Türk ve Japon Modernleşmesi: 'Uygarlık Süreci' - Birikim

50■Body as an unfinished projectThe distinction made between ‘White’ and ‘Black’ Turks is discussed with respectto the concept of ‘civilised bodies’, a concept developed from Norbert Elias’The Civilising Process. The particular construction of civilised bodies, it is argued,has to do with the nature of the Kemalist project of Westernisation, whichto quote Sayyid had to Orientalise in order to Westernise. That is, the ‘Other’ inopposition to whom identity is constructed had to be created from within,which led to what Bauman calls the ‘internalization of ambivalence’.The way the ‘uncivilized body’ is represented, it is argued, is reminiscient ofBakhtin’s ‘animalistic’, ‘grotesque’ body which is opposed to severance from thematerial and bodily roots of the world and does not renounce the earthly. Bakhtin’sdialogical principle is discussed with respect to dialogical body politics.