“My dear Lord, in the name of the secrets of Turkish life, who knows what we are to see!” (Ottoman) Turkish encounter with the German-speaking world in the early twentieth century and an affective rethinking of Occidentalism

In this article, I propose a reconsideration of the concept of Occidentalism. In questioning whether we can conceive Occidentalism differently, apart from the Orientalist logic that has been perpetuated in existing studies of Occidentalism, I posit the study of affect as an alternative for postcolonial criticism, which continues to dominate not only the discourse of Occidentalism, in general, but also the analyses of (Ottoman) Turkish engagement with the West and its long history of modernization. Centralizing Cenap Şahâbeddin’s (1870–1934) European Letters, I argue that Şahâbeddin’s encounter with the West, when regarded through the question of affect and embodiment, beyond staging a reverse mode of Orientalism, destabilizes antagonistic discourses and paradigms of Orientalism and Occidentalism. Rather than staging hierarchical and dichotomic structures of power, the textual deployments of the body develop entangled histories and identify new sites of signification between East and West, and between the Self and its alleged Other.