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SESSİZLİĞİN BİN YÜZÜ: ILYA KAMINSKY’NIN SAĞIR CUMHURİYET ESERİNE METİNLERARASI BİR BAKIŞ

Year 2023, Volume: 63 Issue: 2, 1208 - 1234, 25.12.2023
https://doi.org/10.33171/dtcfjournal.2023.63.2.13

Abstract

Sessizliğin edebiyattaki gücü sözün sınırlarını aşan zenginleştirici özelliğinde yatar ve kimi zaman sözle ifade edilemeyeni anlatarak çok daha derin anlamlara kavuşulmasını sağlar. Bu bağlamda, Ilya Kaminsky Sağır Cumhuriyet isimli yarı otobiyografik eserinde sessizliği çok anlamlı bir anlatım aracı olarak kullanmıştır. Bunlardan ilki bilinçli olarak duymayı reddeden halkın mevcut otoriter rejime karşı sessizlik aracılığıyla direnişe geçmesidir. Bu alışılmadık direnişle birlikte sessizliğin anlam alanı genişler. Halk ve devlet arasındaki süre gelen güç ilişkilerindeki denge bozulur. Bununla bağlantılı olarak sessizlik şiirlerin tamamında birincil anlamından sıyrılarak diyalojinin önemli bir parçası haline gelir ve dilin önemli bir bileşenine dönüşür. Bir diğer katman kadınların, yüzyıllardır baskı aracı olarak kendilerine karşı kullanılmış olan sessizlik kavramını metamorfoza uğratarak bu defa ses yükseltmek için kullanmasıdır. Son olarak Kaminsky’nin çoğu şiirde çeşitli biçimlerle boşluklar yarattığı görülür ve sessizlik bir kez daha bu boşluklarda anlam yüklü olarak gözle görülür bir şekilde kendine yer edinir. Sonuç olarak görülmektedir ki belirli yönleriyle bir sivil itaatsizlik eylemi olarak adlandırılabilecek türden bir direnişle bilinçli olarak duymayı reddeden halk, tiranlığa karşı direnişe geçer ve bu sayede sessizlik anlatının merkezinde konumlanır. Bu da sessizlik olgusunun yukarıda bahsi geçen yönleriyle irdelenmesine olanak tanır. Bu bağlamda çalışmanın amacı Sağır Cumhuriyet eserindeki sessizlik olgusunu çok katmanlı bir anlam alanı olarak kuramsal boyutlarıyla analiz etmektir.

