Literature as a Site of Speculative Thought: On Method and Encounter

Year 2026, Issue: 10 , 237 - 260 , 22.04.2026

Emre Sünter

https://doi.org/10.64957/nesir.1934873

https://izlik.org/JA68CL42CR

Abstract

This article develops a speculative approach to literature grounded in process philosophy, arguing that speculative thought is not an external interpretive framework applied to literary texts, but a mode of thinking that participates in the operative processes of literature itself. Drawing primarily on Alfred North Whitehead’s philosophy and its contemporary elaborations, the article conceptualizes speculation as a methodological obligation that advances by imposing constraints on its own movement while remaining answerable to experience. Literature is approached not as an object to be decoded, but as a site where relations, potentials, and events are actively composed. Through a close engagement with Brian Massumi’s reading of Kafka and Erin Manning’s analyses of Anne Michaels’s Fugitive Pieces, the article shows how literary practices mobilize speculative dynamics by staging encounters between actuality and potentiality, stability and transformation. The figure of the home functions as a central thread, understood not as a symbolic container but as a porous and negotiated configuration through which historical, geographical, and affective forces intersect. By foregrounding encounter rather than application, the article proposes a reorientation of literary theory: a shift in the guiding question from what literature means to how it moves, orients feeling, and holds actuality and potentiality in productive tension.

Keywords

Literary encounter , speculative thought , process philosophy , home , potentiality , Whitehead

Thanks

In this study, artificial intelligence-supported tools were used to a limited extent within the acceptable boundaries defined in Nesir: Journal of Literary Studies’ Artificial Intelligence Use Policy; all content has been reviewed and approved in its final form by the author.

Spekülatif Düşüncenin Bir Mekânı Olarak Edebiyat: Yöntem ve Karşılaşma Üzerine

https://izlik.org/JA68CL42CR

Abstract

Bu makale, süreç felsefesine dayalı spekülatif bir edebiyat yaklaşımı önermektedir. Temel sav, spekülatif düşüncenin edebiyata dışarıdan uygulanan bir yorumlama çerçevesi olmadığıdır. Spekülasyon, edebiyatın kendi işleyiş süreçlerine katılan bir düşünme kipi olarak ele alınır. Alfred North Whitehead’in felsefesi ve bu felsefenin çağdaş yorumları temel alınarak, spekülasyon belirli sınırlamalar altında ilerleyen bir düşünme biçimi olarak kavramsallaştırılır. Bu yaklaşım, düşüncenin keyfi bir icat olarak değil, deneyimle sürekli temas hâlinde şekillenen bir süreç olarak işlemesini mümkün kılar. Bu bağlamda edebiyat, çözümlenecek bir nesne olarak değil; ilişkilerin, potansiyellerin ve olayların kurulduğu bir karşılaşma alanı olarak değerlendirilir. Makale, Brian Massumi’nin Kafka okuması ile Erin Manning’in Anne Michaels’ın Fugitive Pieces romanı üzerine analizlerini birlikte ele alır. Bu okumalar aracılığıyla edebî pratiklerin edimsellik ile potansiyellik, süreklilik ile dönüşüm arasındaki gerilimleri nasıl spekülatif biçimde harekete geçirdiği gösterilir. Ev figürü, kapalı ve sabit bir anlam taşıyıcısı olmaktan ziyade, tarihsel, coğrafi ve duygulamsal kuvvetlerin kesiştiği, sınırları sürekli müzakere edilen bir düzenek olarak düşünülür. Makale, yorumu merkeze alan yaklaşımlar yerine, edebiyatın ne anlama geldiğini değil nasıl hareket ettiğini, ilişkileri nasıl kurduğunu ve edimsellik ile potansiyelliği nasıl gerilimde tuttuğunu soran bir edebiyat teorisi anlayışını savunarak sonuçlanır.

Keywords

Edebi karşılaşma , spekülatif düşünce , süreç felsefesi , ev , potansiyellik , Whitehead

