An Ecocritical Exploration of Bakhtin's Major Concepts in Solar Storms

Year 2024, Issue: 20, 81 - 102, 10.03.2024

Ayşe Şensoy Meryem Ayan

https://doi.org/10.46250/kulturder.1395061

Abstract

Mikhail Bakhtin is a Russian scholar who has been studied internationally in fields of literature and the humanities. Basing his theory on the principle of communication, Bakhtin formed a significant path in literary and cultural studies. Some scholars like Michael Gardiner (1993), Michael M. Bell (1994), Michael J. McDowell (1996), Timo Müller (2010) and Patrick D. Murphy (2013) propose that Bakhtin’s concepts can be appropriated to ecocriticism to make more powerful analyses of literary texts since both Bakhtinian literary criticism and ecocriticism highlight diversity, heterogeneity, agency, and interaction. In this way, Bakhtinian ecocritical theory suggests a new definition of the human subject in its relation to the physical environment and nonhuman beings. Revealing the viability of Bakhtinian critical theory with ecological concerns, this article aims to study the novel Solar Storms by Linda Hogan, a Native American female writer, through an “eco-Bakhtinian” approach to explore how nature is represented in Native American context, how the relationship between human and nonhuman worlds is depicted, how both worlds function in one another, how and why the perception of nature differs in cultural aspects, and how the concept of nature has changed over time. In doing so, this article attempts to show the interaction between culture-nature, human-nonhuman, earth-body, body-mind, traditional-modern, native-non-native, fact-fiction, story-history, self-other, individual-society, and text-reader.

Keywords

Linda Hogan, Solar Storms, native American, Mikhail Bakhtin, ecocriticism

Güneş Fırtınaları Romanında Bahtin’in Temel Kavramlarının Ekoeleştirel Bir İncelemesi

Abstract

Mihail Bahtin, edebiyat ve beşerî bilimler alanlarında uluslararası ölçekte çalışılan bir Rus düşünür ve kuramcıdır. Kuramını iletişim ilkesine dayandıran Bahtin, edebiyat ve kültür çalışmalarında önemli bir yol çizmiştir. Bahtin’in fikirleri son yıllarda edebiyat ve kültür kuramlarının en verimli eleştirel temaları arasında yer almıştır. Michael Gardiner (1993), Michael M. Bell (1994), Michael J. McDowell (1996), Timo Müller (2010) ve Patrick D. Murphy (2013) gibi yazar ve akademisyenler, hem Bahtinci hem de ekoeleştirel kuramların çeşitliliği, heterojenliği, eyleyiciliği ve etkileşimi vurgulamasından dolayı Bahtin'in kavramlarının edebî metinlerin daha güçlü çözümlemelerini yapmak için ekoeleştiriye uygulanabileceğini öne sürmüşlerdir. Böylece Bahtinci ekoeleştiri, fiziksel çevre ve insan olmayan canlılar ile ilişkisinde insan öznesinin yeni bir tanımını ortaya koymaktadır. Bahtin’in eleştirel kuramının ekolojik konulara uygulanabilirliğini gösteren bu makale, yerli Amerikan bağlamında doğanın nasıl tasvir edildiğini, insan ve insan olmayan dünyalar arasındaki ilişkinin nasıl betimlendiğini, her iki dünyanın birbiri içinde nasıl işlediğini, doğa algısının kültürel açıdan nasıl ve neden farklılaştığını, ve doğa kavramının zaman içinde nasıl değiştiğini ortaya çıkarmak için yerli Amerikan kadın yazar Linda Hogan’ın Güneş Fırtınaları romanını “eko-Bahtinci” bir yaklaşımla incelemeyi amaçlamaktadır. Bunu yaparken bu makale, kültür/ doğa, insan/ insan olmayan, yeryüzü-beden, beden-zihin, geleneksel-modern, yerli-yerli olmayan, gerçek-kurgu, hikâye-tarih, birey-toplum, benlik-öteki ve metin-okur arasındaki etkileşimi göstermeye çalışmaktadır.

