Queer Subjectivity and Heteronormative Alienation: Desire, Escape and Identity in the Modern Turkish Novel

Abstract

Using a queer theoretical framework, this article examines the repression, invisibility, and framing of queer subjectivity within heteronormative norms in modern Turkish novels. Drawing on Judith Butler, Michel Foucault, Lauren Berlant, and Sara Ahmed, it emphasizes how gender, identity, and desire are immanent to modern power structures. Focusing on Selim İleri’s Her Gece Bodrum (Every Night in Bodrum), the analysis reveals queer subjectivity as a silent resistance against social and cultural norms. The character Cem embodies the tension between personal desire and societal expectation, exposing conflicts of repression, alienation, and selfhood within heteronormative frameworks. The novel’s temporal shifts, fragmented perspectives, and linguistic openness provide multiple avenues for queer readings, showing how deviation from normative gender and sexual scripts produces both vulnerability and agency. At the same time, the text reflects on how literature can simultaneously reproduce and challenge hegemonic norms. Situating desire and identity as socially mediated, the study argues that queer subjectivity extends beyond sexual orientation, encompassing alternative ways of existing, knowing, and relating to society. Ultimately, the article underscores modern Turkish literature’s capacity to reveal tensions between normative pressures and individual expressions of difference, offering nuanced insights into resistance, visibility, and self-formation.