Dellaloğlu: “We ignore whether society is a modern construction or a historical one.”

Samsun University Centre of Art and Thought hosted academician and writer Besim Dellaloğlu, moderated by Kaan Kurt within the scope of “Öteki Buluşmalar 2021”. With his speech titled “Poetic Foundations of Society”on an online program, Dellaloğlu explained his thoughts on the subject.

“The modern nation-state is built on the cultural public sphere.”

Besim Dellaloğlu, who started his speech by referring to the general framework of his speech, said ” The modern nation state, political republic or modern republic is actually built on an infrastructure that we can call a poetic republic or a cultural public sphere. Therefore, this idea contradicts the thesis that the main thing is more political, economic and socio-economic development. There is the opposite proposition. In fact, the industrial revolution and the modern nation-state after it are actually built on this cultural public sphere. Therefore, in this speech and in this session, I will try to expand this a little more through the concept of society. My field is actually sociology. My formation is political science and sociology. Apart from the last few years of my academic career, I also studied sociology. I will give an introduction to the concept of society in sociology. Then I’ll try to combine it with the reasoning I said at the beginning.”

“In order to talk about society, we need to talk about a broad publicity.”

Continuing his words by mentioning that society is ignored as modern or historical, Dellaloğlu said ” We ignore a little that society is also a modern construction or historical. This is a very common anachronism in the world of thought and academia in Turkey.  This situation is also a manifestation of a general attitude that I can no longer tolerate and have criticized a lot in recent years. We can arbitrarily extend everything, that is, the present, into the past as we wish. To put it most simply, were Adam and Eve members of a society? So is society a universal thing? Is it always and everywhere valid, or is it something more historical? That’s the question. Simply put, wherever man is is society, and man is a political animal. I can say that Aristotle, or in his current language, is a ‘sociological animal’. It is a social animal. Then we make a very simple subtraction such as ‘wherever there are people there is society’. Of course, this is a false proposition. Because sociology is also a modern discipline. Society is also a modern concept. Therefore, concepts that emerged in the 18th and 19th centuries are largely associated with the process we call the nation state, the process we call modernity, or the process we call civilization. Society also emerges to a large extent here. In order to talk about society, we need to talk about a broad publicity. Society and the idea of a republic should be considered together.”

The talk titled “Poetic Foundations of Society” ended with active participation, questions and contributions from the audience.