References

  • Adrienne, R. (1978). The Dream of a Common Language: Poems 1974-1977. New York, NY.: W. W. Norton.
  • Arendt, H. (1972). Crises of the Republic: Lying in Politics, Civil Disobedience, On Violence, Thoughts on Politics and Revolution. New York, NY.: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich.
  • Bakhtin, M. M. (1981). The Dialogic Imagination: Four Essays. Austin, TX.: University of Texas Press.
  • Bedau, H. A. (1991). Civil Disobedience in Focus. Hugo Adam Bedau (Ed.). Civil Disobedience and Personal Responsibility for Injustice (p. 49-67). London and New York: Routledge.
  • Beeman, W. O. (2006). Silence: The Currency of Power. M. L. Achino-Loeb (Ed.). Silence in Music (p. 23-34). New York and Oxford: Berghahn Books.
  • Davie, K. G. (2013). Silence and the Silenced: Interdisciplinary Perspectives. (Studies on Themes and Motifs in Literature; Vol 119). L. Boldt, C. Federici, E. Virgulti (Eds.). Rhetorical Uses of Silence and Spaces (p. 1-11). New York, NY.: Peter Lang Publishing.
  • Eagleton, T. (2008). Literary Theory: An Introduction. Minneapolis, MN.: University of Minnesota Press.
  • Elshtain, J. B. (1981). Public Man, Private Woman: Women in Social and Political Thought. Princeton, NJ.: Princeton University Press.
  • Foucault, M. (1972). The Archeology of Knowledge and The Discourse on Language. New York, NY.: Pantheon Books.
  • Foucault, M. (1980). Power/Knowledge: Selected Interviews and Other Writings 1972-1977. New York, NY.: Pantheon Books.
  • Glenn, C. (1997). Rhetoric Retold: Regendering the Tradition from Antiquity through the Renaissance. Carbondale, IL.: Southern Illinois University Press.
  • Glenn, C. (2002). Silence: A Rhetorical Art for Resisting Discipline(s). JAC, 22(2), 261-291. http://www.jstor.org/stable/20866487
  • Glenn, C. (2004). Unspoken: A Rhetoric of Silence. Carbondale, IL.: Southern Illinois University Press.
  • Habermas, J. (1985). Civil Disobedience: Litmus Test for the Democratic Constitutional State. Berkeley Journal of Sociology, 30, 95–116. http://www.jstor.org/stable/41035345
  • hooks, b. (2015). talking back: thinking feminist, thinking black. New York and London: Routledge. Jaworski, A. (1997). Silence: Interdisciplinary Perspectives. A. Jaworski (Ed.). Introduction: An Overview. (p. 3-14). Berlin and New York: Mouton de Gruyter.
  • Kalamaras, G. (1994). Reclaiming the Tacit Dimension: Symbolic Form in the Rhetoric of Silence. Albany, NY.: State University of New York Press.
  • Kaminsky, I. (2019). Deaf Republic. Minneapolis, MN.: Graywolf Press.
  • Lanham, R. A. (1968). A Handlist of Rhetorical Terms: A Guide for Students of English Literature. Berkeley, CA.: University of California Press.
  • Laurence, P. (1994). Listening to Silences: New Essays in Feminist Criticism. Elaine Hedge and Shelly Fisher Fishkin (Editors). Women’s Silence as a Ritual of Truth: A Study of Literary Expressions in Austen, Bronte, and Woolf (p. 156-167). New York, NY.: Oxford University Press.
  • Loevlie, E. (2003). Literary Silences in Pascal, Rousseau and Beckett. Oxford: Clarendon Press.
  • Mayar, M. and Schulte, M. (2022). Silence and Its Derivatives: Conversations Across Disciplines. Mahshid Mayar and Marion Shulte (Editors). Silences in History, Linguistics, and Literature: An Introduction (p. 1-18). Switzerland: Palgrave Macmillan.
  • Mazzei, L. A. (2007). CHAPTER 3: An Absent Presence: Theorizing Silence. Counterpoints, 318, 27-43. http://www.jstor.org/stable/42979788
  • Merleau-Ponty, M. (1964). Signs. Evanston, IL.: Northwestern University Press.
  • Parrott, J. M. (2012). Power and Discourse: Silence as Rhetorical Choice in Maxine Hong Kingston’s The Woman Warrior. Rhetorica: A Journal of the History of Rhetoric, 30(4), 375–391. https://doi.org/10.1525/rh.2012.30.4.375
  • Pérez, J. (1984). Functions of the Rhetoric of Silence in Contemporary Spanish Literature. South Central Review, 1(1/2), 108-130. https://doi.org/10.2307/3189244
  • Peters, P. (2013). Silence and the Silenced: Interdisciplinary Perspectives. (Studies on Themes and Motifs in Literature; Vol 119). L. Boldt, C. Federici, E. Virgulti (Editors). Power of the Void: Fascism and Silence in the Poetry of Bertolt Brecht and Paul Celan (p. 67-81). New York, NY.: Peter Lang Publishing.
  • Picard, M. (1988). The World of Silence. Washington, DC.: Regnery Gateway.
  • Ratcliffe, K. (1996). Anglo-American Feminist Challenges to the Rhetorical Traditions.Carbondale, IL.: Southern Illinois University Press.
  • Rawls, J. (1991). Civil Disobedience in Focus. Hugo Adam Bedau (Ed.). Definition and Justification of Civil Disobedience (p. 103-121). London and New York: Routledge.
  • Shakespeare, W. (2010). Hamlet. Camberwell, VIC.: Penguin.
  • Sontag, S. (1987). Styles of Radical Will. New York, NY.: Farrar, Straus and Giroux.
  • Tannen, D. and Troike, M. S. (1985). Perspectives on Silence. Norwood, NJ.: Ablex Publishing Corporation.

