Abject Mimesis: Grotesque Femininity and the Crisis of Representation in Lady Oracle and The Gaze

Yıl 2025, Sayı: 9, 225 - 243, 23.10.2025

Henrieta Krupa

https://doi.org/10.64957/nesir.1800064

Öz

This article examines how Margaret Atwood’s Lady Oracle and Elif Shafak’s The Gaze mobilize grotesque femininity to destabilize the mimetic ideals of beauty, coherence, and narrative unity. Both novels center on protagonists whose excessive bodies and fractured identities render them unreadable within dominant aesthetic frameworks, thereby raising critical questions about who may be represented, desired, or made visible. Drawing on feminist theory—particularly Julia Kristeva’s notion of abjection, Luce Irigaray’s critique of phallocentric discourse, and Mikhail Bakhtin’s theory of the grotesque—the study develops the concept of abject mimesis: a feminist representational strategy in which distortion and excess expose the exclusions that sustain mimetic norms. In Lady Oracle, Joan’s grotesque embodiment and parodic use of popular genres disrupt the logic of coherence and closure. In The Gaze, the unnamed obese narrator and the novel’s structure reveal the violence embedded in visual regimes. Taken together, these texts reconfigure mimesis not as faithful imitation but as rupture, where bodily and narrative excess become sites of feminist resistance. By pairing Atwood’s postmodern irony with Shafak’s mythopoetic layering, the article advances a theory of abject mimesis as a feminist poetics of grotesque excess, contributing to debates in feminist aesthetics, genre studies, and the politics of representation.

Anahtar Kelimeler

Abject mimesis , feminist aesthetics , grotesque femininity , representation , the gaze

Destekleyen Kurum

This study was conducted without any financial support.

Teşekkür

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.

İğrenç Mimesis: Lady Oracle ve The Gaze’de Grotesk Kadınlık ve Temsil Krizi

Öz

Bu makale, Margaret Atwood’un Lady Oracle ve Elif Şafak’ın The Gaze (Mahrem) romanlarının, güzellik, tutarlılık ve anlatı birliği gibi mimesis ideallerini istikrarsızlaştırmak için grotesk kadınlık kavramını nasıl işlevselleştirdiğini incelemektedir. Her iki roman da aşırı bedensellikleri ve parçalanmış kimlikleri nedeniyle egemen estetik çerçeveler içinde “okunamaz” hale gelen kadın kahramanlara odaklanır; böylece kimin temsil edilebileceği, arzu nesnesi olabileceği ya da görünür kılınabileceği gibi soruları gündeme taşır. Julia Kristeva’nın “iğrençlik” (abjection) kavramı, Luce Irigaray’ın fallosantrik söylem eleştirisi ve Mikhail Bakhtin’in grotesk kuramından yararlanarak, çalışma “iğrenç mimesis” (abject mimesis) adını verdiği bir feminist temsil stratejisi geliştirir. Bu stratejide, biçimsel bozulma ve aşırılık, taklit normlarını sürdüren dışlamaları görünür kılar. Lady Oracle’da Joan’un grotesk bedeni ve popüler türleri parodi yoluyla kullanışı, anlatıdaki tutarlılık ve kapanış mantığını bozar. The Gaze’de ise isimsiz şişman anlatıcı ve romanın yapısı, görsel rejimlere içkin şiddeti açığa çıkarır. Birlikte ele alındığında bu iki metin, mimesisi sadık bir taklit değil, bir yarılma olarak yeniden kurgular: bedensel ve anlatısal aşırılıklar, feminist direnişin alanlarına dönüşür. Atwood’un postmodern ironisini Şafak’ın mitopoetik katmanlaşmasıyla yan yana getiren makale, grotesk aşırılığın feminist bir poetikası olarak “iğrenç mimesis” kavramını geliştirir ve feminist estetik, tür kuramı ve temsil politikaları tartışmalarına katkıda bulunur.

