Political debt and development discourse: translating incommensurable worlds in Diyarbakır

Abstract

This thesis attempts to map out the fundamental political actors and their languages that allow them to occupy the same political space in Diyarbakır. Through an analysis on the events of March 2006 and formation of Kurdish middle-class subjectivities, it aims to examine the effects of the state violence and operation of development discourse in Diyarbakır. In the context of new forms of governmentality with their own mentalities, visibilities and strategies, it seeks the methods through which the state violence and development discourse intermingle and work together. By focusing on the conversations, contestations and translations between distinct actors, such as insurgents, Kurdish middle classes and “the state” in Diyarbakır, it searches for the languages and lexicon that makes the same political space inhabitable for these incommensurable worlds. It looks at the ways these different actors render the political debts commensurate in their own perception of the world. By considering the acts of translation as world-making practices, it argues that in each attempt for the translation there remain differences that resist the complete incorporation of incommensurable life-worlds into other languages. It is these differences that give way for alternative worldings and political subjectivities.