The Feminist-Futurist Fragmented Narrator in Mina Loy's 'Parturition'

Year 2022, Volume: 39 Issue: 1, 161 - 183, 30.06.2022

Tuğba Karabulut

https://doi.org/10.32600/huefd.833823

Cited By: 1

Abstract

The British avant-garde poet, artist and feminist Mina Loy is an innovative female figure of the early twentieth century. Loy’s poetry is noted for unusual typography, multiple and shifting narrative voices and themes such as motherhood, gender, investigations of female mind and body and sexuality. Her artworks maintain an eclectic attitude synthesizing the ideas of the canonical art movements of the era—Futurism, Surrealism and Cubism. Loy’s “Parturition” (1914) gets the critical attention of the avant-garde community with its idiosyncratic subject, style and graphic description. The poem problematizes the complex relationships between Futurism and Feminism, and argues the act of parturition occurs in three embodiments of labour: physical childbirth, artistic creation and poetic production. So far, the literal interpretations of “Parturition” have generally focused on its physical aspect, treating labour as a parturient woman’s giving birth; however, this semiotic and intertextual investigation brings out the complexity of the text’s conceptions. This article, in terms of various concepts of “feminine writing” and evolution theories and with intertextual references to Loy’s “Aphorisms on Futurism,” aims to explore the poem’s “fragmented narrative” structure and to argue that its Feminist persona multiplies into three different identities—a feminist-futurist mother who resists the social domestication and classification of women, an avant-garde artist who subverts the retrospective aesthetic forms and re-forms the new ones, and a creative poet who overthrows conventional language forms and reconstructs a new form—Futurist language. These identities undergo various bodily and mental transformations eventually merging to construct new forms and achieve physical and psychological self-realization. Loy’s iconography, Ansikten [ca. 1910s], which, through the visual, semiotic and intertextual analogy I have created, seems to represent the mental and physical space of the maternal-artistic-textual narrator.

Keywords

Mina Loy, Parturition, Mina Loy, feminism, futurism, Parturition, fragmented narrator, female mind and body, identity reformation

Mina Loy’un 'Doğum' Şiirinde Feminist-Fütürist Bölünmüş Anlatıcı

Abstract

Avangard şair, sanatçı ve feminist kimliği ile Mina Loy, yirminici yüzyılın başında yenilikçi bir kadın figürü olarak karşımıza çıkar. Loy’un şiirleri alışılmadık yazım biçimi, çoklu ve değişken anlatıcıları ve annelik, toplumsal cinsiyet, zihinsel ve bedensel kadın temsilleri ve cinsellik gibi temalarıyla dikkat çeker. Görsel yapıtları ise, Fütürizm, Sürrealizm ve Kübizm gibi dönemin başlıca sanat akımlarını eklektik bir yaklaşımla sentezler. 1914 yılında yazdığı “Doğum” şiiri, kendine özgü konusu, biçemi ve çizgesel anlatımı ile, avangard çevrelerde büyük ilgi çeker. Şiir, Fütürizm ve Feminizm arasındaki karmaşık ilişkileri sorunsallaştırır ve doğum eylemini fiziksel doğum, şiirsel yapıt ve sanatsal yaratı olarak üç şekilde tartışır. “Doğum” şiiri ile ilgili şimdiye kadar yapılan edebî yorumlar, genellikle hamile bir kadının fiziksel bağlamda doğum yapmasına odaklanmıştır ancak göstergebilimsel ve metinlararası yaklaşımlarla yapılmış bu analiz, şiirin karmaşık izleklerini ortaya çıkarmıştır. Bu makale, “kadın yazını,” ve evrim kuramlarını dolaylı bir çerçevede ele alarak ve Loy’un “Fütürizm üzerine Aforizmalar” şiirine metinlerarası göndermeler yaparak, şiirdeki “bölünmüş anlatıcı” yapısını, feminist anlatıcının üçe bölünmüş farklı kimliklerini tartışarak incelemeyi amaçlar. Bu kimlikler, sosyal olarak kadını eve hapseden düşünce ve kadının sınıflandırılmasına karşı gelen feminist-fütürist bir anne, geçmişe ait sanat formlarını altüst eden ve yeni türleri oluşturan bir sanatçı ve alışılagelmiş dilsel formları yıkan ve Fütürist dil olarak yeni bir form geliştiren yaratıcı bir şair olarak karşımıza çıkar. Bu kimlikler çeşitli bedensel ve zihinsel değişimlere uğrar ve yeni türler oluşturmak için sonunda bir araya gelerek zihinsel ve bedensel farkındalığa ulaşırlar. Loy’un Ansikten [ca. 1910s] adlı sanat eseri, görsel, göstergebilimsel ve metinlerarası bağlamlarda ortaya çıkardığım paralellik neticesinde, anne-sanatçı-şair kimliklerine bölünmüş anlatıcının zihinsel ve bedensel mekanını temsil yoluyla betimlemektedir.

Keywords

Mina Loy, feminizm, fütürizm, Doğum, bölünmüş anlatıcı, kadın zihni ve bedeni, yeni kimlik inşası

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