THOUSAND FACES OF SILENCE: AN INTERTEXTUAL READING OF ILYA KAMINSKY’S DEAF REPUBLIC

Year 2023, Volume: 63 Issue: 2, 1208 - 1234, 25.12.2023
https://doi.org/10.33171/dtcfjournal.2023.63.2.13

Abstract

The power of silence in literature lies in its transcending and enriching characteristic which renders it possible to grasp a deeper meaning by way of telling the things that cannot be told by words. In this respect, Ilya Kaminsky uses polysemous silence as a narrative technic in his partially autobiographic book, Deaf Republic. Silence is primarily used as an instrument of insurgency by the townspeople who reject to hear consciously and revolt against the authoritarian government. With this unusual resistance, the meaning of silence expands. The ongoing power relations between the public and the state gets destabilized. Relatedly, stripped of its primary meaning in all the poems, silence becomes an important part of the dialogue and turns out to be a significant component of the language. Another layer is that metamorphosing the concept of silence that has been used against them as a tool of oppression for centuries, women use it this time to raise their voices. Lastly, it is seen that in most of the poems, Kaminsky creates absences with various forms and once again silence takes its place in these absences, visibly loaded with meaning. Hereby, consciously refusing to hear with a kind of resistance that can be called an act of civil disobedience in certain aspects, the citizens resist against tyranny and thus silence gets positioned at the centre of the narrative, which allows the phenomenon of silence to be analysed with the aforementioned aspects. In this respect, the aim of this study is to analyse the phenomenon of silence in Deaf Republic as a multilayered field of meaning with its theoretical dimensions.

