“I am only me.” The ‘Crisis of the Subject’ in Feridun Zaimoglu’s Novel Isabel

Abstract

Feridun Zaimoglu’s novel  Isabel presents life and border situations from the 21st century life in Berlin. It further visualizes the theme of non-integrity as well as the crisis of the modern subject of the present, which results from social problems and social conventionality. The aim of this article is to focus on the conceptualization of the title character, and the protagonist as well, through the constitution of the subject from an intercultural perspective. By introducing and employing the theoretical approach of Stuart Hall and Judith Butler, specifically on the notion of “subject”, I will first analyze the ‘crisis of the subject’ which the title character is engaged with. I will further examine the critical positioning of the female protagonist, that reveals itself particularly in the conventional discourse and attitude she is subject to. In view of her exclusive disgust against the fundamental issues in life, the protagonist is primarily characterized by a new concept of self. Therefore, she takes a firmly distant attitude toward any kind of conventionality, and thus isolates herself from society. However, she rescues herself from the position of the subjected and non-“recognizable” (Butler, 2008, p. 15) individual as she reverses the dynamics of society through her critical attitude and linguistic statements. This means the title figure performs a “subversive resignification” (Butler, 2008, p. 246), and through this, creates a space for her self-defined subjectivity. This process of revaluation, which is directly linked to the title character, can also be observed from an intercultural perspective. In this sense, I will proceed to explain how the novel undermines and recodes the ethnicized and culturalized female subject through the subversive title character. In this context, moreover, the novel leads to the critical reconsidering of perception patterns related to Turkish culture.