Taşa Kazılı, Yasada Yazılı: Potter Evreninde Büyülü Yönetimin Maddesel-Söylemsel Politikaları

Öz

Bu makale, J. K. Rowling’in Harry Potter serisinde türler arası ilişkileri yapılandıran hukuki, görsel ve finansal aparatları ele alarak bunları eleştirel posthümanizm ve biyopolitika kuramı ışığında incelemektedir. Seri, ahlaki cesareti yüceltip kötü yönetimi irdelerken, aynı zamanda tür hiyerarşileri, insan merkezci hukuk ve estetikleştirilmiş egemenlik tarafından biçimlendirilen bir dünya da sahneler. Karen Barad’ın eyleyici gerçekçiliği, Giorgio Agamben’in çıplak hayat kavramı ve Rosi Braidotti’nin posthümanist etiğinden yararlanan bu çalışma, üç alanı analiz etmektedir: büyücü üstünlüğünü kodlayan “Büyücü Kardeşler Çeşmesi” ve “Sihir Güçtür” heykeli gibi anıt niteliğindeki kamusal sanat eserleri gibi maddesel-söylemsel aparatları, insan merkezci kökenlere sahip düzenleyici kurgular olan Sihir Bakanlığı’nın “varlık,” “canavar” ve “ruh” kategorilerini ve “dahil ederek dışlama”nın bir örneği olarak goblinlerin asa sahipliğinden ve hukuki temsilden dışlanmasını. Makale, bu alanlar üzerinden, büyücü yönetiminin tarafsız bir bürokrasi değil, eşitsizliği meşrulaştırırken türler arası dayanışma ve etik gerilim anlarına zemin hazırlayan onto-epistemolojik bir matris olarak işlediğini savunur. Böylece bu çalışma, fantezi kurgusu çalışmaları, siyaset teorisi ve eleştirel posthümanizm alanlarına katkıda bulunarak, büyücü dünyasının gerçek dünyadaki sınıflandırma, temsil ve dışlama rejimlerinin hem bir yansıması hem de eleştirisi olduğunu, ancak çok türlü adalet ufkunu tamamlanmamış bıraktığını ortaya koyar.

Anahtar Kelimeler

• Harry Potter
• Posthümanizm
• Biyopolitika
• Tür hiyerarşisi
• Büyülü yönetim
• Eyleyicilik

Carved in Stone, Written in Law: Material-Discursive Politics of Magical Governance in the Potterverse

Öz

This article analyzes the juridical, visual, and economic apparatuses that structure interspecies relations in J. K. Rowling’s Harry Potter series, reading them through critical posthumanism and biopolitical theory. While the series celebrates moral courage and anti-authoritarian resistance, it also stages a world organized by species hierarchies, anthropocentric law, and aestheticized sovereignty. Drawing on Karen Barad’s agential realism, Giorgio Agamben’s concept of bare life, and Rosi Braidotti’s posthumanist ethics, the study examines three sites: monumental statuary such as the “Fountain of Magical Brethren” and the “Magic is Might” sculpture as material-discursive apparatuses encoding wizard supremacy; the Ministry of Magic’s evolving classifications of “beings,” “beasts,” and “spirits” as regulatory fictions rooted in anthropocentrism; and goblins’ exclusion from wand ownership and juridical agency as symptomatic of inclusive exclusion. Across these sites, the article argues that magical governance operates not as neutral bureaucracy but as an onto-epistemological matrix that legitimizes inequality while enabling moments of ethical friction and cross-species solidarity. Thus, the study contributes to scholarship in fantasy studies, political theory, and critical posthumanism, revealing how the wizarding world mirrors and critiques real-world regimes of classification, representation, and exclusion, while leaving the horizon of multispecies justice tantalizingly unfinished.

