Akademik Veri Yönetim Sistemi
Critical Insights The Slave Narrative, Drake Kimberly, Editör, Salem Press , New York, ss.94-112, 2014
Ottoman Slave Narratives – Selfhood and Faith, Trials and Travails
‘Who fitter than a man’s selfe [to set forth his history] as being best acquainted with, and most privy to the many passages of his life?’ (Burton as cited in Stauffer 216).
Wrote Henry Burton in his life narrative, A Narration of the Life of Mr. Henry Burton. Burton’s comment reflects the light in which autobiography was viewed in the seventeenth century England, an attempt to give the objective truth about the autobiographer. The early modern self, identifiable and coterminous, is concomitant with the belief in a unified, coherent selfhood. This selfhood has essence, a core, a unity to it, and the subject position is not fluid, inconsistent, or segmented. Thus a coherent, stable, universal subjectivity is not a construct but is imminent to subjectivity.
I would offer as a case in point the memoirs by Michael Heberer of Bretten, covering the period between 1585-1588, originally published as Aegyptiaca Servitus, and The Extraordinary Memoirs of an Ottoman Soldier 1688-1700 by Osman Aga of Temesvar, published in 1724. By focusing on the aforementioned texts, I would argue that two such seamlessly coherent selves are constructed in these early modern memoirs, which respectively depict the trials and travails of a German galley slave in the Ottoman Empire and an enslaved Turkish soldier in Austria. What these construed selves have in common is the impact of faith in the self formation of these subjects. In the case of Hebeber, the Protestant faith is not only the locus of selfhood, but the pillar on which his identity is solely built. Slavery is but a test for the faithful, and the fact that Heberer is saved on this world is proof that he is one of the elect and will be saved in the next. Osman Aga on the other hand, forecloses an identity clearly within the limits allowed to a Muslim, abstaining from licentiousness behavior. However, Osman’s relation with God is complicated to say the least as he keeps questioning God and His motives in trying to make sense of his own ordeals. Having said that I’d further argue that although Heberer’s and Osman’s relation to God does differ, for both individuals their faith function as an anchor, helping them resist change and keeping their identities intact. Through faith Heberer and Osman contest the dissolution of their selfhoods, and the possibility of becoming uprooted and adrift, mere fleeting presences.