An Archive of Silences

Abstract This article bridges the gap between postcolonial studies and Ottoman literatures by revisiting the Ottoman Turkish novel as an archive that indexes the silencing of domestically enslaved women. Centering its discussion on Ahmet Mithat Efendi’s novel, Felâtun Bey ile Râkım Efendi , I argue that Ottoman Turkish novels from the late nineteenth century register and contribute to a historical-political unvoicing of women who are detained in the slave economy of the empire. Enslaved women in numerous fictional works from the period are censored in that they are compelled to rehearse a language that shies away from confronting the institutionality of slavery and slave trade. I propose that this representational muting parallels, and thereby calls into question the ongoing marginalization of the Ottoman context of enslavement in postcolonial literary-historical interrogations.