Arendt’s Rahel Varnhagen: Challenging The Public - Private Dichotomy

Year 2022, Volume: 25(1) Issue: 49, 102 - 122, 08.03.2022

Senem Yıldırım

https://doi.org/10.18691/kulturveiletisim.984424

Abstract

Rahel Varnhagen, among the earliest works of Hannah Arendt, is often treated as an isolated piece in relation to her later political writings. However, this factual biography challenges one of the most inalienable elements in Arendt’s political theory: the public- private dichotomy. I argue that Rahel can be read as an exploration of the public or the private, that Varnhagen herself can be classified as either a parvenu or a pariah. A closer reading reveals that Rahel, as text and as individual, blurs this binary distinction. This blurring, in one exceptional text, helps to undermine the strict conceptual binary between public and private that is assumed to run through all of Arendt’s work. In Rahel, the political is not observed within the confines of a strict separation between the public and the private, but in an intermediate space: the social sphere of the eighteenth century salon. Identifying a conception of the social within Arendt’s political theory that is not detrimental to political actors and their actions would provide us a new reading of the social that is affirmative rather than negative. Such a reading would pave the way for a more inclusive reading of the social in Arendt, through which several “social” issues that are excluded from the political sphere may be recognized and re-conceptualized as political.

Keywords

Rahel Varnhagen, Arendt, the public, the private, the social.

Thanks

I would like to thank Norma C. Moruzzi and Banu Helvacıoğlu for their invaluable comments and suggestions.

Arendt'in Rahel Varnhagen'ı: Kamusal-Özel Dikotomisine Bir Meydan Okuyuş

Abstract

Hannah Arendt’in ilk dönem eserlerinden biri olan Rahel Varnhagen, Arendt üzerine yapılan çalışmalarda genellikle Arendt’in geç dönem siyasi yazılarından farklı ve ayrıksı bir yere sahip olarak değerlendirilir. Fakat bu biyografik eser aynı zamanda Arendt’in çalışmalarının vazgeçilmez unsurlarından biri olarak gözüken kamusal-özel dikotomisine meydan okumaktadır. Bu makale, biyografide, yer yer parvenu (irtifaperver) yer yer ise parya olarak sınıflandırılan Rahel’in bu deneyiminin, Arendt’in siyaset kuramındaki kamusal veya özel kavramları için yeni bir okuma olanağı yarattığını iddia etmektedir. Bunun da ötesinde, Rahel hem metin olarak hem de birey olarak bahsi geçen ikiliği muğlak hale getirmektedir. Bu ayrıksı çalışmanın ortaya koyduğu muğlaklık, Arendt’in diğer çalışmalarında baskın olduğu iddia edilen kamusal-özel dikotomisini sorgulamamızı sağlamaktadır. Rahel’de siyasi olan, kamusal ve özel olanın keskin bir biçimde ayrıldığı bir bağlamda değil; toplumsal olan olarak adlandırılan ve Arendt’in kuramında kamusal ve özelin arasında kalmış bir alan olarak kavramsallaştırılan on sekizinci yüzyıl salon kültüründe ortaya çıkmaktadır. Arendt’in siyaset kuramında siyasi aktör ve onların eylemlerine zarar vermeyen bir toplumsal olana işaret etmek, bizi negatiften ziyade, olumlanan bir toplumsal kavramı ile baş başa bırakmaktadır. Böyle bir okuma, Arendt’in çalışmalarında toplumsal alana tekabül ettiği için siyasi alanın dışında kalan kavram ve olguların yine Arendt’in çizdiği kuramsal çerçeve içerisinde yeniden değerlendirilmesine yol açacaktır.

Keywords

Rahel Varnhagen, Arendt, kamusal (olan), özel (olan), toplumsal (olan)

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