[Prof.Dr. Serpil Oppermann]

Back in 2003 teaching a Postmodern Novel course in the English Department of Dresden University some of my German students stood against the process of globalization during our class discussions on Postmodernism. Teaching the Postmodern theory and the exemplary novels I had chosen for this class I found myself facing the young minds in former East Germany who had adopted a questioning atitude to the Postmodern subversion of all conventions and values. With the desire to include Alev Alatlı’s Schrodinger’s Cat in class discussion that seemed to comply with my students’ stance, I set out to find its English translation. But I was so disillusioned to learn from my e-mail correspondance with the writer that her novel was not translated. So were my students. Having now learned that this novel will be displayed in Frankfurt Book Fair I find it is my duty as an academician and scholar of Postmodern literature to introduce this remarkable work to the German reading public and academic circles with the hope of witnessing its translation as a result.

Alev Alatlı is one of the most erudite of all the contemporary Turkish writers. She not only draws on an ecclectic mix of Western modes of knowledge, Eastern philosophies, ancient and modern Turkish customs, folklore and myths, but also displays a unique talent of fusing the intricate theories of Quantum physics with the socio-political ideologies of our time. She presents in her fiction a sense of living in a world whose foundations have been shaken, and where national and personal identity appears in wholly decentered forms. Her characters, trying to make sense of their anti-utopic world, and its violent forms of oppression, experience a process of disenchantment from traditional structures of belief. Her blending of the cultural, historical, social, scientific, theological and political discourses within her fiction to express this mood of disenchantment creates an amalgam of competing styles and voices. Her novels cannot simply be considered mere fictional constructions, because they are pervaded with a profound sense of philosophical inquiry and critical insight concerning the world we live in. Had her work been translated she would, no doubt, have been acclaimed as one of the foremost thinkers of our time. Her massive two volume novel Schrodinger’s Cat, published in 1999, attest to this. This novel is a remarkable fusion of the origins of ancient Turkish culture that date thousands of years back to the Asiatic plains where the first Turkish empires and their cultural forms flourished, with the diverse range of the theoretical interpretations of Quantum physics and postmodern theories. The negative and foreboding implications of the Postmodern condition today rendered through the supposedly universal but in fact the fragmentary, and exclusionary logic of identity in the novel find their most explicit expression in the first volume, while the second volume replaces a sense of hope and new possibilities of redemption with a literary recourse to our galactic origins and the ancient Turks who helped found their culture upon the model of the universe as observed and recorded by their astronomers.

The first volume, subtitled “Nightmare” is a self-conscious investigation of the limits and the visible paradoxes of the Postmodern condition in present-day Turkish society from the perspective of the 2020s. This volume attacks the Postmodern from within its own rhetorical sign posts. It is perhaps the only text in the form of fiction that challenges the postmodern subversion of the truth value of the grand narratives which attempt to explain the world in terms of an over-reaching truth, such as Religion, History and Science. “Nightmare” is a disutopia of a Postmodern world; but this is a totatlly negative form of postmodernism which appears as a tyrannic force of oppression in the novel. As such it has become the one and only negative Grand Narrative. Therefore the first volume should be read as a cautionary tale against the provisional formulations of postmodernist ideology. It exposes the inherent political perils of this ideology’s privileging of decentering our national identity, cultural continuity and unity, and political stability. It opens with a trial case of the major character Imre Kadızade who has been accussed of murdering her niece Revolution, in Adrionople Reformatory founded by Amnesty International. We read that the world has been forcefully united under the banner of the New World Order the founder and president of which is called The Grand Master and who has authorized the trained “Achievers” (vasıl), “Devotees” (salik), “Disciples” (Murid) and “Aspirants” (talip) to announce the “Final Truth” to the rest of the planet. Turkey is divided into newly created political states with their specific borders, political leaders and citizens in keeping with the totalitarian sytem of the New World Order.The aim of this Order is to make the the new nations as such blend into a new system called “Being in Oneness.” Those who resist are subjected to genetic annihilation. There are of course the rebel rousers who fight against this oppression, and who are labelled by the followers of the Grand Master as the “Uncolonizables” and the “Cursed.” Alev Alatlı calls this new order “Postmodern Fascism,” and the system of rule as “The Holy Coalition of the Grand Master.” Obviously the title has ironic echoes of the present European Union. The one and only power that can defy this system is Schrodinger’s Cat. Being both dead and alive Schrodinger’s cat stands for the logic of “both” as opposed to the tyrannic Coalition’s logic of “either/or.”

