Okumanın Devinimi: Robertson’un Nilling’inden Derrida’nın Sovereignties’ine

Year 2017, Volume: 16 Issue: 3, 774 - 784, 31.07.2017

Meliz Ergin

https://doi.org/10.21547/jss.322221

Abstract

Bu makalenin amacı, okuma eyleminin ortaya koyduğu devinimi
irdelemek ve bununla ilişkili olarak okuma eylemini hem okuyucunun kimliğini
hem de metnin anlamını dönüştüren bir tecrübe olarak tanımlamaktır. Öncelikle
Kanada’lı şair-denemeci Lisa Robertson’ın Nilling: prose (2012) başlıklı
eserinden yola çıkarak okuma esnasında “nereye” gittiğimizi ve okuyucunun
kimliğine ne olduğunu tartışacağım. Daha sonra Derrida’nin eserlerine
yoğunlaşarak okumanın deviniminin metin-okuyucu arasındaki ilişkiyi nasıl
etkilediğini analiz edeceğim. Robertson ve Derrida okuma eyleminin okuyucu ve
metin arasında bir anlaşma/diyalog başlattığını öne sürerler. Ayrıca düşünme ve
varolmanın diyalojik yönünü vurgulayan bu anlaşmayı analiz ederek bir okuma
etiği ortaya koyarlar. Metin-okuyucu, öz-başkalık arasındaki bu anlaşmanın iki
tarafı da askıda tutan ve anlamın kapanmasını erteleyen, karşılıklı bağlayıcı
bir diyalog olduğunu göstereceğim. Buna ek olarak, Robertson ve Derrida’nın
okuma eylemini, onu pratik ederek tanımladığını ileri süreceğim. Robertson
Hannah Arendt ve Pauline Réage’yi okuyarak, Derrida Paul Celan’ı okuyarak çok
referanslı bir okur topluluğunun parçası olurlar, ve bu sayede okumanın nasıl
tanımlanabileceğini birer okuyucu olarak gösterirler. Metinsel karşılaşmalarda
çoğul ve okunaksız öznelliklerin varlığına dikkat çekerek, okuyucu kimliğinin
ve metinsel anlamın yaratıcı potansiyelinin bu okunaksızlıktan ileri geldiğini
savunurlar. Bu makale, okuma teorilerine şiirsel-felsefi bir yaklaşım
sergileyerek, yazarlık/okurluk ve metinsel analiz çalışmalarına katkı
yapmaktadır.

Keywords

Okuma, şiir, okur kimliği, Robertson, Derrida

Reading’s Motions: From Robertson’s Nilling to Derrida’s Sovereignties

Abstract

This essay
examines the movement set in motion by reading to formulate the act of reading
as an experience that transforms both the identity of the reader and the
significations gathered in a text. I first focus on the Canadian poet-essayist
Lisa Robertson’s Nilling: prose (2012) to discuss “where” we go when we
read and what happens to readerly identity during the act of reading. I then
turn to Derrida’s work to study the implications that reading’s motions have on
the rapport between text and reader. I argue that both Robertson and Derrida
highlight the importance of reading in initiating a dialogue/pact between text
and reader. They formulate an ethics of reading through an analysis of this
pact, which foregrounds the dialogic nature of thinking and being. The pact
between reader and text, self and alterity, is mutually binding and keeps them
both suspended, postponing any closure of meaning. I furthermore demonstrate
that Robertson and Derrida define reading by practicing it. As Robertson
defines it, by staging a reading of Hannah Arendt and Pauline Réage, and as
Derrida defines it by reading Paul Celan, they become enfolded in a
multi-referential reading community. They place emphasis on the vitality of
multiple, often illegible, agencies at work in textual encounters, and assert
that readerly identity and textual meaning find the source of their creative
potential in this illegibility. The essay develops a poetic-philosophical
approach to theories of reading, and contributes to the existing scholarship on
theories on authorship/readership and textual interpretation. 