References

  • Adrienne, R. (1978). The Dream of a Common Language: Poems 1974-1977. New York, NY.: W. W. Norton.
  • Arendt, H. (1972). Crises of the Republic: Lying in Politics, Civil Disobedience, On Violence, Thoughts on Politics and Revolution. New York, NY.: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich.
  • Bakhtin, M. M. (1981). The Dialogic Imagination: Four Essays. Austin, TX.: University of Texas Press.
  • Bedau, H. A. (1991). Civil Disobedience in Focus. Hugo Adam Bedau (Ed.). Civil Disobedience and Personal Responsibility for Injustice (p. 49-67). London and New York: Routledge.
  • Beeman, W. O. (2006). Silence: The Currency of Power. M. L. Achino-Loeb (Ed.). Silence in Music (p. 23-34). New York and Oxford: Berghahn Books.
  • Davie, K. G. (2013). Silence and the Silenced: Interdisciplinary Perspectives. (Studies on Themes and Motifs in Literature; Vol 119). L. Boldt, C. Federici, E. Virgulti (Eds.). Rhetorical Uses of Silence and Spaces (p. 1-11). New York, NY.: Peter Lang Publishing.
  • Eagleton, T. (2008). Literary Theory: An Introduction. Minneapolis, MN.: University of Minnesota Press.
  • Elshtain, J. B. (1981). Public Man, Private Woman: Women in Social and Political Thought. Princeton, NJ.: Princeton University Press.
  • Foucault, M. (1972). The Archeology of Knowledge and The Discourse on Language. New York, NY.: Pantheon Books.
  • Foucault, M. (1980). Power/Knowledge: Selected Interviews and Other Writings 1972-1977. New York, NY.: Pantheon Books.
  • Glenn, C. (1997). Rhetoric Retold: Regendering the Tradition from Antiquity through the Renaissance. Carbondale, IL.: Southern Illinois University Press.
  • Glenn, C. (2002). Silence: A Rhetorical Art for Resisting Discipline(s). JAC, 22(2), 261-291. http://www.jstor.org/stable/20866487
  • Glenn, C. (2004). Unspoken: A Rhetoric of Silence. Carbondale, IL.: Southern Illinois University Press.
  • Habermas, J. (1985). Civil Disobedience: Litmus Test for the Democratic Constitutional State. Berkeley Journal of Sociology, 30, 95–116. http://www.jstor.org/stable/41035345
  • hooks, b. (2015). talking back: thinking feminist, thinking black. New York and London: Routledge. Jaworski, A. (1997). Silence: Interdisciplinary Perspectives. A. Jaworski (Ed.). Introduction: An Overview. (p. 3-14). Berlin and New York: Mouton de Gruyter.
  • Kalamaras, G. (1994). Reclaiming the Tacit Dimension: Symbolic Form in the Rhetoric of Silence. Albany, NY.: State University of New York Press.
  • Kaminsky, I. (2019). Deaf Republic. Minneapolis, MN.: Graywolf Press.
  • Lanham, R. A. (1968). A Handlist of Rhetorical Terms: A Guide for Students of English Literature. Berkeley, CA.: University of California Press.
  • Laurence, P. (1994). Listening to Silences: New Essays in Feminist Criticism. Elaine Hedge and Shelly Fisher Fishkin (Editors). Women’s Silence as a Ritual of Truth: A Study of Literary Expressions in Austen, Bronte, and Woolf (p. 156-167). New York, NY.: Oxford University Press.
  • Loevlie, E. (2003). Literary Silences in Pascal, Rousseau and Beckett. Oxford: Clarendon Press.
  • Mayar, M. and Schulte, M. (2022). Silence and Its Derivatives: Conversations Across Disciplines. Mahshid Mayar and Marion Shulte (Editors). Silences in History, Linguistics, and Literature: An Introduction (p. 1-18). Switzerland: Palgrave Macmillan.
  • Mazzei, L. A. (2007). CHAPTER 3: An Absent Presence: Theorizing Silence. Counterpoints, 318, 27-43. http://www.jstor.org/stable/42979788
  • Merleau-Ponty, M. (1964). Signs. Evanston, IL.: Northwestern University Press.
  • Parrott, J. M. (2012). Power and Discourse: Silence as Rhetorical Choice in Maxine Hong Kingston’s The Woman Warrior. Rhetorica: A Journal of the History of Rhetoric, 30(4), 375–391. https://doi.org/10.1525/rh.2012.30.4.375
  • Pérez, J. (1984). Functions of the Rhetoric of Silence in Contemporary Spanish Literature. South Central Review, 1(1/2), 108-130. https://doi.org/10.2307/3189244
  • Peters, P. (2013). Silence and the Silenced: Interdisciplinary Perspectives. (Studies on Themes and Motifs in Literature; Vol 119). L. Boldt, C. Federici, E. Virgulti (Editors). Power of the Void: Fascism and Silence in the Poetry of Bertolt Brecht and Paul Celan (p. 67-81). New York, NY.: Peter Lang Publishing.
  • Picard, M. (1988). The World of Silence. Washington, DC.: Regnery Gateway.
  • Ratcliffe, K. (1996). Anglo-American Feminist Challenges to the Rhetorical Traditions.Carbondale, IL.: Southern Illinois University Press.
  • Rawls, J. (1991). Civil Disobedience in Focus. Hugo Adam Bedau (Ed.). Definition and Justification of Civil Disobedience (p. 103-121). London and New York: Routledge.
  • Shakespeare, W. (2010). Hamlet. Camberwell, VIC.: Penguin.
  • Sontag, S. (1987). Styles of Radical Will. New York, NY.: Farrar, Straus and Giroux.
  • Tannen, D. and Troike, M. S. (1985). Perspectives on Silence. Norwood, NJ.: Ablex Publishing Corporation.
There are 32 citations in total.

Details

Primary Language English
Subjects Creative Arts and Writing
Journal Section Research Article
Authors

Ayşem Dur 0000-0003-3340-2826

Early Pub Date December 20, 2023
Publication Date December 25, 2023
Submission Date May 2, 2023
Published in Issue Year 2023 Volume: 63 Issue: 2

Cite

APA Dur, A. (2023). THOUSAND FACES OF SILENCE: AN INTERTEXTUAL READING OF ILYA KAMINSKY’S DEAF REPUBLIC. Ankara Üniversitesi Dil Ve Tarih-Coğrafya Fakültesi Dergisi, 63(2), 1208-1234. https://doi.org/10.33171/dtcfjournal.2023.63.2.13

Ankara University Journal of the Faculty of Languages and History-Geography

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