The genesis of the Kurdish (Kurmanji) novel as an autonomus field

From the year 2004 onwards, there has been a significant quantitative leap in the number of new novels published in the field of Kurdish Kurmancî literature in a year. The number of new novels blew past 10 in 2004, 20 in 2009, 30 in 2012, and 40 in 2014. While the number of novels written between 1935 and 2003 was 90, it doubled in the five years after 2004, and reached 453 in 2017, with a fivefold increase. Looking at the span from 1935 to 2017, a total of 205 novel writers emerged. The number of writers who began writing novels in 2004 and afterward (151) tripled. Nearly 75% of the novelists started to write Kurdish novels during this period. This period, characterized by a noteworthy increase in the number of novels and authors, marks the time when Kurdish novel writing began to gain autonomy. In my thesis, I examine this time period starting from 1935, when the first Kurdish novel was published. In my analysis, I approach the literary elements in this field through mixed methods. I obtain the concrete form of each novel and conduct statistical analyses. I investigate almost all living novelists through surveys, analyze textual inquiries conducted by publishers using secondary sources, and examine readers through the phenomenon of reading clubs. By encompassing all novels within the relevant time frame, covering all geographical areas inhabited by Kurds, conducting surveys with numerous living novelists, writing a form of novel history, and contextualizing this history, this work distinguishes itself from many preceding studies. Particularly through providing a detailed list of novels, conducting statistical analyses, and engaging with authors through surveys, it claims to serve as a foundational resource for future researchers. Due to the fragmentation (a fractured social structure, geographical divisions, and use of different alphabets and dialects) created by colonialist domination, Kurdish language and literature have been imbued with the identity of a non-territorial, political field. While necessarily subjecting the political sphere to questioning when the novel returned to its own land, this non-territoriality furthermore added a certain depth to the novel in the field of literature, and therefore triggered the principles of distinction and judgement of taste, as well as a process of autonomization in the field of the novel alongside the other literary elements. This process can be divided into three chronological periods: The first being 1935-1991, which witnessed the birth of the novel; the second, 1992-2003, which saw the rise of the novel; and the third, post-2004, when the novel began to autonomize. Though there are no clear divisions marking the exact transitions between these periods, the third period is when the factors of autonomization come to the fore. With the beginning of autonomization, a series of autonomization parameters emerged in the various denominators of literature. Moreover, the manufacturing of belief in the field by agents, in accordance with the particular capital they possessed in the different micro fields, also took place. Looking at these denominators, the swift rise in the number of novels, the formation of a principle of distinction amongst publishers when it comes to the publication of these novels, and the conferring upon the writers the status of authorship, all serve as parameters that augment autonomization. While taking part in the field as political actors or folkloric writers, authors simultaneously continue to be engaged with the field as publishers, readers and critics. (In times when there are no actual readers, the Kurdish writers are also motivated readers). As they transition from being political actors to being political, or from being folkloric to being artistic agents, they abandon their previous positions as publishers and motivated readers and seek to build up the institution of authorship. While the process of publishing works of literature, including novels, in the Kurdish language only, and not charging authors to do so, has on the one hand accelerated autonomisation, on the other hand, the principle of distinction has become a kind of debt of gratitude forced upon the authors, and is used as justification for usurping authors' the copyrights. This is actually nothing less than a form of symbolic violence. Therefore, the emergence of capital as it appears during the autonomisation process is built on symbolic rather than financial capital. After the symbolic market was established, writers and publishers wishing to neutralise the usurpation of copyright developed a series of strategies that I term "the rûmet paradox," in order to avoid acquiring or granting copyrights. Thanks to reading clubs, a new reading culture and class has emerged. This has allowed for the establishment of a readership which is not dependent on intellectual-type readers, thereby marking the end of the motivated readership era in the field. The rise of actual readers has allowed writers to exit the realms of motivated readership and envisage his/her own imaginary readers. In this way, writers have been provided with the advantage of being able to convert a new kind of symbolic capital in order to counter political dependency and publishers' patronage. Although marked with a fragility that leaves it vulnerable to the emotional manipulation of the publishing market as well as under constant political shadow, the emergence of a symbolic market does have positive outcomes. Namely, the existence of a symbolic market, the appearance of a form of capital that the writers can freely renounce has provided the Kurdish literature field and its subfield of the novel with a kind of distinctness in which there is a literary public sphere and authorship as an institution which can determine its own rules. Keywords: authorship as an institution, Kurdish literature, Kurdish novel, Kurdish publishing, Kurdish studies, literary autonomy, literary field, literary public sphere, national literature, postcolonial criticism.