Karanlık Ormanda: Edward Bond Şiirlerinde “Deliliğimizin İşaretleri”ni Okumak

Öz

Aktivist, oyun yazarı ve şair olarak Edward Bond (1934-), bireyi tebaaya dönüştürüp baskı altına alan bir silsile konusunda bilinç uyandırmak için edebiyatın pratik gücünden yararlanır. Şiirlerinde toplum ve bu toplumun belli güç yapıları tarafından düzenlenişine odaklanması her gün maruz kaldığı sosyal mekanizmaların güncel durumunu yansıtır. Bu bakımdan Karanlık Ormanda, tabiiyet süreci veya Althusser’in ifadesiyle ‘bireylerin çağırılması’ üzerine Bond’un çeşitli vesilelerle dillendirdiği fikirlerinin en güzel örneğidir. Çalışma, Althusser’in ideoloji tartışması ve ideolojinin çeşitli aygıtlar vasıtasıyla nasıl tabiiyet kurduğunu seçilen şiirler aracılığıyla değerlendirmeye çalışmaktadır. Çalışma ayrıca, Bond tarafından kullanılan mecazi bir dil ve çok katmanlı imgelem aracılığıyla bu devlet aygıtlarının görünürlük/ görünmezlik ikiliği üzerine yoğunlaşmaktadır. Şiirler kişisel olanla kamusal olanı birleştirdiğinden politik duruşları da bütünlük ve huzur’a bir kişisel özlemi göstermektedir. Böylece şiirler iyimserlik ve kötümserlik arasında gidip gelmektedir, fakat sonunda tabiiyet süreci kaçınılmaz olduğundan karamsar bir hava hâkimdir. Tebaa karşı duruşunu veya Althusserci ‘kötü vatandaş’lığını onu sistemin içinde tutan ancak nasıl çalıştığı bilgisini de ona sunan bir bilinçle başarmaktadır.

Anahtar Kelimeler

• Edward Bond,Althusser,Ideology,subject,power relations,state apparatuses.

In the Dark Forest: An Althusserian Reading of Edward Bond’s Poems

Öz

As an activist, a playwright and a poet, Edward Bond (1934-) avails himself of literature’s power for practical purposes in order to raise awareness of a chain structure which entraps and subjugates the individuals by transforming them into mere subjects. Bond’s focus on society and its arrangement by certain power structures in his poems reflects the current state of the social mechanisms that he is exposed to every day. In the Dark Forest, in this respect, is an epitome of Bond’s ideas consistently verbalized through various mediums of expression on the subjection process or ‘interpellation’ of individuals in Althusser’ words. As the title of the poetry collection implicates, Bond depicts different levels of tension in a bleak atmosphere created by corporeal and psychological variations of violence through his poems. This study tries to evaluate Althusser’s argument of ideology and the apparatuses through which ideology sustains its ascendancy over the subjects by analyzing Bond’s selected poems. The study also concentrates on the duality of in/visibility of the state apparatuses in the poems by means of multilayered imagery and metaphorical language employed by Bond. Since the poems merge the private realm into the public sphere, their political stance also denotes a personal yearning for unity and peace. Thus, the poems vacillate between optimism and pessimism, but in the end, a dark atmosphere prevails since the subjection process is inevitable and subject can only achieve his resistance or Althusserian ‘bad citizenship’ only through a consciousness which keeps him in the system but with the knowledge of how it operates.

Anahtar Kelimeler

• Edward Bond,Althusser,Ideology,subject,power relations

Kaynakça

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2. Althusser, Louis (1996). “Ideology and the State.” Modern Literary Theory: A Reader. Eds. Philip Rice and Patricia Waugh. Bristol: Arnold.
3. ---. (2014). On the Reproduction of Capitalism: Ideology and Ideological State Apparatuses. Trans. by G.M. Goshgarian. London and New York: Verso.
4. Bond, Edward (1987). Poems 1978-1985. London: Methuen.
5. ---. (1994). Edward Bond Letters I. Ed. by Ian Stuart. Amsterdam: Harwood.
6. ---. (2013). Selections from the Notebooks of Edward Bond: Volume 2 980-1995. Ed. by Ian Stuart. London and New York: Bloomsbury.
7. Dante, Alighieri (2005). The Divine Comedy of Dante Alighieri. Trans. Henry Wadsworth Longfellow. The Pennsylvania State University, Electronic Classics Series.
8. Debuyst, Ch. (1974). “Etiology of Violence.” Collected Studies in Criminological Research: Violence in Society. Strasbourg: Council of Europe. Scott, Leighton R. (1978). “Pythagorean Proportion and Music of the Spheres in Richard II.” Albion: A Quarterly Journal Concerned with British Studies. 10. 2, pp. 104-117.

9. Stoll, Karl-Heinz (1976). Interviews with Edward Bond and Arnold Wesker. Twentieth Century Literature. 22. 4: 411-432.
10. Strathausen, Carsten (1994). “Althusser’s Mirror.” Studies in 20th & 21st Century Literature, 18. 1, pp. 61-73.
11. Tuaillon, David (2015). Edward Bond: The Playwright Speaks. Norfolk: Bloomsbury.
12. Žižek, Slavoj (2008). The Sublime Object of Ideology. London and New York: Verso.