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Vişnenin Cinsiyeti Romanında Bahtin’in Grotesk Gerçekçiliğinin Ekosantrik Açıdan Yeniden İncelenmesi

Yıl 2022, Cilt: 7 Sayı: 3, 861 - 888, 29.09.2022
https://doi.org/10.30622/tarr.1118701

Öz

Postmodern kurgunun en iyi örneklerinden biri olarak değerlendirilen Jeanette Winterson’ın Vişnenin Cinsiyeti (1989) romanı öykü/tarih, ben/öteki, erkek/kadın, gerçeklik/fantezi, maddesel/maddesel olmayan, doğa/kültür, doğal/doğal olmayan ve insan/insan olmayan arasındaki sınırları ortadan kaldırarak cinsiyet, kimlik ve çevre sorunlarının yeniden ele alınması için yeni bir ortam sunmaktadır. İnsanmerkezciliğin ve erkekmerkezciliğin monolojik söylemlerini sorgulayan roman sosyal kısıtlamaları, siyasî karışıklıkları, dinî çatışmaları, otoriter eşitsizlikleri, cinsiyet sorunlarını ve çevresel yıkımı pek çok bağlamda ele almaktadır. Romanda cinsiyeti ne olursa olsun insanlar ve insan olmayan canlılar alemindeki canavarın, en korkulanın, göz ardı edilenin, susturulanın ve ezilenin sesi, öznelliği ve eyleyiciliği betimlenmektedir. Bu amaca ulaşmak için yazar, romanında İngiltere tarihinde on yedinci ve yirminci yüzyıllarda yaşanmış bazı olayları gerçeküstü karakterlerin sesleri ve bakış açıları aracılığıyla ayrıntılı bir şekilde yeniden anlatmaktadır. Bunu yaparken yazar, romandaki otoriter güç ilişkilerini, siyasî hiyerarşileri ve toplumsal eşitsizlikleri yapıbozuma uğratmaya çalışmaktadır. Yazar aynı zamanda ekolojik adalet için ataerkil ve insanmerkezci önyargıları ve normları ortadan kaldırmaya çalışmaktadır. Bu anlamda, roman benlik ve ses çokluğu ile karnavalesk bir alan sunarken sonsuz olası varoluş biçimleri, akışkanlık ve varlıkların karşılıklı bağımlılığı ile diyalojik bir dünya ortaya koymaktadır. Bu çerçevede, bu makale Winterson’un Vişnenin Cinsiyeti romanını Bahtinci grotesk gerçekçilik ışığında ekosantrik bir bakış açısıyla insanın otoriter, hiyerarşik ve ataerkil tutumlarının insan ve insan olmayan topluluklar üzerindeki etkilerini incelemeyi amaçlamaktadır. Yazar, romanında insanı fiziksel çevresiyle içkinliğinden koparan ve hem doğayı hem onun insan olmayan tüm sakinlerini nesnelere indirgemeye yönelik insanmerkezci bir eğilime yol açan Kartezyen ikili zıtlıklarına karşı çıkmak için insan dışı etkileri canlandırmaya çalışmaktadır. Dolayısıyla bu makale aynı zamanda romanda tasvir edilen çevre sorunlarına ana karakterlerin sergilediği grotesk tepkileri ve meydan okumaları açığa çıkarmayı amaçlamaktadır. Bahtin’in grotesk gerçekçiliğine uygun olarak yazar bir iyimserlik ve eşitlik dünyası tasavvur ederek insanın insan olmayanla birlik ve uyumuna odaklanmaktadır.

