“Innocent Objects:” Fetishism and Melancholia in Orhan Pamuk’s The Museum of Innocence

Authors

  • Eva Hoffmann University of Oregon

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.5399/uo/konturen.8.0.3715

Abstract

In this article, I place Orhan Pamuk’s novel The Museum of Innocence into dialogue with Sigmund Freud’s theory of the fetish. As Gerhard Neumann argues, the fetish provides the basic pattern for the modern subject and its experience of self and the world while performing the impossibility of narrating this experience. In a similar vein, the fetishized objects described in the novel and put on display in Pamuk’s actual museum in Istanbul complicate the narrator’s account of a lost love relationship. The fetish objects create an intertwinement of coalescing and contradicting narratives that point to “black melancholia” as a deeply ambiguous feeling in the collective memory of Istanbul and its people.

Author Biography

Eva Hoffmann, University of Oregon

Eva Hoffmann is a PhD candidate in the Department of German and Scandinavian at the University of Oregon, where she is writing her dissertation on language and animality in the work of Hugo von Hofmannsthal, Franz Kafka, and Rainer Maria Rilke. Eva has published articles on Hugo von Hofmannsthal and Frank Kafka. She is a recipient of the University of Oregon Graduate Summer Translation Award for her collaborative translation project of Elsa Asenijeff’s selection of short stories.

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Published

2015-10-24

How to Cite

Hoffmann, E. (2015). “Innocent Objects:” Fetishism and Melancholia in Orhan Pamuk’s The Museum of Innocence. Konturen, 8, 151–171. https://doi.org/10.5399/uo/konturen.8.0.3715

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Section

Articles