History MA student Işın Taylan's conference participation

History MA student Işın Taylan attended the 29th annual Middle East History and Theory Conference at University of Chicago on May 2-3, 2014.

She presented a paper titled "Tracing Ottoman Reception of Gustave Le Bon’s ‘Foules’ in Ruh’ul-Akvam and Ruh'ul-Cema'at." Below is the link to the conference program and the abstract of her paper.

http://cas.uchicago.edu/workshops/mehat/conference/schedule

Abdullah Cevdet and Mehmed Fuad published their translations of Gustave Le Bon under the titles of Ruh’ul-Akvam and Ruh’ul-Cema’at respectively in the late years of the Ottoman Empire. The translators’ emphasis on the ruh (spirit) was not coincidental; as suggested by Le Bon l’ame des foules/peuple (the spirit of the crowd/people) constituted the fundamental vocabulary of the progress of civilizations, l’evolution des civilisations, or as translated by his Ottoman counterparts as tekamül-ü medeniyet. Le Bon presented the characteristics of foules and peuples, which in many ways resonated the Islamic tradition al-khassa wa’l-‘amma.  The vocabulary of foules and peuples in Le Bon’s conceptualization and in the Ottoman translations appear as complementary and necessary concepts related to the issues of progress and civilization.

In Ottoman historiography, reading and translating Gustave Le Bon is associated with ‘Abdullah Cevdet’s understanding of him. This study brings Mehmed Fuad into the picture, and contextualizes Abdullah Cevdet’s and Mehmed Fuad’s decisions to translate Gustave Le Bon within a close period of 1907-1909. This work aims to demonstrate that reading and translating a French intellectual is not only about trying to find the (Western) way of progressing, but also is the result of a complex process of choosing a particular intellectual to follow. Thus, Abdullah Cevdet and Mehmed Fuad found in Gustave Le Bon something similar to their prior readings and education. One needs to contextualize reading Le Bon not only as a sub-reading of Ottoman materialism among Young Turks, but as an intellectual challenge of confrontation of European values, and Islamic and Ottoman heritage.