extratextual norms; it links literary and legal discourses as well as genres; it traverses language cultures along with social practices and their imaginary dimensions. Each textuality, as we can witness, extends to a global history nourished by as well as influencing local conjunctions. And in each case, these receive their shape from the antagonism of social inequalities: “The act that asserts dignity is any will to power or will against the power of an other” (Oprisko 128). Signifying power is meant, too.
While we would be inclined to adapt for our purposes the s>r/s<r shuttling and countertextual process as described, we prefer to set it in relation not only to an individual reading and interpreting experience but rather to dialogic “meetings among friends” in a real or virtual space: from the graduate seminar to the encounter group, the private and the collective are not isolated from each other (see Sedo). Members of reading communities, as studies show, have “actively constructed meanings together, sometimes in joint streams-of-consciousness, ←25 | 26→based on such issues as character, identifications, and the moral qualities of the books as they related to the members’ own lives” (Oatley 452).
What we (within the communities we form) can learn about the rich literary heritage, at any rate, is that it begins with what must be the most stupendous result of a young wife’s dishonorable action in all the world’s literature: a highly ambivalent war lasting no less than ten years, as presented in Homeric epic and in Euripidean tragedy. What is more, the heritage embraces one of literature’s most perplexing problems: the question of Iago’s motive in William Shakespeare’s tragedy Othello. And it draws our attention to the complex psychological ambiguity of Lope de Vega’s dramatic characters. The heritage, in these and other cases, helps us to grow aware of the variety of ways in which Western cultures, too, have grappled with the honor problematic.
As we approach our topic, in working together we wish and hope, beyond any single text, to understand better the multiple sources of intercultural conflicts. Like Elif Shafak, we believe that “we need to be exposed to multiple voices, multiple interpretations of reality” (Kok). Sema Kaygusuz underlines a similar aspect:
I have no objection to the lyrical lexical composition of Turkish literature being compared to Japanese literature, which introduced incomparable literary genres to world literature; or to Chinese literature, the first exponent of prose and essentially regarded at the progenitor of the novel. On the contrary, I see these characterisations as being the key to pluralism and diversity. (“Literature”)
Hence in this book we will focus on a comparative approach to representative works of contemporary literature from countries like Afghanistan, China, India, Iran, Sudan, Syria, Turkey, and others, to contribute to a detailed, cross-cultural analysis of honor, especially honor-related violence, in its various forms. In our globalized age, which is continuously subject to re-conception, the impact of local rituals gains a strongly international and intercultural dimension. The problematic of a “dishonorable defense of honor” has become relevant for foreign policy (see for instance Al-Tamimi as well as Baig). Perceptions of honor-related values can be (mis)used as efficient means to oppress women. Such values tend to be passed on from generation to generation, a process which ensures their durability. It is not only women who are constrained. Wherever possible, consideration of narrative methods and techniques will illustrate how literary works explore honor-based values which not only impose hidden shackles and fetters on female but also on male society members. Owing to the nature of ←26 | 27→the topic, we will be largely concerned with reading from a thematic approach, without in-depth studies of particular fictional works’ comprehensive structure. The fictional works, we find, harbor a number of surprises in their representation of strongly variable conditions.35
←27 | 28→
Working in three countries, and with intercultural experiences in Turkey, Western Europe, and China, we are associated with an Intercultural Institute which has published research volumes on value frameworks and value dynamics across cultures. Our academic profile is in comparative literary studies, partly connected with legal studies. Building on some earlier collaborative research, it is our aim to develop a more in-depth analysis of the literary culture of honor and face. Yet at each stage we should remind ourselves that “the acts of cross-cultural reading” which academics as well as translators and publishers perform are “never disinterested,” being inculcated by specific experiences of socialization and education and informed by our specific understanding of literature in the reading communities to which each of us belongs (Dalvai 277). The configuration of these communities, their reading strategies and practices, emerge as a form of discursive politics (see Dalvai 8–9).
Amy R. Williamsen is right: “We must acknowledge the potential bias inherent in every generation of scholars and respond to the undeniable need for continual reexamination of the presuppositions that operate in our discipline” (137) – whatever the discipline. Mine Krause’s perception of honor is influenced by both dignity culture and honor culture approaches, having been brought up with both value systems. She has worked with immigrant children and adolescents in Germany and France, which has allowed her to learn more about patriarchal family structures torn in-between different traditions. Having studied intercultural identity problems for several years, she regularly communicates with Turkish writers and feminists on honor-based issues to gain current insights on the subject. Yan Sun had been immersed in face culture before leaving home for college education. The emigration from rural to urban, from northern to southern China has provided her with a perspective on the complexities and varieties of honor conceptions. Then, a one-year visit to Mississippi as a Fulbright scholar as well as a one-year period in New York as an exchange scholar gave her chances to learn more about dignity culture. The M.A. program at the Law School of Fudan University and the Ph.D. Program in English literature at Shanghai International Studies University assisted her in gaining a more systematic and in-depth cognition of differences between face ←28 | 29→culture and dignity culture. Michael Steppat’s potential bias is grounded in a “dignity-culture” personal background, in Southeast Asia, Australia, and several countries in Western Europe, with no personal involvement in honor culture. Academically, he was already concerned with honor issues in a study of Shakespearian reception, then with literature in relation to cross-cultural communication in several Intercultural Research volumes which include attention to honor contexts (Shanghai Foreign Language Education Press).
Turkish author Sema Kaygusuz has agreed to write the Preface to this book (see above). Her novels and short stories, which describe Turkey’s social reality, cultural variety, and existential issues including the search for identity and the marginalization of minorities, have been translated into several languages. In a 2013 contribution to The Guardian, she sums up her country’s situation in the following question: “The real issues in Turkey – the language conventions forced upon us by nationalistic thinking, the simplistic attitudes induced by the power of mediocrity, the barbarity of popular culture, all the sexist attitudes I have to endure daily, the gulf that exists between writer and reader – are they not enough?” In her short stories collection The Well of Trapped Words and her latest novel Barbarın Kahkahası, we come across the problem of gender-related double standards which can also be analyzed in an honor-related context. Among other awards Sema Kaygusuz has received the ‘English PEN Translates’ Award, the Yunus Nadi Novel Prize, the Coburg-Rückert Prize, the France-Turquie Award, the Balkanika Award, the Cevdet Kudret Literature Prize, and the Yaşar Nabi Nayır Prize for Young Writers.
Chinese scholar Professor Ma Chi has agreed to write the Foreword (see above). With a Ph.D. in literature, Ma Chi is Secretary General of the Center For Thought and Culture Studies of the Shanghai Academy of Social Sciences, member of the Standing Committee of the China Democratic League in Shanghai, Associate Chair of the Mao Zedong Literary Theory and Thoughts Study Center, and Premier Scholar for the TV program Past at Shanghai Documentary Channel (DOCUTV). He has published more than 20 academic books including
