Silent resistance :|forms of beauty and ugliness in Sait Faik’s short stories

Abstract

This thesis examines the ways in which beauty and ugliness are discussed through the portrayal of the body in Sait Faik Abasıyanık's short stories. The first main section focuses on the way Abasıyanık’s short stories present the body descriptions. The second main part of the thesis deals with the approach to the bodies of the characters who are outside of the social contract. The last part examines the short stories describing the uncontrollable protrusions and discharges of the human bodies are handled in the stories. Relying on Michel Foucault’s conceptualization of power, the thesis argues that Sait Faik Abasıyanık has generated an image aesthetics outside the existing aesthetic perception in Turkey through the creation of complex characters. His short stories portray the characters ambiguously so that they do not materialize in the eye. Characters who are outside the social contract and depicted as examples of ugliness in the stories are presented with a sympathetic perspective. At the same time, his short stories draw attention to the disgusting aspects of the body in the face of pure human defense. This study ultimately argues that Sait Faik Abasıyanık put forward a practice of silent resistance to the established notion of power by generating a new perspection of aesthetics that undermines existing aesthetic uses in arts during the 1940s and 1950s in Turkish.