Commodification anxiety and the memory of Turkish revolutionary Deniz Gezmiş

Abstract

This article examines the impact of commodification on the memory-activism nexus in relation to the cultural afterlife of Deniz Gezmiş. It reframes discussions of the ‘commodification’ of the revolutionary in terms of ‘celebrification’ and examines why this process generates social unease in Turkey. It shows that this anxiety emerges from the perception that once memory is brought into the circuit of exchange-value, it risks losing its use-value in activism. Cultural memory is indeed becoming increasingly mediated by market relations. Yet, this article calls attention to activist remembrance which occurs within the interstices of capitalist property relations and is therefore not necessarily dependent on the market. As such, it supports a shift from the ‘passive consumer’ paradigm to the recognition of the political and narrative agency of remembering subjects, demonstrating that people often contest processes of commodification, especially in the context of anti-capitalist activism.