Creative Diplomacy in Constantinople: Virginia Woolf and Kang Youwei

Abstract

Abstract This article discusses two figures who visited Constantinople/Istanbul in roughly the same period, English writer Virginia Woolf (1906) and Qing China reformer Kang Youwei (1908). While Woolf and Kang arrived in Istanbul from different contexts, they were each deeply interested in Istanbul as the capital of an empire that called their own into provocative comparison. Both produced texts that were the result of critical reflections upon their encounters there, and each would also go on to advocate for profound societal reforms, with shared emphases on social equality, pacifism, and cosmopolitan critiques of the state. By reading Kang’s and Woolf’s Istanbul-inspired and other related texts alongside one another, this article presents these literary texts as forms of creative diplomacy that engage with historical, aesthetic, and ethical dimensions of difference, and that highlight the possibilities of imaginative interventions into official diplomatic practices and narratives.