Reading The Penelopiad through Irigaray: Rewriting Female Subjectivity

Bu makale Margaret Atwood'un 2005 yılında yayınladığı The Penelopiad adlı romanını Luce Irigaray'ın dişi özne ve ataerkil ve anaerkil kültürlerin çatışma alanı olarak mitolojinin yeniden okunması tartışması bağlamında inceleyektir. The Penelopiad Penelope'ye ve Odysseus'un Ithake'ye dönüşünde katlettiği Penelope'nin on iki hizmetçisine özne konumunu verir ve epik şiiri bir de onların dilinden bakış açısından dinleriz. Odesa'daki sessiz karakterlerin kalemi eline aldığı, çeşitli yazın türlerinin bir kolajı olan bu romanda, tür, cinsiyet, dil sorunsalları bir araya gelir ve yeni bir özne ve cinsiyet paradigması ortaya çıkar. Bu yeniden yazımda ortaya çıkan Odesa anlatısının bastırdığı, varlığını inkar ettiği farklı bir özne ve cinsiyet kavramına işaret eden ataerkil kültür öncesi anaerkil bir toplum yapısıdır. Bu yeni özne anlayışı da Luce Irigaray'ın, hümanizmin erkek egemen, tekil ve tek sesli öznesine alternatif olarak sunduğu dişi özne anlayışına benzer; çoğul ama cinsiyet farklılığının farkında olan bir öznedir. Roman böylece erkek egemen öznenin dayandığı temelleri sarsar ve bizi bir kez daha 1990'larda başlayan, feminist eleştirmenlerle ve Derrida'nın izinden giden yapısökümcü eleştirmenleri karşı karşıya getiren dişi özne tartışmalarını gözden geçirmeye davet eder. Margaret Atwood bu romanında, kadınların özne konumuna erişmelerinin temsil ve güç ilişkilerini sorgulamaya olanak sağlayan yeni bir dil ve edebiyat üretebileceğini gösteriyor

The Penelopiad’ı Irigaray ile Okumak : Dişi Öznenin Yeniden Yazımı

This article analyzes Margaret Atwood’s 2005 novel The Penelopiad in the light of Luce Irigaray’s argument of female subjectivity and re-interpretation of mythology as the site of the representation of patriarchal power turnover and suppression of matriarchal cultures. Giving subject positions to silent agents and using various genres, The Penelopiad brings together gender, genre and language in such a way that results in a paradigm shift in conceptualizing subjectivity and sexuality in a similar vein that Luce Irigaray calls for. Reconstructing the silent characters such as Penelope and her twelve maids whom Odysseus murders upon his return to Ithaca in The Odyssey, Atwood unfolds the traces of a previous socio-economic structure’s existence and its suppression in the epic. Revealing history in myth and myth in history, she criticizes patriarchy through its exclusions and suppression of female traditions that indicate a different construction of sexuality and subjectivity in prepatriarchal cultures. The novel destabilizes the foundations of the male subject, which occasions revisiting the controversial issue of female subjectivity that has produced an immense amount of literature since the 1990s with the rise of deconstructionist criticism. Atwood’s text shows that women’s claim to a subject position helps produce a different language and literature that allows for the exploration of suppression and representation

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