Sinological Origins of Turcology in 18th-century Europe

• Main Author: Despina Magkanari
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Published: Association pour la Recherche sur le Moyen-Orient 2017-11-01
• Series: European Journal of Turkish Studies
• Subjects: History of Knowledge; Orientalism; Turcology; Transnational History; Cultural History; Early Modern Era
• Online Access: http://journals.openedition.org/ejts/5441

The present article undertakes an interrogation of the genealogy of the Turkish cultural area. Challenging some readings influenced by subsequent institutional and disciplinary boundaries, I propose to focus on the period preceding the first institutionalizations in order to capture the process of intellectual autonomization of the field of Turcology and to point out the role that early-European sinologists played in the identification and delimitation of a Central Asian Turkish world. This account is intended to contribute to recent attempts to historicize the study of Orientalist knowledge production, informed by a socio-cultural approach to knowledge, allowing us to grasp the dynamics relating to the connections and circulations in the global context of the early modern era. The question is one of an open and complex process – marked by constraints and possibilities – that can only be understood by means of close and subtle contextualized analysis.