Eco, Golding’in Geçiş Ayinleri ve Varoluşun Sınırlarını Aşmak

William Golding’in Geçiş Ayinleri (1980) adlı romanı, bilişsel, ontolojik ve göndergesel sınırlarla çevrilmiş ve bunlarla mücadele eden insanlık deneyiminin derinliklerini keşfetmektedir. Edmund Talbot’u ve James Colley’i Avustralya’ya bir ekvator geçiş yolculuğunda tasvir ederek, Golding, Colley’in ölümünün tezahür ettiği insan varoluşunu sınırlandıran ve sınırlayan çizgilerin ötesinde yatan karanlığın olduğunu vurgulamaktadır. Böylelikle, Geçiş Ayinleri adlı romanı, Umberto Eco’nun “sözleşmesel gerçekçilik” teorisi üzerine yazıldığı Kant ve Ornitorenk: Dil ve Biliş Hakkında Denemeler (1999) adlı eser ile bağdaşmaktadır ve bir kültürel sözleşme çerçevesinde varlığın özünü sorgulayan insanoğlunun bazı şeyleri yapmaya yasaklandığı iddia etmektedir. Bu makale, Umberto Eco’nun “sözleşmesel gerçekçilik” teorisi ışığında William Golding’in Geçiş Ayinleri adlı romanının tematik bir incelemesini sunmaktadır.

Eco, Golding’s Rites of Passage and Breaching the Limits of Being

William Golding’s novel Rites of Passage (1980) explores the depths of human experience, absorbed in and struggling against the cognitive, ontological and referential limits inherent in its essence. By portraying Edmund Talbot and James Colley on an equator-crossing voyage to Australia, Golding emphasizes the fact that it is darkness that lies beyond the lines that systemize and limit human existence, which is manifested by Colley’s death. In this way, Rites of Passage comports with Umberto Eco’s theory of ‘contractual realism’, elaborated in Kant and the Platypus: Essays on Language and Cognition (1999), in a sense that it asserts that within a framework of a cultural contract, there are certain things that we as human beings are vetoed from doing in our inquiry after the essence of Being. This article provides a thematic examination of William Golding’s novel Rites of Passage in the light of Umberto Eco’s theory of ‘contractual realism’.

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