Kaynakça

  • Bakhtin, Mikhail M. (1981). The Dialogic Imagination: Four Essays by M. M. Bakhtin. Caryl Emerson and Michael Holquist (Trans.). Austin: University of Texas Press.
  • ---- (1984). Rabelais and His World. Helene Iswolsky (Trans.). Bloomington: Indiana University Press. (Original work published in 1965)
  • Chevalier, Jean and Gheerbrant, Alain (1996). The Penguin Dictionary of Symbols. J. Buchanan-Brown (Trans.). London: Penguin Books.
  • Dentith, Simon (1995). Bakhtinian Thought: An Introductory Reader. New York: Routledge.
  • Doan, Laura L. (1994). “Jeanette Winterson’s Sexing the Postmodern”. The Lesbian Postmodern. Ed. Laura L. Doan. New York: Columbia University Press. 137-155.
  • Haraway, Donna J. (1991). Simians, Cyborgs and Woman: The Reinvention of Nature. New York: Routledge.
  • Hitchcock, Peter (1998). “The Grotesque of the Body Electric”. Bakhtin and the Human Sciences: No Last Words. Eds. Michael Gardiner and Michael M. Bell. London: Sage Publications. 78-94.
  • Holquist, Michael (1984). “Prologue”. Rabelais and His World by Mikhail M. Bakhtin. Bloomington: Indiana University Press. xiii-xxiii.
  • ---- (1990). “Introduction: The Architectonics of Answerability”. Art and Answerability: Early Philosophical Essays. Vadim Liapunov (Trans.). Eds. Michael Holquist and Vadim Liapunov. Austin: University of Texas Press. ix-xlix.
  • Kayser, Wolfgang J. (1957). The Grotesque in Art and Literature. Ulrich Weisstein (Trans.). New York: Columbia University Press.
  • Lee, Alison (1994). “Bending the Arrow of Time: The Continuing Postmodern Present”. Historicité et Metafiction dans le Roman Contemporain des Îles Britanniques. Ed. Max Duperray. Provence: Publications de l’Université de Provence. 217-229.
  • Makinen, Merja (2005). The Novels of Jeanette Winterson. New York: Palgrave Macmillan.
  • McLeish, Kenneth (1989). “Larger than Life: Review of Sexing the Cherry”. Sunday Times. G7.
  • National Health Service. (2020, October 26). Osteomyelitis. Retrieved May 16, 2022, from https://www.nhs.uk/conditions/osteomyelitis/
  • Onega, Susana (2006). Jeanette Winterson. Manchester: Manchester University Press.
  • Palmer, Paulina (1993). Contemporary Lesbian Writing: Dreams, Desire, Difference. Buckingham: Open University Press.
  • Pearce, Lynne (1994). “Dialogism and Gender: Gendering the Chronotope: Readings of Jeanette Winterson’s Sexing the Cherry and Toni Morrison’s Beloved”. Reading Dialogics. London: Edward Arnold. 173-196.
  • Plants for a Future. (n.d.). Prunus cerasus austera. Retrieved December 20, 2019, from https://pfaf.org/USER/Plant.aspx?LatinName=Prunus+cerasus+austera
  • ---- (n.d.). Prunus serotina. Retrieved December 20, 2019, from https://pfaf.org/user/Plant.aspx?LatinName=Prunus+serotina
  • Rosemergy, Jan (2000). “Navigating the Interior Journey: The Fiction of Jeanette Winterson”. British Women Writing Fiction. Ed. Abby H.P. Werlock. Alabama: The University of Alabama Press. 248-269.
  • Russell, Lorena (2000). “Dog-Woman and She-Devils: The Queering Field of Monstrous Women”. International Journal of Sexuality and Gender Studies, 5(2), 177-193. https://doi.org/10.1023/A:1010128813369
  • Russo, Mary (1995). The Female Grotesque: Risk, Excess and Modernity. Oxford: Routledge.
  • Selway, Jennifer (1992). “Tasting the Sweet Fruits of Success”. Observer. 45.
  • Winterson, Jeanette (1990). Sexing the Cherry. London: Vintage. (Original work published in 1989)

An Ecocentric Reconsideration of Bakhtin’s Grotesque Realism in Sexing the Cherry

Yıl 2022, Cilt: 7 Sayı: 3, 861 - 888, 29.09.2022
https://doi.org/10.30622/tarr.1118701

Öz

Jeanette Winterson’s Sexing the Cherry (1989), which is regarded as one of the best examples in the postmodern fiction, offers a new space for re-considering genders, identities and environmental problems by effacing the boundaries of story/history, self/other, male/female, reality/fantasy, material/immaterial, nature/culture, natural/unnatural, and human/nonhuman. Questioning the monologic discourses of anthropocentrism and androcentrism, the novel deals with social restrictions, political upheavals, religious conflicts, authoritative inequalities, gender issues, and environmental destruction in multiple contexts. Winterson’s novel presents the voice, subjectivity and agency of the monstrous, the most feared, the ignored, the muted and the oppressed, including all human beings regardless of their gender and nonhuman life forms. To achieve this aim, the author retells some events in English history in a detailed way through the voices and perspectives of larger-than-life characters. In doing so, Winterson seeks to deconstruct the officialdom, authoritarian power relations, political hierarchies and social inequalities. She also attempts to eliminate the patriarchal and anthropocentric biases and norms for ecological justice. In this sense, the novel suggests a carnivalesque space with a multiplicity of self and voice and offers a dialogic world with infinite possible ways of existence, fluidity and interdependence of beings. Within this framework, this article seeks to explore Sexing the Cherry in the light of Bakhtinian grotesque realism within the ecocentric view to discuss the effects of the authoritarian, hierarchical and patriarchal attitudes of the human on human and nonhuman communities. In her novel, the author tries to revive the agency of the nonhuman to oppose Cartesian binary oppositions that keep humans away from their physical environment and lead to an anthropocentric tendency that reduces both nature and all its nonhuman inhabitants to objects. Therefore, the article aims to show grotesque responses and challenges demonstrated by the main characters to the environmental problems depicted in the novel. Consequently, Winterson, in accordance with Bakhtin’s grotesque realism, imagines a world of optimism and equality and focuses on the union and harmony of the human with the nonhuman.

