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Çankaya University the Graduate School of Social Sciences English Literature and Cultural Studies

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Çankaya University the Graduate School of Social Sciences English Literature and Cultural Studies ÇANKAYA UNIVERSITY THE GRADUATE SCHOOL OF SOCIAL SCIENCES ENGLISH LITERATURE AND CULTURAL STUDIES CONFIGURATION OF ALTERNATIVE SPACES THROUGH PERFORMATIVE AND NOMADIC ACTS IN DORIS LESSING’S SHORT FICTION Ph.D. Dissertation ÖZGE GÜVENÇ JULY 2018 ABSTRACT CONFIGURATION OF ALTERNATIVE SPACES THROUGH PERFORMATIVE AND NOMADIC ACTS IN DORIS LESSING’S SHORT FICTION GÜVENÇ, ÖZGE Department of English Literature and Cultural Studies Ph.D. Dissertation Supervisor: Assoc. Prof. Dr. Özlem Uzundemir July 2018, 255 pages Doris Lessing is a protean author of the twentieth century due to her experimental writing style and a diversity of issues, ranging from race and ethnicity to class and gender. The richness in the material and form of her writing can also be traced in how she values spaces in her fiction set in Africa and England: wild nature, cultivated settler lands and homesteads in the African continent as well as a variety of closed, open and transitory spaces in the city, gain importance with respect to human intervention. Her two collections of African stories – This Was the Old Chief’s Country and The Sun Between Their Feet; two collections of stories set in Europe and England – To Room Nineteen: Collected Stories and The Temptation of Jack Orkney: Collected Stories; and finally, one collection of stories and sketches London Observed lend themselves to an analysis based on the relationship between space and gender. Within the framework of recent theories of space by Henri Lefebvre and Edward Soja, which are related to Judith Butler’s and Rosi Braidotti’s theories on performativity and nomadism, this dissertation discusses to what extent both genders, particularly women, help to constitute an alternative mode of thinking about private/closed, public/open and transitory spaces, and transform them into lived/social ones based on experience, appropriation and movement. For this purpose, in each chapter the stories in each iv collection are classified in terms of space and one narrative from that collection is analysed in detail. The variety of spaces in the stories – from the smallest unit to the largest scale – chosen for textual analyses mark at not only the physical parameters of space where everyday activities take place as well as the thoughts regarding social codes and norms that shape human behaviours and social relations, but also the possibilities of configuring these spaces in new ways through the characters’ performative and nomadic acts. In addition, this dissertation also discusses the gradual change in the concept of home from one story to another. “The De Wets Come to Kloof Grange” depicts the appropriation of the private house of a family as a home-country-like space and its transformation into a social space for all inhabitants such as the children, the adolescents and the adults in “Getting off the Altitude”. The stories set in England demonstrate how the meaning of home changes from a semi-open space in “A Woman on a Roof” to temporary spaces in “An Old Woman and Her Cat”. Finally, transitory spaces like a taxi and a city are discussed in “Storms” from London Observed. Through these discussions, space is revealed to be a fluid entity changing with social intervention. Keywords: Doris Lessing, Thirdspace, Social Space, Nomad, Gender Performativity v ÖZ DORIS LESSING’İN KISA ÖYKÜLERİNDE PERFORMATİF CİNSİYET ROLLERİ VE GÖÇEBE EYLEMLER YOLUYLA ALTERNATİF MEKANLARIN YARATILMASI GÜVENÇ, ÖZGE İngiliz Edebiyatı ve Kültür İncelemeleri Doktora Tezi Tez Yöneticisi: Doç. Dr. Özlem Uzundemir Temmuz 2018, 255 sayfa Doris Lessing farklı konuları deneysel yazı biçimleriyle ele alarak kendini sürekli keşfeden ve geliştiren çok yönlü bir yirminci yüzyıl yazarıdır. Eserlerindeki içerik ve biçim zenginliği aynı zamanda yaşadığı mekanlara nasıl değer verdiğini de gösterir. Yazarın çoğu roman ve öykülerinin Afrika ve İngiltere’de geçiyor olması yazarın hem bir çocuk hem de bir yetişkin olarak bu iki ülkedeki deneyimleriyle yakından ilgilidir. Lessing, Afrika kıtasında bulunan vahşi doğa, ekilen sömürge toprakları ve çiftlik evleri ile Avrupa şehirlerindeki geçici mekanlarda geçen öykülerinde sömürgecilik, ırkçılık, ulusallık, sınıf ve cinsiyet konularını tartışır. Bu açıdan yaklaşıldığında, öykü kitaplarının – Burası Yaşlı Şefin Ülkesiydi, The Sun Between Their Feet (Ayaklarının Arasındaki Güneş), On Dokuz Numaralı Oda, Jack Orkney’nin Günaha Çağrılışı ve Londra Gözlemleri: Öyküler ve Taslaklar – mekan ve cinsiyet ilişkisi çerçevesinde incelenmesinin mümkün olduğu görülmektedir. Bu tez her iki cinsiyetin, özellikle de kadın kahramanların, performatif ve göçebe eylemler yoluyla, özel ve kamu alanları ve geçici yerleri