Agatha Christie'nin "Bağdat’a Geldiler" Adlı Romanında Duygulanım, Uzamsal Bağlantılar ve Kentsel Uzam

Agatha Christie’nin casusluk hikâyelerine örnek teşkil eden Bağdat’a Geldiler (1951) adlı romanı, Soğuk Savaş döneminin ilk safhalarında, uluslararası diplomatik çatışmalara ve Irak petrol rezervleri üzerindeki gizli savaşa da ışık tutan siyasi bir arka plana sahip olmakla birlikte türsel açıdan bir gerilim hikâyesi olarak da ele alınabilir. Romanın sahneleri, casus kovalamacalarından Orta Doğu’daki arkeolojik kazı alanlarına, gülünç bir aşk hikâyesinden cinayet öyküsüne beklenmedik bir hızla geçiş yapmakta, Christie’nin alışılageldik dedektif öykülerinden farklılaşmaktadır. Agatha Christie’nin romanları türsel açıdan çeşitli çalışmalara konu olmuştur ancak, bu çalışma, söz konusu romana türsel ve biçemsel açıdan incelemek yerine, uzam kuramlarını kullanarak Orta Doğu’nun konumlandırılışını incelemeyi hedeflemektedir. Öykünün uzamı, hikâyenin ana kahramanı Victoria Jones’un kültürel ve toplumsal sınırları aşmasına imkân sağlamakla birlikte, Bağdat’ta konuşlanan uluslararası güç odaklarının planlarını aydınlatma konusunda imkan sağlamaktadır. Bu çalışma, Nigel Thrift’in şehir, birey ve duygulanım arasındaki ilişkiye dikkat çektiği çalışmalarına dayanarak, Bağdat’ı “akışkan bir şehir” olarak incelemekte, romanın türsel özellikleriyle de örtüşen korku, kuşku, kaygı, güvenlik ihtiyacı, yer-yön kaybı gibi uzam (space) ve beden (corporeality) arasındaki duygulanımsal bağları (affective relations) incelemeyi hedeflemektedir.

Anahtar Kelimeler:

Agatha Christie, Duygulanım, Uzamsal Duygulanım, Kentsel Mekan, Bağdat

Affect, Spatial Practices, and the City in Agatha Christie's "They Came to Baghdad"

They Came to Baghdad (1951), one of Agatha Christie’s mid-career books, could be categorized as a political thriller that unravels the ideological conflicts during the early Cold War period and the fight over Iraqi oil reserves. The scenes of the novel, like an adventure movie alters from a spy hunt to an archaeological theme, then to a romance, and finally a murder story and a thriller, in which fear comes up unexpectedly. Particularly, the setting provides the grounds for the female protagonist of the novel, Victoria Jones, to cross cultural and social boundaries and explore the space as a naïve pseudo-spy working for the international forces in Baghdad. By the lens of Nigel Thrift’s concept of “affective cities” and “spatialities of feeling,” this paper aims to explore how the setting of the novel—Baghdad—creates an intensive field of conflicting cultural and social forces that inscribe the female body, which runs in parallel with the narrative tactics Christie uses in revealing the affective emplacements of fear, suspicion, increasing levels of anxiety and insecurity in the cityscape. This paper, in other words, offers a spatial analysis of the novel in order to explore how the cityscape is mobilized and altered by the shifting perceptions of it by Victoria Jones while she defies the patriarchal demarcations of space. Through her adventures, it becomes possible to comprehend how power is distributed and circulated within this Middle Eastern society.

Keywords:

Affect, spatialities of feeling, Agatha Christie, Baghdad, Urban Space,

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