“KÖKEN ARAYIŞININ SON BULDUĞU YER”: JEANETTE WINTERSON’IN THE POWERBOOK ADLI ROMANINDA POSTHÜMANİST DÜNYANIN TASVİRİ

Year 2019, Issue: 20, 171 - 180, 01.06.2019

Seda Yılmaz

Abstract

Posthumanizm ve teknoloji arasındaki bağ feminist eleştirmenlerin bedenlileşmeyi, insan bedenini doğal ve organik olarak varsayan biyolojik bir belirleyici olarak değil; akıllı makinelerin ve insanların birleşmesi olarak algılamasını sağladı. Bu makale, Deleuze ve Guattari'nin rizom ve Haraway'in sayborg kavramları üzerinden, Jeanette Winterson'un The PowerBook 2000 adlı romanında toplumsal ve biyolojik cinsiyetin temelinde yer alan bedenlileşme politikalarının ve ‘insan’ kavramının nasıl işlendiğini göstermeyi amaçlamaktadır. Yazarın sanal gerçeklik ortamı yaratması, maddesel ve soyut dünyaların sınırlarının belirsizleştiği, posthümanist bir dünyayı betimlemektedir. Aynı şekilde, romanın kahramanı Ali/Alix, bedeni sürekli akış halindeki bir içkinlik düzlemi olan insan-sonrası bir özne olarak betimlenmektedir. Makale, romanın, insan bedeniyle ilgili özcü algılarının da yıkılmasıyla, insan/insan olmayan, doğa/kültür, erkek/kadın, toplumsal cinsiyet/biyolojik cinsiyet, gerçek/sanal veya organizma/makine gibi ikili kategorileri reddettiğini öne sürmektedir.

Keywords

sayborg feminizm, rizom, posthümanizm, bedenlileşme, Jeanette Winterson

“THE SEARCH FOR ORIGINS STOP HERE”: REPRESENTING JEANETTE WINTERSON’S POSTHUMANIST WORLD IN THE POWERBOOK

Abstract

The alliance between posthumanism and technology has opened a way for feminist critics to perceive embodiment not as a biological determinant essentialising the human body as natural and organic, but rather as the intertwinement of intelligent machines and humans. By highlighting Deleuze and Guattari’s concept of the rhizome and Haraway’s notion of the cyborg to bear upon Jeanette Winterson’s novel The PowerBook 2000 , this paper aims to demonstrate how the text deals with the notion of the human, alongside practices of embodiment central to the organisation of gendered and sexed identities. The writer’s use of cyberspace depicts a posthumanist world, where the boundaries of physical and non-physical worlds become blurred. Likewise, the protagonist, Ali/Alix, is represented as a posthuman subject, whose body becomes a plane of immanence, by being in a state of constant flux. With the destabilization of any essentialist perception of the human body, it argues that the novel refuses any demarcation between human/non-human, nature/culture, male/female, gender/sex, real/virtual or organism/machine.

Keywords

cyborg feminism, rhizome, posthumanism, embodiment, Jeanette Winterson

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