4. Rituals for the State: Public Statism and the Production of "Civil Society" 117 The Soldier's Farewell 117 The Wrestler as Leviathan 122 The Flag Campaign 127 Does "Civil Society" Exist? 130 "The Transparent Reflection of Society" 137 "A Holiday of the People" 144 The Agency of "Society" 152 5. Fantasies for the State: Hype, Cynicism, and the Everyday Life of Statecraft 155 Does the "State" Exist? 155 Mundane Cynicism 166 The Truck That Crashed into the "State" 171 The Magnetism of State Crime 180 The Afterlife of the "State" 183 6. The Cult of Ataturk: The Apparition of a Secularist Leader in Uncanny Forms 188 Like a Cross That Stops the Devil ... 190 "Visits to a Saint's Tomb" 191 Mystical Apparitions 193 Calling Spirits 194 Numerology 195 Statues and Idols 196 Heads of State 199 Secularist Excesses 201 Notes 205 Bibliography 231 Index 241

"A provocative and sophisticated analysis of value to regional specialists and scholars interested in the nature of the state."--Choice "Navaro-Yashin's highly innovative use of an ethnographic approach to establish evidence to support her two major arguments--concerning the shared political culture of secularists and Islamists and the regeneration of the state through the margins--is extremely successful. A welcome addition to the ethnography of Turkey, this study will be also of use to readers interested in debates on civil society, the public sphere, nationalism, and subjectivity."--Leyla Neyzi, Journal of Royal Anthropological Institute