nasıl sınırları olan kısıtlayıcı mekan anlayışından alternatif mekanlara dönüştürdüklerini, Henri Lefebvre ve Edward Soja’nın mekan, Judith Butler’ın performatif cinsiyet ve Rosi Braidotti’nin göçebe kimlik kuramları kapsamında tartışmayı amaçlamaktadır. Bu amaç doğrultusunda, her vi bölümde ele alınan kitaptaki öyküler mekan açısından sınıflandırıldıktan sonra aynı kitaptan bir öykü seçilerek ayrıntılı olarak incelenir. Analiz için seçilen öykülerdeki farklı mekanlar sadece günlük aktivitelerin gerçekleştirildiği yerlerin fiziksel özellikleriyle birlikte insanların davranışlarını ve sosyal ilişkilerini şekillendiren toplumsal norm ve değerleri yansıtmakla kalmaz, aynı zamanda bu mekanların nasıl yeni biçimlerde yaratılabileceğini gösterir. Bununla beraber, bu tez ev kavramının öyküden öyküye nasıl aşamalı bir şekilde değiştiğini tartışır. Afrika öykülerinden “The De Wets Come to Kloof Grange” başlıklı öykü, aileye ait özel bir evin İngiltere’deki gibi yapılandırılmasını gösterirken, “Getting off the Altitude” böyle bir evin çocuklar, ergenler ve yetişkinler için nasıl sosyal bir mekana dönüştüğünü sergiler. İngiltere’de geçen öyküler ise ev anlayışının kapalı ve özel mekandan açık mekanlara doğru evrildiğini inceler. “A Woman on a Roof” başlıklı öykü bir kadının apartman çatısını evi gibi kullanarak kişiselleştirdiğini anlatırken, “An Old Woman and Her Cat” ev kavramının aidiyet duygusundan arındırılıp geçici bir barınma mekanına dönüştürüldüğünü sergiler. “Storms” adlı öykü ise taksi ve şehir gibi geçici mekanlarla insanlar arasındaki ilişkiyi ön plana çıkarır. Anahtar Kelimeler: Doris Lessing, Alternatif Mekan, Sosyal Mekan, Göçebe Kimlik, Performatif Cinsiyet Rolleri vii To My Daughter, Ecem Güvenç, and My Mother, Merih Üstündağ, who have made it all possible viii ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS Without the guide, help, support, faith and love of my professors, friends and family, writing this Ph.D. dissertation would not have been possible because it was really a challenging and long process. Hence, I would like to thank my thesis committee members, Assoc. Prof. Dr. Özlem Uzundemir, Assoc. Prof. Dr. Johann Pillai and Assoc. Prof. Dr. Nurten Birlik, who have contributed to my research with their invaluable comments and sincere encouragement. It has been a great pleasure to meet them once every six months for three years and discuss the chapters of my dissertation. I would like to express my gratitude, first and foremost, to my supervisor, Assoc. Prof. Dr. Özlem Uzundemir, for her intellectual guidance, inspiring suggestions, meticulous feedback and particularly for her patience in reading my drafts thoroughly over and over again. It would have been impossible to complete this study, had it not been her always encouraging and positive supervision. She has been my inspiration and an exemplary academician as she is hard-working, creative, innovative and open-minded. It has been a pleasure and an invaluable experience to write this dissertation under her guidance. I am also deeply indebted to Assoc. Prof. Dr. Johann Pillai, who has taught me how to read a text word by word by exploring every layer of meaning, connecting ideas and rewriting the text from my own perspective. He has always been a source of knowledge, criticism and new thoughts for me. I would also like to thank Assoc. Prof. Dr. Nurten Birlik for her positive and reassuring attitude in every stage of this dissertation. Her constructive criticism and insightful suggestions have clarified my scope and improved my dissertation in meaningful ways. I wish to express my gratitude to Prof. Dr. Aytül Özüm and Assist. Prof. Dr. Fatma Neslihan Ekmekçioğlu for their invaluable comments and contributions for improvement. My thanks are also forwarded to Prof. Dr. Ertuğrul Koç, who has encouraged ix me to start this Ph.D. programme and provided me with moral support for years. I extend my sincere thanks to Assist. Prof. Dr. Mustafa Kırca for offering me the opportunity to work as his assistant in Foreign Languages Department and for his positive attitude. I always feel grateful to Halide Aral, who has been a respectable academician and intellectual for me since my graduate years at Hacettepe University. She has provided me with academic guidance during the preparations for doctoral proficiency exam and has encouraged me with all her heart and has been a great moral support. I want to express my deepest thanks to my best and dearest friends Nimet Mine Baskan and Pelin Köseoğlu whom I have known for twenty years. Nimet Mine Baskan has always made me smile, feel safe and comfortable. She has been a source of relief and happiness at hardest times. She has encouraged me to be confident in my career path and also contributed much to this dissertation by reading my papers and listening to my talks over and over again. We have stood shoulder to shoulder not only during my Ph.D. process but
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