Anahtar Kelimeler

• Harry Potter
• Posthumanism
• Biopolitics
• Species hierarchy
• Magical governance
• Agency

Kaynakça

1. Agamben, G. (1998). Homo sacer: Sovereign power and bare life. (D. Heller-Roazen, Tran.). Stanford: Stanford University Press.
2. Anatol, G. L. (2009). The Replication of Victorian ideology in Harry Potter. In G. L. Anatol (Ed.), Reading Harry Potter again: New critical essays (pp. 109–126). Santa Barbara: ABC Clio.
3. Aslan, S. G. (2018). A Foucauldian reading of power in Harry Potter series: Speciesism and discrimination based on blood status Unpublished master’s thesis. Middle East Technical University, Ankara.
4. Barad, K. (2003). Posthumanist performativity: Toward an understanding of how matter comes to matter. Signs: Journal of Women in Culture and Society, 28(3), 801–831.
5. Barad, K. (2007). Meeting the universe halfway: Quantum physics and the entanglement of matter and meaning. Durham: Duke University Press.
6. Batty, H. (2015). Harry Potter and the (Post)human animal body. Bookbird: A Journal of International Children’s Literature, 53(1), 24–37.
7. Braidotti, R. (2003). Cyberteratologies: Female monsters negotiate the other’s participation in humanity’s fat future. In M. S. Barr (Ed.), Envisioning the future: Science fiction and the next millennium (pp. 146–169). Middletown: Wesleyan University Press.
8. Braidotti, R. (2013). The Posthuman. Cambridge: Polity.