“Nightmare” follows the story of the former psychotherapist Imre Kadızade who has been sentenced to a program of re-cycling by the Amnesty International court. Her trial takes place in Adrianople Reformatory (today’s Edirne in Turkey) which is now part of the new state known as the Republic of Eastern Thrace. Her defence constitutes the novel’s major narrative. Using a holoformer, a device to project 3-dimensional images, Imre Kadızade explains to the court the political, economic and cultural make-up of former Turkey within which she grew up. Hence the cross-references to the major socio-political events of the Turkish history in the second half of the 20th century that have shaped Imre’s identity and her historical and poitical consciousness. These events are also presented as a nightmare concerning her situation. Imre Kadızade is an “Aspirant” in the novel. The “Aspirants” are made to repeat over and over the key concepts of the New World Order for the purposes of getting thoroughly indoctrinated. Among these repeated terms are: Grand Master, Absolute Consciousness, Unified Egalitarian Doctrine, Coalition, The Way, Uniform Individuals, Re-purification, Submission, Unitary World, Wealth, Western, European, Grudger, Rich, Sexy, Liberal, Economic Mind, Capitalist, Individualism, Progressive, and Rationalism. Needless to say the repetition of these concepts that constituded and justified the Western civilization’s dominance of other cultures throughout the centuries creates a sense of ironic estrangement from their very meanings. “Aspirants,” like Imre Kadızade from former Turkey, are made aware of their “otherness” and difference in their re-programming. Although postmodern theory rejects binarity, hierarchy and unitary forms of knowledge in favor of a more plural concept of difference, here it has proven the opposite. Here the postmodern discourse is made to move paradoxically from the language of otherness to that of decentering and oppressive unity. However, Imre Kadızade will be made aware of the contradiction of the authoritarian order she is being re-programmed to accept as the only Egalitarian system. Furthermore although postmodernism celebtares difference against exclusion and binary oppositions, in the novel it is condemned as part of the postmodern condition that hides the western wish for universal domination. Separation of Turkey into new nation states shows the inherent dangers within the postmodern privileging of historical plurality and cultural multiplicity. Here the Postmodern has turned against itself celebrating what it thoroughly rejected, such as closure, teleology, universalization and authority represented by the Postmodern organization of the Holy Coalition. Therefore the repetitions of the key terms help create a sense of horror in the reader. Run by the principles of the “Economic Mind” the Holy Coalition’s sovereignity of the planet has become an absolute nigtmare for the rest of the people who are marginalized as the Uncolonizables. This nightmare is the inverted form of postmodern totalization with its determinate logos. Postmoderism is thus turned upside down and against itself in Imre Kadızade’s narrative of trial. This negative reformulation of postmodernism as a totalitarian ideology also aims to shock the reader further into the nightmarish world of the narrative. In this respect there is a deliberate confusing of postmodern thought with its unresolved contradictions. Is this how postmodernism perceived in Turkey? Maybe the literary conundrum here leads to this question.
One of the most outstanding references in the novel is the explanation of the state of being pre-human. Imre Kadızade is tried to be brainwashed to accept this as the condition of her fellow countrymen in Turkey. Individual differences are systematically erased from the genetic make up of these “Unfortunate Ones.” Yet Imre’s profound knowledge of the quantum theories which she displays with specific references to the work and ideas of famous quantum physicists and mathematicians, and her deep understanding and critical assessment of philosophy, politics, economy and other disciplines, by which she explains her situation, stand out in the courtroom as the greatest challenge to the Western attitude of suppressing her identity as pre-human. Subjecting her to Amnesty International’s re-programming to become full- human creates a brilliant postmodern parody of the Western mindset in the text. During the trial process Imre Kadizade is fortunate enough to meet the Rebels who resist as well as threaten the authoritarian system of the New World Order. The mysetrious Black Kalpak Man (the Man with a black headgear) introduces her to “The Reconstructors” whose sole task is to restore the sense of dignity of self, historical consciousness and social awareness to the now oppressed Turks by using the theories of the New Physics, astronomical knowledge and astro-physics to prove their point. The numerous historical referencences to Istanbul’s distant past, Anatolian customs and traditions, Turkish legends and history are used to prepare the reader for what follows in the second volume. The Reconstructors in “Nightmare” try to prevent Imre Kadizade from being an easy prey to the mind control methods of the Holy Coalition and from falling into their hands completely. They also attempt to erase the impact of re-programming she undergoes. The reconstructors’ main aim is to make the people aware of the fact that the Parliament of Achievers are working to “moronize” the Turkish “Sufferers” otherwise referred to as the Oppressed. We read that the Parliament of Achievers has determined that the Oppressed are suffering from aphasia. Imre Kadizade finds herself fortunate to have escaped this end because she is using Fuzzy Logic. Therefore she boldly declares that “there can be nothing belonging to this world which can be proven 100% true or 100% false.”

