@article{article_997940, title={Homines Sacri of Eskibahçe: An Agambenian Reading of Louis de Bernières’ Birds without Wings}, journal={Litera: Journal of Language, Literature and Culture Studies}, volume={32}, pages={517–533}, year={2023}, DOI={10.26650/LITERA2021-997940}, author={Özdinç, Tuğçe}, keywords={homo sacer, sacred man, bare life, sovereign exception, population exchange}, abstract={This study aims to provide a political criticism of the 2004 novel Birds without Wings <br />by the English author Louis de Bernières, as the political background and overtly <br />political subplot of the novel render it open to one. In order to develop its own <br />argument the study reads Bernières’ novel through the political concepts of the <br />contemporary Italian thinker Giorgio Agamben, focusing mainly on two of them that <br />can be found in Homo Sacer: Sovereign Power and Bare Life of Agamben, and created <br />by the sovereign in relation with the sovereign exception or ban: The first concept is <br />an indistinct concept of life, namely a naked or as Agamben puts it, a bare life. And <br />the second is the homo sacer (sacred man), the one who dwells in this naked life. Living <br />in a small village named Eskibahçe, the characters in Louis de Bernières’ novel are <br />described as birds without wings that “are always confined to earth, no matter how <br />much [they] climb to the high places and flap [their] arms” by the author himself <br />(2005, p.621) and they are turned into homines sacri (sacred men) during a state of <br />political emergency as the footfall of the upcoming change. Therefore, the study aims <br />to examine all the homines sacri in Birds without Wings of Louis de Bernières by an <br />Agambenian reading.}, number={2}, publisher={İstanbul Üniversitesi}