BETWEEN PROXIMITY AND DISTANCE: HUMANITARIANISM AND DARK TOURISM IN TONY KUSHNER’S HOMEBODY/KABUL

Sömürgecilik döneminde yapılan emperyalist seyahatler, 21. yüzyılda hümanitarizm seyahati, insani yardım ve karanlık turizm olarak yeniden şekil almışlardır. Karanlık turizm, yalnızca Batılıların oryantalizme olan açlığını bastırmakla ve bölgeyi marjinal ve egzotik olarak tanımlamakla yetinmez; aynı zamanda bu seyahatteki turistik amaçları da ortaya koyar. Bu makalede, tiyatro türünün doğrudanlığından yola çıkarak, tiyatronun, tıpkı karanlık turizmde olduğu gibi, ötekiyle olan ilişkisinde yakınlık ve uzaklık arasına sıkışmış çelişkili bir uzamsal ilişkisi olduğunu tartışacağım. Bu bağlamda, üstkurmaca kavramını sahneleyen Amerikalı yazar Tony Kushner'in 2001 yapımı oyunu Homebody/Kabil tiyatronun görselliğinin altını çizer ve gerçek-kurmaca ve yakınlık-uzaklık arasındaki bir ilişkinin sınırlarını daha da bulandırır. Bu özgöndergelilik sayesinde oyun, hem aktris ve izleyici arasında bir uzaklık yaratır, hem de seyirciden empati bekleyen uzaktaki bir hikayeyi anlattığı için ikisi arasında yakınlık kurar. İki bölüm olarak yazılan bu makale, ilk önce karanlık turizm kavramını ve tiyatronun onunla nasıl örtüştüğünü irdeleyecek, sonra da Tony Kushner'in oyununun bu kavramlar ışığında detaylı bir okumasını yapacaktır

UZAKLIK VE YAKINLIK ARASINDA: TONY KUSHNER’IN HOMEBODY/KABIL OYUNUNDA HÜMANİTARİZM VE KARANLIK TURİZM

Colonial adventures and imperialistic travels have taken a new pattern as in the cases of humanitarian travel and dark tourism in the twenty-first century. Dark tourism not only satisfies Western individual’s hunger for orientalism labeling the touristic site a marginal and exotic landscape, but also uncovers the touristic undercurrents involved in the voyage. In this article, by utilizing the immediacy of the theatre genre, I argue that dramatic literature shares similar ambivalent spatial relations with humanitarian travel in that they both locate themselves between proximity and remoteness in their relation to the other. Similarly, by staging metatheatrical aspects, Tony Kushner’s 2001 play Homebody/Kabul underlines the spectral feature of theatre blurring the distinction between reality and performance, distance and closeness. Thanks to this self-referentiality, the play creates a distance between the actress and the spectator and, simultaneously, establishes a bond through the protagonist’s endeavor to present a remote story that instigates empathy from the audience. Written in two sections, my article first explores the concept of dark tourism and the genre’s overlap with this ambiguous relationship between distance and proximity in humanitarianism, and then does a close reading of Tony Kushner’s Homebody/Kabul

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