Acı Çemberi: Alice Walker’in Possessing The Secret Of Joy Romanında Tekrarlama ve Kefaret

Öz

Alice Walker'ın Possessing the Secret of Joy adlı romanı, travmayı düzeltilebilecek tarihsel bir yara olarak değil, kişiyi şekillendiren ve yeniden tanımlayan tekrar eden bir güç olarak gösterir. Bu çalışma, romana Freud'un tekrarlama dürtüsü fikri ve Jung'un bireyleşme teorisi üzerinden bakmaktadır. Tashi'nin bir yetişkin olarak Kadın Sünneti (FGM) geçirmeyi seçmesinin ve daha sonra tsunga M'lissa'yı öldürmesinin, acı ve benliği geri kazanma arasındaki psikolojik bir döngüyü temsil ettiğini öne sürmektedir. Travma teorisine (Caruth, 1996; van der Kolk, 2015) ve bedenlenmiş biliş alanındaki son bulgulara (Luckhurst, 2021; Lanius & Frewen, 2021) dayanan bu makale, Walker'ın kültürel şiddeti nasıl psikolojik bir parçalanma ve kısmi bütünleşme sürecine dönüştürdüğünü incelemektedir. Romanın doğrusal olmayan yapısı ve değişen sesler, travmatik hafızanın ve bölünmüş benliğin parçalanmasını yansıtmaktadır. Bu yorum, Tashi'nin eylemlerini feminist direniş olarak görmek yerine, zihinsel bütünlük için umutsuz bir girişim olarak çözülmemiş travmayı tekrarlama ihtiyacına yerleştirir. Sonunda, Possessing the Secret of Joy, kurtuluşun travmayı aşmaktan değil, onunla yüzleşmekten geçtiğini gösteriyor. Bu sebeple acı döngüsü hem bir hapishane hem de bir çıkış yolu hâline gelir; bu, acının öz farkındalığa dönüştüğü ve sessizliğin anlam şansını açtığı kafa karıştırıcı bir yoldur.

Anahtar Kelimeler

• Travma
• Yinemele saplantısı
• Bireyleşme
• Bedensel bellek
• Dissosiyasyon
• Alice Walker
• Jungcu psikoloji

The Circle Of Pain: Repetition and Redemption in Alice Walker’s Possessing The Secret Of Joy

Öz

Alice Walker’s Possessing the Secret of Joy shows trauma not as a historical wound that can be fixed, but as a repeating force that shapes and redefines a person. This study looks at the novel through Freud’s idea of repetition compulsion and Jung’s theory of individuation. It suggests that Tashi’s choice to undergo Female Genital Mutilation (FGM) as an adult and her later killing of the tsunga, M’lissa, represent a psychological loop between pain and reclaiming the self. Based on trauma theory (Caruth, 1996; van der Kolk, 2015) and recent findings in embodied cognition (Luckhurst, 2021; Lanius & Frewen, 2021), this paper examines how Walker turns cultural violence into a psychological process of fragmentation and partial integration. The novel’s nonlinear structure and changing voices reflect the breakdown of The novel’s nonlinear structure and changing voices reflect the breakdown of trau-matic memory and the divided self. Rather than seeing Tashi’s actions as feminist resistance, this interpretation places them within the need to repeat unresolved trau-ma as a desperate attempt at mental wholeness. In the end, Possessing the Secret of Joy shows that redemption does not come from transcending trauma, but from facing it. The cycle of pain, then, becomes both a prison and a way out, which is a confusing path where suffering turns into self-awareness, and silence opens up the chance for meaning.

Anahtar Kelimeler

• Trauma
• Repetition compulsion
• Individuation
• Somatic memory
• Dissociation
• Alice Walker
• Jungian psychology.

Kaynakça

1. Alister, I., & Hauke, C. (2013). Contemporary Jungian Analysis. In Routledge eBooks. https://doi.org/10.4324/9781315812557
2. American Psychiatric Association. (2013). Diagnostic and statistical manual of mental disorders (5th ed.). https://doi.org/10.1176/appi.books.9780890425596
3. Balaev, M. (2014). Literary trauma Theory reconsidered. In Palgrave Macmillan UK eBooks (pp. 1–14). https://doi.org/10.1057/9781137365941_1
4. Bates, G. (2005). Alice Walker: A critical companion. Greenwood Press.
5. Bekers, E. (2010). Rising Anthills: African and African American Writing on Female Genital Excision, 1960-2000. Madison: University of Wisconsin Press.
6. Berg, R. C., & Denison, E. (2012). Psychological, social and sexual consequences of female genital mutilation/cutting (FGM/C): A systematic review of quantitative studies. Obstetrics and Gynecology International, 2012, Article ID 327760.
7. Boss, P. (1999). Ambiguous loss: Learning to live with unresolved grief. Harvard University Press.
8. Boyer, S. M., Caplan, J. E., & Edwards, L. K. (2022). Trauma-Related Dissociation and the dissociative disorders: Delaware Journal of Public Health, 8(2), 78–84. https://doi.org/10.32481/djph.2022.05.010

