Beyond the Ecology of Common Sense: Grasping the World from the Other Edge

Abstract

This article discusses the idea of the world in terms of literary expression and the conceptual translation of space. The term “world” in this sense designates a complex entity that is subject to different interpretations, as is the case in comparative literature, which tends to develop its definition of the world in order to theorize the relationship of literature to space. With reference to the works of twentieth-century Turkish writer Tezer Özlü, this paper addresses the autonomy of the travelling writer in the context of a textual enjoyment that renounces heteronomy vis-à-vis the Earth as an inflexibly concrete geographical reality. Özlü considers travelling as an act that goes beyond the ecology of common sense and thus claims independence from the collective and stagnant translations of the world so as not to be reduced to a uniformity of expression in the coherence of things. Considering the concepts of identity and alterity, the main issue here is to discuss the translation of the world as a reality to be grasped, as a possibility to expand in the mind, in ideas that resist the rigidity, banality and ordinariness of space as a system.