Anahtar Kelimeler

İğrenç mimesis , feminist estetik , grotesk kadınlık , temsil , bakış

Kaynakça

• Abrams, Meyer Howard. The Mirror and the Lamp: Romantic Theory and the Critical Tradition. Oxford University Press, 1953.
• Ahmed, Sara. Queer Phenomenology: Orientations, Objects, Others. Duke University Press, 2006.
• Aristotle. Poetics. Translated by Malcolm Health. Penguin Books, 1996.
• Atwood, Margaret. Lady Oracle. Andre Deutsch, 1977.
• Bakhtin, Mikhail. Rabelais and His World. Translated by Hélène Iswolsky. Indiana University Press, 1984.
• Barthes, Roland. “The Death of the Author.” In Image, Music, Text. Translated by Stephen Heath. Hill and Wang, 1977.
• Berger, John. Ways of Seeing. Penguin Books, 1972.
• Berlant, Lauren. Desire/Love. Punctum Books, 2012.
• Berlin, Isaiah. The Roots of Romanticism. Princeton University Press, 1999.
• Bordo, Susan. Unbearable Weight: Feminism, Western Culture, and the Body. University of California Press, 1993.
• Butler, Judith. Gender Trouble: Feminism and the Subversion of Identity. Routledge, 1990.
• Cixous, Hélène. “The Laugh of the Medusa.” Translated by Keith Cohen and Paula Cohen. Signs 1, no. 4 (1976): 875–893.
• Creed, Barbara. The Monstrous-Feminine: Film, Feminism, Psychoanalysis. Routledge, 1993.
• Derrida, Jacques. Of Grammatology. Translated by Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak. Johns Hopkins University Press, 1976.
• Eco, Umberto. Art and Beauty in the Middle Ages. Yale University Press, 1989.
• Foucault, Michel. Discipline and Punish: The Birth of the Prison. Translated by Alan Sheridan. Vintage Books, 1995.
• ———. The History of Sexuality: Volume 1. Translated by Robert Hurley. Vintage Books, 1990.
• Freud, Sigmund. “The Uncanny.” In The Standard Edition of the Complete Psychological Works of Sigmund Freud, vol. 17. Translated and edited by James Strachey. Hogarth Press, 1955.
• Grosz, Elizabeth. Volatile Bodies: Toward a Corporeal Feminism. Indiana University Press, 1994.
• Hutcheon, Linda. A Poetics of Postmodernism: History, Theory, Fiction. Routledge, 1988.
• ———. A Theory of Parody: The Teachings of Twentieth-Century Art Forms. Methuen, 1985.
• Irigaray, Luce. Speculum of the Other Woman. Translated by Gillian C. Gill. Cornell University Press, 1985.
• ———. This Sex Which Is Not One. Translated by Catherine Porter and Carolyn Burke. Cornell University Press, 1985.
• Kristeva, Julia. Powers of Horror: An Essay on Abjection. Translated by Leon S. Roudiez. Columbia University Press, 1982.
• Lacan, Jacques.“The Mirror Stage.” In Écrits. Translated by Bruce Fink. Norton, 2006.
• LeBesco, Kathleen. Revolting Bodies?: The Struggle to Redefine Fat Identity. University of Massachusetts Press, 2004.
• Mulvey, Laura. “Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema.” Screen 16, no. 3 (1975): 6–18.
• Panofsky, Erwin. Renaissance and Renascences in Western Art. Almqvist & Wiksell, 1960.
• Plato. The Republic. Translated by Robin Waterfield. Oxford University Press, 1993.
• Scarry, Elaine. On Beauty and Being Just. Princeton University Press, 1999.
• Shafak, Elif. The Gaze. Translated by Brendan Freely. Penguin Books, 2006.
• Showalter, Elaine. The Female Malady: Women, Madness, and English Culture, 1830–1980. Pantheon, 1985.
• Woolf, Virginia. A Room of One’s Own. Hogarth Press, 1929