Underground Topography of the Political Unconscious in Richard Wright and Ralph Ellison

Year 2023, Volume: 17 Issue: 2, 167 - 182, 29.12.2023

Burcu Alkan

https://doi.org/10.47777/cankujhss.1323808

Abstract

Coming from different socio-economic backgrounds but sharing the experience of being black intellectuals in the US before the Civil Rights movement, Richard Wright and Ralph Ellison met in New York in 1937. Although they eventually grew distant, their friendship generated some of the most important political writings of African-American literature. They were interested in the ideas of Sigmund Freud and Karl Marx for possible solutions to the “Negro question.” They argued for a Freudo-Marxist synthesis as a remedy for the broken black psyche under white supremacist pressure. With its dimension on American racism, the synthesis they proposed offers a distinct and important contribution to the dominantly European canon of the theory. This article investigates the political psychoanalysis of Wright and Ellison as represented in their ideationally interlinked novels, Ellison’s Invisible Man (1952) and Wright’s The Man Who Lived Underground (2021). It analyses how their novelistic writing emerges as a dynamic space to elaborate upon a political psychoanalysis through their own race-based version of a theoretical synthesis. Moreover, the study also offers a new approach to new material, as Richard Wright's The Man Who Lived Underground remained unpublished until it was recently rediscovered and printed for the first time in 2021.

Keywords

Political psychoanalysis, Freudo-Marxism, Richard Wright, Ralph Ellison, The Man Who Lived Underground, Invisible Man

Richard Wright ve Ralph Ellison’da Politik Bilinçdışının Yeraltı Topografyası

Abstract

Farklı sosyoekonomik kökenlerden gelen, fakat Sivil Haklar hareketi öncesi ABD’de siyah entelektüel olma deneyimini paylaşan Richard Wright ve Ralph Ellison 1937’de New York’ta tanıştı. Zamanla araları açılmış olsa da dostlukları Afro-Amerikan edebiyatın bazı çok önemli metinlerine ön ayak oldu. İki yazar da “Zenci meselesi”ne olası çözümler için Sigmund Freud ve Karl Marx’ın fikirleriyle ilgileniyorlardı. Freudo-Marksist bir sentezin beyaz üstünlükçü baskı altında hasar gören siyah ruhuna çare olma potansiyelini savunuyorlardı. Yazarların önerdikleri Freudo-Marksist sentez Amerikan ırkçılığına dair boyutuyla teorinin baskın Avrupa kanonuna da farklı bir katkı sunmaktadır. Bu makale düşünsel anlamda birbiriyle ilişkili olan Ralph Ellison’ın Invisible Man (Görünmez Adam, 1952) ve Richard Wright’ın The Man Who Lived Underground (Yeraltında Yaşayan Adam, 2021) romanlarındaki politik psikanaliz temsillerini incelemektedir. Yazarların bahsi geçen romanlar üzerinden nasıl kendilerine özgü ırk temelli bir teorik sentez sunduklarını tartışmaktadır. Ayrıca, Richard Wright’ın The Man Who Lived Underground romanı daha önceden basılmadığı ve yakın zamanda yeniden keşfedilerek ilk defa 2021’de yayımlandığı için çalışma yeni malzemelerle yeni bir yaklaşım da sunmaktadır.

Keywords

Politik psikanaliz, Freudo-Marksizm, Richard Wright, Ralph Ellison, The Man Who Lived Underground, Invisible Man

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