Lilo Linke : a 'Spirit of insubordination' : autobiography as emancipatory pedagogy : a Turkish case study

• Main Author: Ogurla, Anita Judith
• Published: Birkbeck (University of London) 2016
• Subjects: 838
• Online Access: http://ethos.bl.uk/OrderDetails.do?uin=uk.bl.ethos.681090

This thesis examines the life and work of a little-known interwar period German writer Lilo Linke. Documenting individual and social evolution across three continents, her self-reflexive and autobiographical narratives are like conversations with readers in the hope of facilitating progressive change. With little tertiary education, as a self-fashioned practitioner prior to the emergence of cultural studies, Linke’s everyday experiences constitute ‘experiential learning’ (John Dewey). Rejecting her Nazi-leaning family, through ‘fortunate encounter[s]’ (Goethe) she became critical of Weimar and cultivated hope by imagining and working to become a better person, what Ernst Bloch called Vor-Schein. Linke’s ‘instinct of workmanship’, ‘parental bent’ and ‘idle curiosity’ was grounded in her inherent ‘spirit of insubordination’, terms borrowed from Thorstein Veblen. Experiences and writing these experiences up resembles Paulo Freire’s pedagogy ‘word=work=praxis’. Devoid of scientific or colonial gaze, she learned a new way of seeing, what Goethe called ‘tender empiricism’. I argue Linke’s praxis is an emancipatory pedagogy that worked toward betterment of the self and ‘common man’ (Veblen). This interdisciplinary research revisits a question Veblen broadly investigated regarding individual and social evolution at the turn of the twentieth century. My primary question asks; how did Lilo Linke evolve from a ‘self-regarding’ individual to ‘other-regarding’ person to work for the betterment of the whole? The thesis comprises two parts. Part I interprets Linke’s evolution evoking the Bildungsroman (Goethe). Using Veblen’s cumulative causation methodology, I explore German ‘native-bias’ by juxtaposing it to Linke’s ‘spirit of insubordination.’ Part II selects Linke’s authorship (1937) on the modern Turkish Republic in its Étatist era and addresses my secondary question; how did Linke’s praxis reflect in her narratives on Turkey? I suggest there are strong parallels between Linke’s ‘experiential learning’ and ‘spirit of insubordination’ within Turkey, in that, they both worked for betterment of the whole under exceedingly trying circumstances.