The Necropolitics of Linguistic Indoctrination in Agustina Bazterrica’s Tender Is the Flesh

Abstract

Necropolitical control is fundamentally sustained through political rhetoric and engineered through the gradual erosion and redefinition of quotidian terms. Dystopian fiction is especially rife with imagining worlds where language is weaponized to subvert common topoi: from Orwellian doublespeak to Atwood’s scriptural euphemisms and Burgess’s invented slang. A contemporary novel that intensifies the linguistic tradition is Agustina Bazterrica’s Tender Is the Flesh (2017), which depicts a society where cannibalism is a legally and socially accepted norm. In this novel, the state-sanctioned clinical vocabulary that reduces human beings to meat, heads, or products functions as a mechanism of systemic indoctrination that legitimizes the consumption of human flesh and universalizes the morally unacceptable. Through a discursive analysis of the text, this paper demonstrates how the establishment of this distinct linguistic mode enforces a necropolitical hierarchy. Drawing on Achille Mbembe’s “necropolitics” to illuminate the structural sovereign mechanisms of state-sanctioned death and Giorgio Agamben’s conceptualization of “bare life” to explain the ontological reduction of consumable subjects, this article argues that engineered language, in tandem with institutional means of control, structurally stratifies society between the consumers and the consumed, and renders systemic violence morally permissible.

Keywords

• Agustina Bazterrica
• necropolitics
• linguistic indoctrination
• bare life
• dystopia

Ethical Statement

The author of this article confirms that this research does not require a research ethics committee approval. The author of this article confirms that her work complies with the principles of research and publication ethics. Artificial Intelligence (AI) Use Declaration: The author declares that generative AI tools were used solely for language editing, proofreading, or formatting purposes. The author reviewed the AI-assisted output and takes full responsibility for the final content of the article.

Agustina Bazterrica’nın Leziz Kadavralar Romanında Dilsel Aşılamanın Nekropolitikası

Abstract

Nekropolitik kontrol, siyasi söylem, dilin aşındırılması ve kavramların yeniden tanımlanmasıyla sürdürülür. Distopik edebiyat, dilin silahlaştırıldığı dünyaları tasvir etmede zengindir. Agustina Bazterrica'nın Leziz Kadavralar (2017) romanı, yamyamlığın yasal ve sosyal bir norm olarak kabul edildiği bir toplum üzerinden bu geleneği derinleştirir. Metindeki devlet onaylı klinik dil, insanları ‘et,’ ‘kafa’ veya ‘ürün’ seviyesine indirgeyerek insan eti tüketimini meşrulaştıran sistemik bir beyin yıkama mekanizması işlevi görür. Bu makale, söylemsel metin çözümlemesiyle söz konusu dilsel yapının nekropolitik hiyerarşiyi nasıl kurduğunu incelemektedir. Achille Mbembe’nin “nekropolitika” ve Giorgio Agamben’in “yalın hayat” kavramlarından yararlanan çalışma, devlet söyleminin toplumu tüketenler ve tüketilenler olarak katmanlaştırdığını ve sistemik şiddeti söylemsel mühendislikle ahlaken kabul edilebilir kıldığını savunmaktadır.

Keywords

• Agustina Bazterrica
• nekropolitika
• dilsel aşılama
• yalın hayat
• distopya

Ethical Statement

Bu makalenin yazarı, söz konusu araştırmanın bir etik kurul onayı gerektirmediğini beyan eder. Yazar, çalışmasının araştırma ve yayın etiği ilkelerine uygun olduğunu onaylar. Yapay Zeka (YZ) Kullanım Beyanı: Yazar, üretken YZ araçlarının yalnızca dil düzenleme, son okuma veya biçimlendirme amacıyla kullanıldığını beyan eder. Yazar, YZ destekli çıktıları gözden geçirmiş olup makalenin nihai içeriğine ilişkin tüm sorumluluğu üstlenmektedir.

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