Kaynakça

  • Bakhtin, Mikhail M. (1981). The Dialogic Imagination: Four Essays by M. M. Bakhtin. Caryl Emerson and Michael Holquist (Trans.). Austin: University of Texas Press.
  • ---- (1984). Rabelais and His World. Helene Iswolsky (Trans.). Bloomington: Indiana University Press. (Original work published in 1965)
  • Chevalier, Jean and Gheerbrant, Alain (1996). The Penguin Dictionary of Symbols. J. Buchanan-Brown (Trans.). London: Penguin Books.
  • Dentith, Simon (1995). Bakhtinian Thought: An Introductory Reader. New York: Routledge.
  • Doan, Laura L. (1994). “Jeanette Winterson’s Sexing the Postmodern”. The Lesbian Postmodern. Ed. Laura L. Doan. New York: Columbia University Press. 137-155.
  • Haraway, Donna J. (1991). Simians, Cyborgs and Woman: The Reinvention of Nature. New York: Routledge.
  • Hitchcock, Peter (1998). “The Grotesque of the Body Electric”. Bakhtin and the Human Sciences: No Last Words. Eds. Michael Gardiner and Michael M. Bell. London: Sage Publications. 78-94.
  • Holquist, Michael (1984). “Prologue”. Rabelais and His World by Mikhail M. Bakhtin. Bloomington: Indiana University Press. xiii-xxiii.
  • ---- (1990). “Introduction: The Architectonics of Answerability”. Art and Answerability: Early Philosophical Essays. Vadim Liapunov (Trans.). Eds. Michael Holquist and Vadim Liapunov. Austin: University of Texas Press. ix-xlix.
  • Kayser, Wolfgang J. (1957). The Grotesque in Art and Literature. Ulrich Weisstein (Trans.). New York: Columbia University Press.
  • Lee, Alison (1994). “Bending the Arrow of Time: The Continuing Postmodern Present”. Historicité et Metafiction dans le Roman Contemporain des Îles Britanniques. Ed. Max Duperray. Provence: Publications de l’Université de Provence. 217-229.
  • Makinen, Merja (2005). The Novels of Jeanette Winterson. New York: Palgrave Macmillan.
  • McLeish, Kenneth (1989). “Larger than Life: Review of Sexing the Cherry”. Sunday Times. G7.
  • National Health Service. (2020, October 26). Osteomyelitis. Retrieved May 16, 2022, from https://www.nhs.uk/conditions/osteomyelitis/
  • Onega, Susana (2006). Jeanette Winterson. Manchester: Manchester University Press.
  • Palmer, Paulina (1993). Contemporary Lesbian Writing: Dreams, Desire, Difference. Buckingham: Open University Press.
  • Pearce, Lynne (1994). “Dialogism and Gender: Gendering the Chronotope: Readings of Jeanette Winterson’s Sexing the Cherry and Toni Morrison’s Beloved”. Reading Dialogics. London: Edward Arnold. 173-196.
  • Plants for a Future. (n.d.). Prunus cerasus austera. Retrieved December 20, 2019, from https://pfaf.org/USER/Plant.aspx?LatinName=Prunus+cerasus+austera
  • ---- (n.d.). Prunus serotina. Retrieved December 20, 2019, from https://pfaf.org/user/Plant.aspx?LatinName=Prunus+serotina
  • Rosemergy, Jan (2000). “Navigating the Interior Journey: The Fiction of Jeanette Winterson”. British Women Writing Fiction. Ed. Abby H.P. Werlock. Alabama: The University of Alabama Press. 248-269.
  • Russell, Lorena (2000). “Dog-Woman and She-Devils: The Queering Field of Monstrous Women”. International Journal of Sexuality and Gender Studies, 5(2), 177-193. https://doi.org/10.1023/A:1010128813369
  • Russo, Mary (1995). The Female Grotesque: Risk, Excess and Modernity. Oxford: Routledge.
  • Selway, Jennifer (1992). “Tasting the Sweet Fruits of Success”. Observer. 45.
  • Winterson, Jeanette (1990). Sexing the Cherry. London: Vintage. (Original work published in 1989)
Toplam 24 adet kaynakça vardır.

Ayrıntılar

Birincil Dil İngilizce
Konular Sanat ve Edebiyat
Bölüm Makaleler
Yazarlar

Ayşe Şensoy 0000-0002-1792-2381

Meryem Ayan 0000-0003-3138-1523

Yayımlanma Tarihi 29 Eylül 2022
Yayımlandığı Sayı Yıl 2022 Cilt: 7 Sayı: 3

Kaynak Göster

APA Şensoy, A., & Ayan, M. (2022). An Ecocentric Reconsideration of Bakhtin’s Grotesque Realism in Sexing the Cherry. Turkish Academic Research Review, 7(3), 861-888. https://doi.org/10.30622/tarr.1118701

Turkish Academic Research Review 
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