References

• Agamben, Giorgio. State of Exception. Translated by Kevin Attell. University of Chicago Press, 2005.
• Atay, Hakan. “Taklitteki Gerçek: Graham Harman’ın Felsefesinde Metafor ve Mimesis.” Nesir: Edebiyat Araştırmaları Dergisi 9 (2025): 137–162.
• Bakhtin, Mikhail. “Forms of Time and of the Chronotope in the Novel.” In The Dialogic Imagination: Four Essays, translated by Caryl Emerson and Michael Holquist, 84–258. University of Texas Press, 1981.
• Barthes, Roland. “The Death of the Author.” In Image–Music–Text, translated by Stephen Heath, 142–148. Hill and Wang, 1977.
• ———. The Rustle of Language. Translated by Richard Howard. University of California Press, 1989.
• Braidotti, Rosi. The Posthuman. Polity Press, 2013.
• Bryant, Levi R., Nick Srnicek, and Graham Harman, eds. The Speculative Turn: Continental Materialism and Realism. re.press, 2011.
• Debaise, Didier. Speculative Empiricism: Revisiting Whitehead. Edinburgh University Press, 2017.
• Deleuze, Gilles, and Félix Guattari. Kafka: Toward a Minor Literature. Translated by Dana Polan. University of Minnesota Press, 1986.
• Derrida, Jacques. Acts of Literature. Edited by Derek Attridge. Routledge, 1992.
• Dastur, Françoise. “Tragedy and Speculation.” In Philosophy and Tragedy, edited by Miguel de Beistegui and Simon Sparks, 73–89. Routledge, 2000.
• Despret, Vinciane. What Would Animals Say If We Asked the Right Questions? Translated by Brett Buchanan. University of Minnesota Press, 2016.
• Eagleton, Terry. Literary Theory: An Introduction. 2nd ed. University of Minnesota Press, 1996.
• ———. After Theory. Penguin, 2003.
• ———. The Event of Literature. Yale University Press, 2012.
• Foucault, Michel. “What is an Author?” In The Foucault Reader, edited by Paul Rabinow, 101–120. Pantheon Books, 1984.
• Gaskill, Nicholas, and A. J. Nocek, eds. The Lure of Whitehead. University of Minnesota Press, 2014.
• Gunn, James, and Matthew Candelaria. Speculations on Speculation: Theories of Science Fiction. Scarecrow Press, 2004.
• Haraway, Donna J. Staying with the Trouble: Making Kin in the Chthulucene. Duke University Press, 2016.
• Harman, Graham. The Quadruple Object. Zero Books, 2011.
• ———. “The Well-Wrought Broken Hammer: Object-Oriented Literary Criticism.” New Literary History 43, no. 2 (2012): 183–203.
• Hunt, Maurice. Shakespeare’s Speculative Art. Palgrave Macmillan, 2011.
• Latour, Bruno. “What Is the Style of Matters of Concern?” In The Lure of Whitehead, edited by Nicholas Gaskill and A. J. Nocek, 92–126. University of Minnesota Press, 2014.
• Levine, Caroline. Forms: Whole, Rhythm, Hierarchy, Network. Princeton University Press, 2015.
• Mackenzie, Agnes Mure. The Process of Literature: An Essay towards Some Reconsideration. Harper & Brothers, 1929. Reprint, Routledge, 2026.
• Manning, Erin. “Beyond Accommodation: National Space and Recalcitrant Bodies.” Alternatives: Global, Local, Political 25, no. 1 (2000): 51–74.
• ———. “Compromising Encounters: Reading History through Geography in Anne Michaels’ Fugitive Pieces.” Space and Culture 3, no. 1 (2000): 70–90.
• Massumi, Brian. Parables for the Virtual: Movement, Affect, Sensation. Revised ed. Duke University Press, 2021.
• ———. Politics of Affect. Polity Press, 2015.
• ———. “To Write Like a Rat Flicks Its Tail.” Supplement 1 in What Animals Teach Us about Politics, 55–64. Duke University Press, 2014.
• ———. What Animals Teach Us about Politics. Duke University Press, 2014.
• Michaels, Anne. Fugitive Pieces. Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group, 1998.
• Moretti, Franco. Graphs, Maps, Trees: Abstract Models for Literary History. Verso, 2005.
• ———. Distant Reading. Verso, 2013.
• Paksoy, Emrah. “Metin, Eleştiri, Okur: İnsan-Dışı Olarak Edebiyat.” Pasajlar Sosyal Bilimler Dergisi 2 (2019): 35–55.
• Pepper, Stephen C. “Whitehead’s ‘Actual Occasion.’” In Studies in Whitehead’s Philosophy, Tulane Studies in Philosophy 10. Dordrecht: Springer, 1961. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-011-8135-8_5
• Schmitt, Carl. Political Theology: Four Chapters on the Concept of Sovereignty. Translated by George Schwab. University of Chicago Press, 2005.
• Shaviro, Steven. The Universe of Things: On Speculative Realism. University of Minnesota Press, 2014.
• Stengers, Isabelle. Thinking with Whitehead: A Free and Wild Creation of Concepts. Translated by Michael Chase. Harvard University Press, 2011.
• Whitehead, Alfred North. Process and Reality: An Essay in Cosmology. Corrected ed. Edited by David Ray Griffin and Donald W. Sherburne. Free Press, 1978.
• ———. Symbolism: Its Meaning and Effect. Fordham University Press, 1927.