Constructing the Self in Intellectuals’ Biographies: Struggle and Reckoning in Pursuit of Memory

The author of any autobiography or memoir writes not only herself, but the conjuncture, social, political and cultural climate of her time. Biographies or memoirs also serve to fill in the points left by the historical and official sources. At the same time, the author also builds her ‘self’ in and through the narrative. In countries with less developed archival culture, the memoirs fill an important gap. It is possible to trace the political breaks, the signs of social and cultural transformations through memoirs and autobiographies. Current study is a press history based on autobiographies and memoirs of Turkish intellectuals. The study also attempts to analyze the relationship between modernization and the intellectual. For this, the memories or biographies of journalists or column writers who wrote between 1930-1990 were analyzed, and how these social, political and cultural divisions emerged through personal self-constructions. For this research, Zekeriya Sertel, Sabiha Sertel, Nadir Nadi and Hasan Cemal’s memoirs were analyzed. This study tries to understand how the Turkish intellectual constructed its self and identity in and through memoirs, within the context of struggle, reckoning, and conflict