Keywords

Linda Hogan, Güneş Fırtınaları, yerli Amerikan, Mihail Bahtin, ekoeleştiri

References

• Allen, Paula G. (1986). The Sacred Hoop: Recovering the Feminine in American Indian Traditions. Boston: Beacon Press.
• Bakhtin, Mikhail M. (1981). The Dialogic Imagination: Four Essays by M. M. Bakhtin. Trans. Caryl Emerson and Michael Holquist. Ed. Michael Holquist. Austin: University of Texas Press.
• Bakhtin, Mikhail M. (1984a). Problems of Dostoevsky’s Poetics. Trans. and ed. Caryl Emerson. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.
• Bakhtin, Mikhail M. (1984b). Rabelais and His World. Trans. Helene Iswolsky. Bloomington: Indiana University Press.
• Bakhtin, Mikhail M. (1986). “Toward a Methodology for the Human Sciences”. Trans. Vern W. McGee. Speech Genres and Other Late Essays. Eds. Caryl Emerson and Michael Holquist. Austin: University of Texas Press, 159-172.
• Bell, Michael M. (1994). “Deep Fecology: Mikhail Bakhtin and the Call of Nature”. Capitalism Nature Socialism, 5(4): 65-84.
• Bevis, William (1993). “Native American Novels: Homing In”. Critical Perspectives on Native American Fiction. Ed. Richard F. Fleck. Washington: Three Continents, 15-45.
• Bodian, Stephan (1995). “Simple in Means, Rich in Ends: An Interview with Arne Naess”. Deep Ecology for the Twenty-First Century. Ed. George Sessions. Boston: Shambala, 26-36.
• Brown, Robert L. and Herndl, Carl G. (1996). “Beyond the Realm of Reason: Understanding the Extreme Environmental Rhetoric of the John Birch Society”. Green Culture: Environmental Rhetoric in Contemporary America. Eds. Carl G. Herndl and Stuart C. Brown. Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 213-235.
• Buell, Lawrence (2005). The Future of Environmental Criticism: Environmental Crisis and Literary Imagination. Oxford: Blackwell Publishing.
• Busse, Beatrix (2006). “(Historical) Ecolinguistics and Literary Analysis”. Nature in Literary and Cultural Studies: Transatlantic Conversations on Ecocriticism. Eds. Catrin Gersdorf and Sylvia Mayer. Amsterdam: Rodopi B.V., 131-154.
• Cook, Barbara J. (2003). “Introduction”. From the Center of Tradition: Critical Perspectives on Linda Hogan. Ed. Barbara J. Cook. Colorado: University Press of Colorado, 1-10.
• Dreese, Donelle N. (1999). “The Terrestrial and Aquatic Intelligence of Linda Hogan”. SAIL: Studies in American Indian Literatures, 11(4): 6-22.
• Fox, Warwick (1986). Approaching Deep Ecology: A Response to Richard Sylvan’s Critique of Deep Ecology. Hobart: University of Tasmania Center for Environmental Studies.
• Gardiner, Michael (1993). “Ecology and Carnival: Traces of a ‘Green’ Social Theory in the Writings of M. M. Bakhtin”. Theory and Society, 22(6): 765-812.
• Harré, Rom et al. (1999). Greenspeak: A Study of Environmental Discourse. London: Sage.
• Harrison, Summer (2011). “Sea Level: An Interview with Linda Hogan”. ISLE: Interdisciplinary Studies in Literature and Environment, 18(1): 161-177.
• Hayles, N. Katherine (1995). “Simulated Nature and Natural Simulations: Rethinking the Relation between the Beholder and the World”. Uncommon Ground: Toward Reinventing Nature. Ed. William Cronon. New York: W. W. Norton, 409-545.
• Hogan, Linda (1994). “An Interview with Linda Hogan”. The Missouri Review, 17(2): 109-134.
• Hogan, Linda (1995). Dwellings: A Spiritual History of the Living World. New York: W. W. Norton.
• Hogan, Linda (1997). Solar Storms. New York: Scribner.
• Hogan, Linda (1998). “First People”. Intimate Nature: The Bond Between Women and Animals. Eds. Linda Hogan, Deena Metzger and Brenda Peterson. New York: The Ballantine Publishing Group, 6-19.
• Holquist, Michael (2002). Dialogism: Bakhtin and His World. New York: Routledge.
• Johnson, Brad (1998). “Western Voices Interview with Linda Hogan”. Center of the American West. Retrieved from www.centerwest.org/voices/Hogan-interview.htm.
• Jung, Hwa Y. (1998). “Bakhtin’s Dialogical Body Politics”. Bakhtin and the Human Sciences: No Last Words. Eds. Michael M. Bell and Michael Gardiner. London: Sage, 95-111.
• Krech III, Sheppard (1999). The Ecological Indian: Myth and History. New York: W. W. Norton.
• McDowell, Michael J. (1996). “The Bakhtinian Road to Ecological Insight”. The Ecocriticism Reader: Landmarks in Literary Ecology. Eds. Cheryll Glotfelty and Harold Fromm. Athens: The University of Georgia Press, 371-391.
• Merleau-Ponty, Maurice (1962). Phenomenology of Perception. Trans. Colin Smith. London: Routledge & Kegan Paul.
• Müller, Timo (2010). “Notes toward an Ecological Conception of Bakhtin’s ‘Chronotope’”. Ecozona, 1(1): 98-102.
• Murphy, Patrick D. (2013). Transversal Ecocritical Praxis: Theoretical Arguments, Literary Analysis, and Cultural Critique. Lanham: Lexington Books.
• Naess, Arne (1989). Ecology, Community and Lifestyle: Outline of an Ecosophy. Trans. David Rothenberg. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
• Schrag, Calvin O. (1997). The Self After Postmodernity. New Haven: Yale University Press.