All the references to specific socio-political, historical and cultural events in the late 20th century Turkey come to be discussed from the perspectives of “Fuzzy Logic” of the New physics. As Imre Kadizade says to her nuclear physicist friend Professor Erkani: “Schrodinger’s Cat is like Turkey. Believe me, I am not worried for its being both dead and alive! If death is one extreme end and life another, I do not find what is in between that strange. Similarly I do not find light behaving both as a wave and as particles that strange. In fact this sounds quite logical to me. My problem is with black and white” (119). We realize that Imre Kadizade thinks in accordance with the multivalued, multivariable principles of Fuzzy Logic which in Turkish has come to be accepted as “ruffled logic” concerning the indeterminable nature of reality. “In my cubistic world” says Imre, “Picasso, Lenin, Freud, Prophet Mohammed and Man are real, as real as Hawking. As real as socialism, capitalism, liberalism. All of them are real. They demand interest, and responsibility” (123).

Little anecdotes scattered throughout her narrative about the old Turkish legends, Imre’s family background, Anatolian customs and traditions, as well as life in Istanbul and discussions on Chaos theory with reference to Islamic theology, along with pervasive narrative on quantum physics dominate Imre Kadizade’s defence. Holographic projections of her entire life enact the old scenes for further impact on the judge. Imre Kadizade defends her present condition by condemning the state of affairs in old Turkey. She says that there was no direction, no specific ideology there. “Old Turkey lacked political principles, theories, ideals or philosophy...it had no foresight; its leadership lacked intellectual principles. The culture of Old Turkey was dominated by emotions. The major emotion was fear. As a citizen of a country which adopted anti-ideology as its only ideology and which lacked political philosophy I was like a boat rocked by the mercy of the waves” (325). In this way she tries to justify the reason behind the death of her niece for which she is being accused by the Amnesty International. This kind of severe criticism of Turkey’s political stance finds its final justification in the nightmare of its fragmentation and its people’s state of aphasia. On a larger scale Imre’s narrative points to the systematic reduction of the peoples of the world into automations launched by the Western program of global unification. She rejects being deliberately made the “Other.” She explains what seems so incomprehensible and paradoxical about Turkish society to the West by using the multi-dimensional conceptual framework drawn from the Quantum theory. Trukey itself stands as a symbol of the logic of “both” defying any either/ or category about its very nature. Thus the first volume, “Nightmare” ends with the final division of Turkey into many states which have accepted the way the holy Coalition has determined for them, with their willing submission to the rule of the Grand Master. But the Reconstructors send her a final signal: “Don’t be afraid.”
The second volume, entitled “Dream” opens with a magnificent narrative of the creation of our galaxy and the planets that the Reconstructors have simulated in their underground headquarters. Imre Kadizade is witnessing a superb display of 3 dimensional cosmic show. The important minds of ancient Turkish civilizations, such as astronomers, philosophers, leaders have been cloned to reenact the past Turkish history. We are taken into the realm of Khubla Khan where Uluğ Bey and Shoujing discuss the nature of the galactic formations. We also learn how the Turks have founded their culture and values upon the original creation in the universe and lived in accordance with its principles. Imre Kadizade here also learns the beauty of holistic way of thinking, and the fact that the Reconstructors have taken the Blue Crane as their symbol of liberation and freedom just as the ancient Turks have always revered this bird. They have adapted the old saying: “Unless the sky collapses on itself above, unless the land is devestated below, who can disrupt your country, your customs Turkish nation?” (53). They say that if there is going to be total annihilation of this planet it must be the natural result of the astronomical or celestial reality, not result from the Achievers’ destruction of the ozone layer. Theirs is the nationalism of the Blue Crane. In the cosmic show of the death and birth of the stars, and supernovas, Imre Kadizade learns that their ideology is grounded in the sovereignity of the Heavens, and that we all have descended from star dust.

Schrodinger’s Cat is a masterpiece with multiple set of discourses pervaded by intertextual contexts all of which contribute to the thematic criticism of the matrix of the Freudian Eros/Thanatos opposition that the text meticulously deconstructs. Its self-conscious critique of the present forms of knowledge based on duality offers a textual model of holistic thinking by paradoxically contextualizing the inherent dangers of totalitarian idea of unity that may be confused with holism, and postmodern strategy of discontinuty, fragmentation and difference in the Turkish condition today. It makes the reader re-think the very meaning of concepts as such. No doubt it is an ex-centric text that contests not only centered way of thinking but also decentralized approaches in the discourses of human sciences today. It can be read as a tale of disutopia followed by utopia in its two volumes, or as a call to responsibility even in such degraded political and social conditions it depicts for all people to collectively transform the present social structures.

Ankara, August 2004