Zinnie Harris'in This Restless House Oyununda Kadın ve Travmanın Yeniden Yazımı

Öz

Bu makale, Aeschylus'un Oresteia üçlemeisnin bir yeniden yazımı olan, Zinni Harris'in This Restless House oyununun, travma ve tanıklığın sahnede söz hakkı istediğini, adalet ve teselli aradığını iddia ederek, Clytemnestra ve Electra'nın görmezden gelinmiş yaralarına söz hakkı verme çabası olduğunu tartışmayı amaçlar. Bu sebeple, kadın yazarların yeniden yazma eylemi de külliyatta eksikliği görülen veya yanlış temsil edilen kadın sesinin travması için bir hesaplaşma olarak okunabilir. Bu amaçla, ağırlıklı olarak eril kalan tiyatronun kullanılması ise, hem klasik bir oyun yazarının otoritesine meydan okuması hem de seyirciyi kadın karakterlerin travma anlatılarına tanıklık etmeye davet etmesi sebebi ile eşsiz bir şekilde işlev görür. Bu makale, travma kuramının ve eylemleme ve çözüm, musallatoloji, tanıklık ve ifade gibi kavramların ışığında dile dökülemeyen travmaların sahnelenmesini ve travmatik deneyimlerin yeniden anlatım ve yeniden canlandırma ile bulaştırılmasını irdeler.

Anahtar Kelimeler

• Zinnie Harris
• This Restless House
• Travma
• Yeniden yazım
• Eylemleme ve Çözüm

Rewriting Women and Trauma: Zinnie Harris’s This Restless House

Öz

This article aims to argue that Zinnie Harris’s This Restless House, which is a rewriting of Aeschylus’ The Oresteia, is an attempt to give voice to Clytemnestra’s and Electra’s disregarded wounds, claiming that overlooked and/or suppressed traumas demand to be communicated on stage, seeking justice and solace. The act of rewriting by women is also interpreted as an act of reckoning for the trauma of the negation/misrepresentation of the female voice in the canon. Thus, rewriting a classical play functions on two levels, it helps moving female characters and their traumas centre stage, and with the attendance of the live audience the play experiments with the experience of bearing witness to and transmission of women’s traumatic stories. In the light of trauma theory, acting-out & working-through, hauntology, bearing witness and testimony, this article explores staging uncommunicable traumas and the transmission of traumatic experience through retelling and re-enacting.

Anahtar Kelimeler

• Zinnie Harris
• This Restless House
• Trauma
• Rewriting
• Acting out and working through

Kaynakça

1. Aeschylus. The Oresteian Trilogy. Translated by Philip Vellacott. London: Penguin Books Ltd., 1974. google scholar
2. Aston, Elaine. “Moving Women Centre Stage: Structures of Feminist-Tragic Feeling.” Journal of Contemporary Drama in English, 5(2), (2017): 292-310. https://doi.org/10.1515/jcde-2017-0027 google scholar
3. Aydoğmuş, Azime. “Clytemnestra as a Nightmare to Patriarchy in Aeschylus Tragedy, the Oresteian Trilogy.” Tiyatro Eleştirmenliği ve Dramaturji Bölümü Dergisi, 27 (2), (2015): 25-38. google scholar
4. Caruth, Cathy. “Trauma and Experience: Introduction.” In Trauma: Explorations in Memory, edited by Cathy Caruth, 3-12. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1995. google scholar
5. Caruth, Cathy. Unclaimed Experience: Trauma, Narrative, and History. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1996. google scholar
6. Chevalier, Jean, and Alain Gheerbrant. The Penguin Dictionary of Symbols. Translated by John Buchanan-Brown. London: Penguin Books, 1996. google scholar
7. Derrida, Jacques. Specters of Marx: The State of the Debt, the Work of Mourning and the New International. Translated by Peggy Kamuf. New York: Routledge, 1994. google scholar
8. Duggan, Patrick, and Mick Wallis. “Trauma and Performance.” Performance Research, 16 (1), (2011): 4-17. http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/13528165.2011.562674 google scholar

9. Felman, Shoshana. “Education and Crisis, or the Vicissitudes of Teaching.” In Testimony: Crises of Witnessing in Literature, Psychoanalysis, and History, edited by S. Felman & D. Laub, 1-56. London: Routledge, 1992.Gordon, Avery F. Ghostly Matters: Haunting and the Sociological Imagination. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2008. google scholar
10. Harris, Zinnie. “Agamemnon’s Return.” In This Restless House, Z. Harris, 15-136. London: Faber and Faber, 2016. google scholar
11. Harris, Zinnie. “Electra and Her Shadow.” In This Restless House, Z. Harris, 235-319. London: Faber and Faber, 2016. google scholar
12. Harris, Zinnie. “The Bough Breaks.” In This Restless House, Z. Harris, 137-234. London: Faber and Faber, 2016. google scholar
13. Herman, Judith. Trauma and Recovery: The Aftermath of Violence - From Domestic Abuse to Political Terror. New York: Basic Books, 2015. google scholar
14. Karadağ, Özlem. “Trauma on the Contemporary English Stage: Kane, Ravenhill, Ridley.” PhD diss., Istanbul University, 2013. google scholar
15. LaCapra, Dominick. Writing History Writing Trauma. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2014. google scholar
16. Laub, Dori. “An Event without a Witness: Truth, Testimony and Survival.” In Testimony: Crises of Witnessing in Literature, Psychoanalysis, and History, edited by S. Felman & D. Laub, 75-92. London: Routledge, 1992. google scholar
17. Laub, Dori. “Bearing Witness or the Vicissitudes of Listening.” In Testimony: Crises of Witnessing in Literature, Psychoanalysis, and History, edited by S. Felman & D. Laub, 57-74. London: Routledge, 1992. google scholar
18. Scott, Jill. Electra after Freud: Myth and Culture. Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2005. google scholar
19. Shaw, Katy. Hauntology: The Presence of the Past in Twenty-First Century English Literature. London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2018. google scholar
20. van der Kolk, Bessel, and Onno van der Hart. “The Intrusive Past: The Flexibility of Memory and the Engraving of Trauma.” In Trauma: Explorations in Memory, edited by Cathy Caruth, 158-182. Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1996. google scholar
21. Vrachiotis, Petros. “Medea, Clytemnestra and Antigone: A Psychological Approach according to the Tragedies and the Myths under the Frame of the Patriarchal Society.” In Tragic Heroines on Ancient and Modern Stage, edited by M. de F. Silva & S. H. Marques, 27-36. Coimbra: University of Coimbra, 2010. google scholar
22. Wiesel, Elie. “The Holocaust as a Literary Inspiration.” In Dimensions of the Holocaust, edited by E. Wiesel & L. S. Dawidowitz, et. al., 5-19. Evanston: Northwestern University Press, 1977. google scholar
23. Wolfe, Rachel M. E. “Woman, Tyrant, Mother, Murderess: An Exploration of the Mythic Character of Clytemnestra in All Her Forms.” Women’s Studies. 38(6), (2009): 692-719. http://dx.doi. org/10.1080/00497870903021554 google scholar
24. Wood Anderson, Sarah. Readings of Trauma, Madness, and the Body. London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2012. google scholar
25. Yazıcıoğlu, Sinem. “Intergenerational Transmission in the Age of Postmemory: Rebecca Makkai’s Music for Wartime.” Litera, 31(1), (2021): 75-94. https://doi.org/10.26650/LITERA2020-804480 google scholar