SÖMÜRGE ÇİFTLİĞİ NOSTALJİSİ: CYNTHIA SHEARER’IN THE CELESTIAL JUKEBOX ADLI ESERİNDE GÖÇ, EMEK, KUMARHANE İŞLETMESİ VE TARİHSEL TRAVMA

Son zamanlarda araştırmacılar edebiyatta göçmen işçi sorunsalına, özellikle de ABD Güney edebiyatında, oldukça yoğun bir ilgi göstermişlerdir. Bu çalışmalar Güney edebiyatında işçi sömürüsü ve iş şartları konusunda yoğunlaşmıştır. ABD’nin güney bölgesi Amerikan tecrübesinde emek ve işçi tarihi açısından bir istisna oluşturmaktadır çünkü bölge çok sayıda göçmen çekmekte ve bu göçmenler bölgenin ırk, sosyal ve ekonomik ilişkilerini değiştirmiş ve değiştirmeye devam etmektedir. Bugün göçmenler ve göçmen işçi sorunu popüler medyada, politikacılar ve bilim insanları arasında en tartışmalı konular arasında yer almaktadır. Bu tartışmalar sadece bu bölgeye özgün değildir ancak tarihi geçmişi, coğrafi konumu ve köleliği yaşayan bir anı olarak yeniden canlandırma arzusu nedeniyle, Güney, küresel bağlantıları göz önünde bulundurulunca, iş ve göçmen işçi tartışmalarında çok önemli bir yer teşkil etmektedir. The Celestial Jukebox (2005) adlı eserinde, Güneyli yazar Cynthia Shearer tarihsel süreciyle bağlantılı olarak işçi sömürüsünü eleştirmekte ve göçmenleri ülkeye zenginlik katacak kültürel çeşitlilik unsuru olarak görme eğilimindedir. Bu bağlamda, bu makalede Shearer’ın The Celestial Jukebox adlı eserinde mevcut evrensel kapitalizmin, kölelik ekonomisini sürdürme eğiliminde olan kumarhane işletmesinin, tarihi geçmişi olan emek sömürüsününün ve iş travmasının incelenmesi hedeflenmektedir.

Anahtar Kelimeler:

Sömürge çiftlikleri, nostalji, sömürü, kölelik ekonomisi

PLANTATION NOSTALGIA: IMMIGRATION, LABOR, CASINO INDUSTRY, AND HISTORICAL TRAUMA IN CYNTHIA SHEARER’S THE CELESTIAL JUKEBOX

Recently, scholars have devoted considerable attention to the study of labor in literature, and specifically in the literature of the U.S. South due to the region’s global connections and complicated history. These studies have given insights into material conditions and exploitation of labor in southern spaces. The South has been an exception to the American experience with its exceptional history of labor, as the region has attracted many immigrants to a labor force that shaped and continues to shape the racial, social, and economic relations in the region. Immigration and immigrant labor are some of the most controversial and popular discussion topics among mass media, politicians, and scholars today. These discussions are not region specific; yet due to its historical background, geographical location, and reconstructing plantation as a living memory, the U.S. South has a profound role in labor and immigration debates as one of the most prominent regions with deep-rooted global connections. Cynthia Shearer in her novel The Celestial Jukebox (2005) problematizes and challenges the idea of labor exploitation through historical contexts and tends to portray immigrants within the framework of cultural diversity and richness with liberal ideas of multiculturalism that acknowledge cultural differences contributing to the cultural diversity of the region. In this vein, this paper attempts to discuss the current condition of global capitalism, casino industry, immigrant labor, the role of historically rooted labor exploitation, and labor trauma in Cynthia Shearer’s The Celestial Jukebox.