9. Braidotti, R. (2014). Writing as a nomadic subject. Comparative critical studies, 11(2–3), 163–184.
10. Chen, M. Y. (2012). Animacies: Biopolitics, racial mattering, and queer affect. Durham: Duke University Press.
11. Chevalier, N. (2005). The Liberty tree and the whomping willow: Political justice, magical science, and Harry Potter. The Lion and the Unicorn, 29(3), 397–415.
12. Chica, C. M. (2022). The Magical (Racial) contract: Understanding the wizarding world of Harry Potter through Whiteness. In S. P. Dahlen & E. E. Thomas (Eds.), Harry Potter and the other: Race, justice, and difference in the wizarding world (pp. 71–85). Jackson: University Press of Mississippi.
13. Deleuze, G., & Guattari, F. (1987). A Thousand plateaus: Capitalism and schizophrenia. (B. Massumi, Tran.). Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.
14. Derrida, J. (2002). The Animal That Therefore I Am (More to Follow). (D. Wills, Tran.) Critical Inquiry, 28(2), 369–418.
15. Derrida, J., & Nancy, J.-L. (1991). “Eating Well,” or the Calculation of the Subject: An Interview with Jacques Derrida. In E. Cadava, P. Connor, & J.-L. Nancy (Eds.), Who Comes After the Subject? (pp. 96–119). New York: Routledge.
16. Erdem Ayyıldız, N. (2020). The Exercise of biopower through race and class in the Harry Potter series. Newcastle upon Tyne: Cambridge Scholars Publishing.
17. Fettke, S. (2012). “Beasts,” “Beings,” and everything between: Environmental and social ethics in Harry Potter Unpublished master’s thesis. University of Kansas, Lawrence.
18. Foucault, M. (1980). Power/Knowledge: Selected interviews and other writings, 1972–1977. (C. Gordon, L. Marshall, J. Mepham, & K. Soper, Trans.). New York: Pantheon Books.
19. Haraway, D. (2008). When species meet. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.
20. Harrison, J. (2018). Posthuman power: The Magic of hybridity in the Harry Potter series. Children’s Literature Association Quarterly, 43(3), 325–343.
21. Holbraad, M., & Pedersen, M. A. (2017). The Ontological turn: An Anthropological exposition. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
22. Horne, J. C. (2010). Harry and the other: Answering the race question in J. K. Rowling’s Harry Potter. The Lion and the Unicorn, 34(1), 76–104.
23. Horzum, S. (2025). Posthumanist subjectivities of fantastic Creatures in the Harry Potter series. English Studies, 106(5), 713–727.
24. Landrieu, M. (2017, May 23). New Orleans mayor on removing confederate monuments. Time. Retrieved September 15, 2025, from https://time.com/4790674/mitch-landrieu-new-orleans-confederate-monuments-speech/
25. Landrieu, M. (2020). Mitch Landrieu takes history off a pedestal. Lapham’s Quarterly, 13(1). Retrieved September 15, 2025, from https://www.laphamsquarterly.org/memory/mitch-landrieu-takes-history-pedestal
26. Lemke, T. (2021). The Government of things: Foucault and the new materialisms. New York: New York University Press.
27. Lopes, J. V. (2022). “All was well”?: The Sociopolitical struggles of house-elves, goblins, and centaurs. In C. K. Farr (Ed.), Open at the Close: Literary Essays on Harry Potter (pp. 178–187). Jackson: University Press of Mississippi.
28. Mbembe, A. (2001). On the postcolony. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press.
29. Mendlesohn, F. (2002). Crowning the king: Harry Potter and the construction of authority. In L. A. Whited (Ed.), The Ivory tower and Harry Potter: Perspectives on a literary phenomenon (pp. 159–181). Columbia: University of Missouri Press.
30. Mendlesohn, F., & James, E. (2009). A Short history of fantasy. London: Middlesex University Press.
31. Murphy, K. J. (2025). Monstrous Jews of the Gospels. In B. R. Grafius & J. W. Morehead (Eds.), The Oxford Handbook of Biblical Monsters (pp. 323–343). Oxford: Oxford University Press.
32. Nelson, J. S. (2021). Defenses against the dark arts: The Political education of Harry Potter and His Friends. Lanham: Lexington.
33. Nguyen, M. (2020). Flirting with posthuman technologies in Harry Potter: Over-consumption of a good thing—Technology as magic. In R. Jarazo-Álvarez & P. Alderete-Diez (Eds.), Cultural politics in Harry Potter: Life, death and the politics of fear (pp. 207–219). New York: Routledge.
34. Nora, P. (1989). Between memory and history: Les Lieux de Mémoire. Representations, 26, 7–24.
35. Phipps, A. (2003). Languages, identities, agencies: Intercultural lessons from Harry Potter. Language and Intercultural Communication, 3(1), 6–19.
36. Rancière, J. (2004). The Politics of aesthetics: The Distribution of the sensible. (G. Rockhill, Tran.). London: Continuum.
37. Rowling, J. K. (1997). Harry Potter and the philosopher’s stone. London: Bloomsbury.
38. Rowling, J. K. (1998). Harry Potter and the chamber of secrets. London: Bloomsbury.
39. Rowling, J. K. (2000). Harry Potter and the goblet of fire. London: Bloomsbury.
40. Rowling, J. K. (2003). Harry Potter and the order of phoenix. London: Bloomsbury.
41. Rowling, J. K. (2007). Harry Potter and the deathly hallows. London: Bloomsbury.
42. Rowling, J. K. (2016). Fantastic beasts and where to find them: The Original sScreenplay. Pottermore Publishing.
43. Said, E. W. (2003). Orientalism. London: Penguin Books.
44. Scamander, N. [Rowling, J. K.] (2001). Fantastic beasts and where to find them. London: Bloomsbury.
45. Smith, L. T. (2021). Decolonizing methodologies: Research and indigenous peoples (3rd ed.). London: Zed Books.
46. Spivak, G. C. (1988). Can the Subaltern Speak? In C. Nelson & L. Grossberg (Eds.), Marxism and the interpretation of culture (pp. 271–313). Basingstoke: Macmillan Education.
47. Sundmark, B. (2018). Of Memes and muggles: Harry Potter, Facebook and the 2016 presidential campaign in the United States. In A. Firestone & L. A. Clark (Eds.), Harry Potter and convergence culture: Essays on fandom and the expanding potterverse (pp. 163–174). Jefferson: McFarland.
48. Swank, K. (2019). House-Elves in Harlem: Stereotyping the other in fantastic beasts and where to find them. In C. E. Bell (Ed.), Transmedia Harry Potter: Essays on storytelling across platforms (pp. 166–180). Jefferson: McFarland.
49. Thompson, W. V. (2016). Finding a place on the literary map: Harry Potter, Secondary Worlds, and post-potter fantasy. New Review of Children’s Literature and Librarianship, 22(1), 36–52.
50. Upton, D. (2017, September 13). Confederate monuments and civic values in the wake of charlottesville. Society of Architectural Historians. Retrieved September 15, 2025, from https://www.sah.org/publications/sah-blog/sah-blog/2017/09/13/confederate-monuments-and-civic-values-in-the-wake-of-charlottesville
51. Young, J. E., & Geddes, J. L. (2007). Interview with James E. Young. Retrieved September 15, 2025, from https://hedgehogreview.com/issues/the-uses-of-the-past/articles/interview-with-james-e-young