Keywords

Reading, poetry, readerly identity, Robertson, derrida

References

• Arendt, H. (1978). One/Thinking. In M. MacCarthy (Ed.), The Life of the Mind (pp. 3-238). Florida: Harcourt, Inc.
• ---. (1978). Two/Willing. In M. MacCarthy (Ed.), The Life of the Mind (pp. 3-239). Florida: Harcourt, Inc.
• Carson, A. (1999). Economy of the Unlost. Princeton: Princeton University Press.
• Celan, Paul. (1986). Speech on the Occasion of Receiving the Literature Prize of the Free Hanseatic City of Bremen. In R. Waldrop (Trans.), Paul Celan: Collected Prose. New York: Routledge.
• Deleuze, G. (2006). The Fold: Leibniz and the Baroque. (T. Conley, Trans.). London: Continuum.
• Derrida, J. (1974). Of Grammatology. (G. C. Spivak, Trans.). Baltimore: Johns Hopkins Press.
• ---. (1985). Otobiographies. In C. McDonald (Ed.) and A. Ronell (Trans.), The Ear of the Other (pp. 1-41). Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press.
• ---. (1988). Signature Event Context. In G. Graff (Ed.) and S. Weber (Trans.), Limited Inc (pp. 1-23). Illinois: Northwestern University Press.
• ---. (2005). Sovereignties in Question: the Poetics of Paul Celan. T. Dutoit and O. Pasanen (Eds.). New York: Fordham University Press.
• ---. (1978). Structure, Sign and Play in the Discourse of the Human Sciences. In A. Bass (Trans.), Writing and Difference (pp. 278-293). Chicago: The University of Chicago Press.
• Donoghue, D. (1979). Hannah Arendt’s The Life of the Mind. The Hudson Review, 32(2), 281-288. doi:10.2307/3849978.
• Fitch, A. (2012). Interview with Lisa Robertson. The Conversant. Retrieved from http://theconversant.org/?p=4100.
• Gadamer, H-G. (1997). Who Am I and Who Are You? In R. Heinemann and B. Krajewski (Trans. and Eds.), Gadamer on Celan: “Who Am I and Who Are You?” and Other Essays (pp. 67-126). Albany: State University of New York Press.
• Gasché, R. (1986). The Tain of the Mirror: Derrida and the Philosophy of Reflection. Cambridge: Harvard University Press.
• Heidegger, M. (1961). Nietzsche, Erster Band. Pfullingen: Verlag Günther Neske.
• Heinemann, R. and B. Krajewski. Editors’ Preface. In R. Heinemann and B. Krajewski (Trans. and Eds.), Gadamer on Celan: “Who Am I and Who Are You?” and Other Essays (pp. 55-61). Albany: State University of New York Press.
• Korhonen, K. (2006). Textual Communities: Nancy, Blanchot, Derrida. Culture Machine, 8. Retrieved from http://www.culturemachine.net/index.php/cm/rt/printerFriendly/35/43.
• MacKendrick, K. (2001). Immemorial Silence. Albany: State University of New York Press.
• Meschonnic, H. (1995). Politique du rythme, politique du sujet. Paris: Verdier.
• Militano, C. (2012). Interview with Lisa Robertson. Northern Poetry Review: Archived. Retrieved from https://nprarchived.wordpress.com/2014/12/31/interview-lisa-robertson-2012/.
• Morris, I. (1986). Gift and Commodity in Archaic Greece. Man, 21(1), 1-17. doi:10.2307/2802643.
• Plato. (1993). The Symposium; and, the Phaedrus: Plato’s Erotic Dialogues. (W. S. Cobb, Trans.). Albany: State University of New York Press.
• Press, G. A. (2007). Plato: a Guide for the Perplexed. New York: Continuum Books.
• Réage, P. (1972). Histoire d’O. Paris: Éditions Jean Jacques Pauvert.
• Robertson, L. (2012). Nilling: prose. Toronto: Bookthug.
• Smith, R. (1995). Derrida and Autobiography. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
• Solnit, R. (2014). Faraway Nearby. New York: Penguin Books.