Keywords:

Plantation nostalgia, exploitation, capitalism, slavery economy,

PDF

___

ADAMS, Jessica (2007). Wounds of Returning: Race, Memory, and Property on the Postslavery Plantation. Chapel Hill, NC: The University of North Carolina Press.
ALTINDIS, Huseyin (2015). "Immigrant Labor in Contemporary Southern Literature, 1980-2010" (Dissertation). Retrieved from ProQuest Dissertations and Theses database. (UMI No. 3688230).
APPADURAI, Arjun (1996).Modernity at Large: Cultural Dimensions of Globalization. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.
BACON, David (2008). “Black and Brown Together” The American Prospect.
BENITEZ- ROJO, Antonio (1998). The Repeating Island: The Caribbean and Postmodern Performance. trans. James E. Maraniss. Durham: Duke University Press.
BEST, Stephen M. (2004). The Fugitive’s Properties: Law and the Poetics of Possession. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
BOELHOWER, William (1981). “The Immigrant Novel as Genre,” MELUS 8 (1): 3-15.
BONE, Martyn (2010).“Narratives of African Immigration to the U.S. South: Dave Eggers’s What Is the What and Cynthia Shearer’s The Celestial Jukebox.” The New Centennial Review 10 (1): 65-76.
CLYNCH, Edward J. et al. (2006). “The Impact of Casino Gaming on Municipal Revenue, Expenditures, and Fiscal Health.” in Resorting to Casinos: The Mississippi Gambling Industry. ed. Denise Von Herrmann. Oxford: University of Mississippi Press: 81-101.
COBB, James C. (2005). “Beyond the ‘Y’All Wall’: The American South goes Global” in Globalization and theAmerican South. eds. James Cobb and William Stueck. Athens: University of Georgia Press: 1-19.
DAHL, Darren W. et al. (2009). “Sex in Advertising: Gender Differences and the Role fo Relationship Commitment” JCR 36 (2): 215-231.
FAULKNER, William (1938). Absalom, Absalom! New York: Vintage (1990).
FINDLAY, John M. (1986). People of Chance. New York: Oxford University Press.
GODDEN, Richard (1997). Fictions of Labor: William Faulkner and the South’s Long Revolution. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
GRAY, Richard (2011). After the Fall: American Literature since 9/11. New York: John Wiley & Sons.
HARVEY, David (2001). Spaces of Capital: Towards a Critical Geography. New York: Routledge. http://prospect.org/article/black-and-brown-together [15.04.2013].
KNIPPLING, Alpana Sharma (1996). Introduction. New Immigrant Literatures in the United States: A Sourcebook to Our Multicultural Literary Heritage. Ed. Alpana Sharma Knippling. Westport: Madagascar Press. Xiii-2.
LIPUMA, Edward and Benjamin Lee (2004). Financial Derivatives and the Globalization of Risk. Durham: Public Planet Books, Duke University Press.
MCPHERSON, Tara (2003). Reconstructing Dixie: Race, Gender, and Nostalgia in the Imagined South. Durham: Duke University Press.
MULLER, Gilbert H. (1999). New Strangers in Paradise: The Immigrant Experience and Contemporary American Fiction. Lexington: The University Press of Kentucky.
OLICK, Jeffrey (1999). “Collective Memory: The Two Cultures.” Sociological Theory 17 (3): 333-50.
POLANYI, Karl (2001). The Great Transformation. Boston: Beacon Press.
PURTY, Merle (1955). “The Renaissance of Southern Plantation.” Geographical Review. 45 (4): 459-91.
RICHARDSON, Robert D. (2006).William James: In the Maelstrom of American Modernism: a Biography. New York: Houghton Mifflin Company.
RIEFF, David (1993). “Multiculturalism’s Silent Partner: Is the Newly Globalized Consumer Economy Stupid.” Harper's: 62-72.
SALLAZ, Jeffrey J. (2009).The Labor of Luck: Casino Capitalism in the United States and South Africa. California: University of California Press.
SHEARER, Cynthia (2005).The Celestial Jukebox. A Novel. Athens: The University of Georgia Press.
SUÁREZ-OROZCO, Carola (2007). “Globalization, Immigration, and Education: Recent US Trends.” Globalization and Education: Proceedings of the Joint Working Group, eds. Marcelo Sánchez Sorondo, Edmond Malinvaud, and Pierre Léna. Berlin: Germany: Hubert & Co,: 93-126.
TAYLOR, Melanie Benson (2008). Disturbing Calculations: The Economics of Identity in Postcolonial Southern Literature, 1912-2002. Athens: University of Georgia Press.