9. Campbell, J. (1949). The hero with a thousand faces. Princeton University Press.
10. Caruth, C. (1996). Unclaimed experience: Trauma, narrative, and history. Johns Hopkins University Press. Craps, S., & Buelens, G. (2008). Introduction: Postcolonial Trauma Novels. Studies in the Novel, 40(1/2), 1-12.
11. Culbertson, R. (1995). Embodied memory, transcendence, and telling: Recoun-ting trauma, re-establishing the self. New Literary History, 26(1), 169–195.
12. Fabi, M. G. (2011). Sexual Violence and the Black Atlantic: On Alice Walker's Possessing the Secret of Joy. In M. G. Fabi, Transnational Feminism and Postcolo-nialism (pp. 85-108). Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press.
13. Freud, S. (1920). Beyond the pleasure principle (J. Strachey, Trans.). The Hogarth Press.
14. Gates, H. L., Jr., & Appiah, K. A. (Eds.). (1993). Alice Walker: Critical Perspectives Past and Present. New York: Amistad.
15. Gifford, E. A. (1994). The courage to blaspheme: Confronting barriers to resis-ting female genital mutilation. UCLA Women’s Law Journal, 4(2), 329–364.
16. Glover, J., Liebling, H., Barrett, H., & Goodman, S. (2017). The psychological and social impact of female genital mutilation: A holistic conceptual framework. Journal of International Women's Studies, 18(2), 219–238.
17. Herman, J. L. (1992). Trauma and recovery: The aftermath of violence-from domestic abuse to political terror. Basic Books.
18. Jung, C. G. (1959). Aion: Researches into the phenomenology of the self (Vol. 9, Part 2). Princeton University Press. (Original work published 1951)
19. Lanius, R. A., Bluhm, R. L., & Frewen, P. A. (2011). How understanding the neurobiology of complex post-traumatic stress disorder can inform clinical practice: a social cognitive and affective neuroscience approach. Acta Psychiatrica Scandinavica, 124(5), 331–348. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1600-0447.2011.01755.x
20. Laub, D. (1992). Bearing witness, or the vicissitudes of listening. In S. Felman & D. Laub (Eds.), Testimony: Crises of witnessing in literature, psychoanalysis, and history (pp. 57–74). Routledge.
21. Levine, P. A. (2015). Trauma and memory: Brain and body in a search for the living past. North Atlantic Books.
22. Luckhurst, R. (2008). The Trauma Question. Routledge.
23. Ngondu, C. N., & Mazibuko, N. C. (2025). The Psychological Perspective of Female Genital Mutilation/Cutting (FGM/C) Among Women in Kenya. New Voices in Psychology, 14 pages. https://doi.org/10.25159/2958-3918/18400
24. Singer, T. (2020). Cultural complexes and the soul of America. Routledge.
25. Staniloiu, A., & Markowitsch, H. J. (2012). Dissociation, memory and trauma narrative. Journal of Literary Theory, 6(1), 103–130. https://doi.org/10.1515/jlt-2011-0012
26. Van der Hart, O., Nijenhuis, E. R. S., & Steele, K. (2006). The haunted self: Structural dissociation and the treatment of chronic traumatization. W. W. Norton & Company.
27. Van der Kolk, B. A. (2015). The body keeps the score: Brain, mind, and body in the healing of trauma. Penguin Books.
28. Van der Kolk, B. A. (1989). The compulsion to repeat the trauma: Re-enactment, revictimization, and masochism. Psychiatric Clinics of North America, 12(2), 389–411.
29. Visser, I. (2011). Trauma Theory and Postcolonial Literary Studies. Journal of Postcolonial Writing, 47(3), 270-282. https://doi.org/10.1080/17449855.2011.569378
30. Walker, A. (1992). Possessing the secret of joy. Pocket Books.