T. C. İstanbul Üniversitesi Sosyal Bilimler Enstitüsü Batı Dilleri ve Edebiyatları Anabilim Dalı İngiliz Dili ve Edebiyatı Bilim Dalı Doktora Tezi Postfeminist Discourse in Shakespeare’s The Tempest and Warner’s Indigo : Ambivalence, Liminality and Plurality Natali Esayan 2502020014 Tez Danı şmanı Prof. Dr. Esra Meliko ğlu İstanbul, 2008 “Postfeminist Discourse in Shakespeare’s The Tempest and Warner’s Indigo : Ambivalence, Liminality and Plurality ” Natali Esayan ÖZ Salt us kavramı ekseninde, düzen, çeli şkisizlik, düzçizgisellik ve birörneklik arayı şını ifade eden özcülük yönelimli egemen söylemler, ötekiler üzerinde kurmaya çalı ştıkları hakimiyetlerini me şru kılabilmek için var olan tek ‘do ğru’yu yansıttıklarını iddia ederler. Aslen Batı metafizi ğinin ürünü olan bu gelenekle ele ştirel bir ili şki kuran postmodern felsefeye göre ise, tüm gerçekli ğimizi kendisi de kaygan, de ğişken ve çok anlamlı olan dil belirledi ğinden, tutarlı bir gerçeklikten veya özden bahsedilemez. Feminizm sonrası, postmodernizm eksenli feminist söylem de, bu gelene ği erkek özneyi merkezine aldı ğı ve Irigaray’in deyimiyle “ana katli” üzerine in şa edildi ği gerekçesiyle ayrıca ele ştirir. Bu söylem, edebiyat alanında metinlerarasılı ğı bir strateji olarak kullanıp temelde ikircikli ği, aradalı ğı ve ço ğullu ğu yücelten yeni bir ahlak ve bakı ş açısı arayı şındadır. Kadınlık ve ötekilik temsillerini merkezine alan bu çalı şma öncelikle, bu üç temel kavramın farklı imalarını feminizm ve sömürgecilik sonrası söylemlerin ortak paydalarıyla olan ilintileri kapsamında irdeledikten sonra, William Shakespeare’in The Tempest adlı tiyatro eserini ve onun feminizm sonrası söylem açısından yeniden yazımı olan Marina Warner’ın Indigo, or Mapping the Waters adlı romanını bu ba ğlamda hem birer edebiyat eseri olarak hem de siyaseten kar şıla ştırmalı olarak incelemektedir. Disiplinlerarası bir bakı ş açısına sahip bu çalı şma, The Tempest ’ın zımni yazarının, ataerkil ve sömürgeci söylemlerle ili şkisi ba ğlamında kendi kendini yapıbozuma u ğratan bir tutum içinde oldu ğunu; kadınlık ve ötekilik temsillerinin sembolik veya bedensel olarak varlık gösterdi ği her alanda, eril öznenin kurmaya çalı ştı ğı mutlak iktidarının a şındı ğını; Indigo ’nun yeniden yazdı ğı tiyatro eseriyle hem bir benzerlik hem de tehdit ili şkisi içinde oldu ğunu öne sürmektedir. iii ABSTRACT Denoting a search for order, non-contradiction, linearity and singularity revolving around absolute reason, essentialism-oriented dominant discourses claim to be reflecting the ‘truth’ to legitimise their attempts to dominate others. Engaged in a critical relationship with this tradition as a by-product of Western metaphysics, postmodernism claims absolute truth no longer exists, for all truth is determined by language, itself slippery, fluid and ambiguous. Postfeminism further criticises the said tradition for centralising the male subject and hinging itself upon what Irigaray dubs “the murder of the mother.” In the literary vein, postfeminist discourse is in search for a new ethics and perspective that mainly champion ambivalence, liminality and plurality through the employment of intertextuality as a strategy. Taking as its focus representations of femininity and the other, this study first scrutinises the various implications of these three concepts in terms of their relevance for the conjunctures of postfeminism and post-colonialism, then carries out a comparative analysis of William Shakespeare’s The Tempest and its postfeminist rewriting Marina Warner’s Indigo, or Mapping the Waters within this context in terms of both poetics and politics. Informed by interdisciplinarity, this study proposes that the implied author of The Tempest destabilises the text, inviting a deconstructionist reading in terms of his relation to patriarchal and colonial dynamics ingrained in the play; that the absolute authority the male subject endeavours to establish erodes wherever representations of femininity or the other are symbolically or corporeally present; and that Indigo is at once resemblance and menace to its mother-text. iv PREFACE Undertaking any kind of analysis of Shakespeare’s play The Tempest , similarly with his other major plays, is quite a feat today, considering the extensive amount of studies already carried out on it. This fact notwithstanding, studying the play through a postfeminist and post-colonialist lens, as this study aims to do, has proven highly rewarding. This stems as much from the subtleties and ambiguities underlying The Tempest as from the fact that despite the ever-burgeoning interest in the play, examples of postfeminist reading into it are relatively few, and that, as its corollary, the nature of the relationship between female or feminised figures, and the lack thereof, has remained largely underexplored. Marina Warner’s novel Indigo, or Mapping the Waters fleshes out the characters and themes from The Tempest , which still retains its power that derives from a subtle exploration of the issues of exploitation, slavery and racism. The significance of Indigo primarily lies in the fact that it is one of the most comprehensive rewritings of the play from a postfeminist and post-colonialist angle, ‘reconstructing’ the geography-specific experiences of colonisation as experienced by both offenders and victims, in search of both poetic and political justice, as one may would call it. The novel contests the possibility of reconciliation between both ‘ends’, which is an ethical concern. Indigo is also the only rewriting penned by a ‘white’ British woman writer. Within this respect, the idea of eliciting what a writer ‘from the centre’ had to say about the very centre she closely belonged to was admittedly seductive: Warner is the great-grand-grand-daughter of Sir Thomas Warner, who established the first British colony in the Caribbean in 1624. Diverse forms of ambivalence, liminality and plurality have been employed as the central axes upon which to centre the study in so far as they lie within the scope of the conjunctures between postfeminism and post-colonialism. These three elements are addressed in terms of politics and poetics, which is informed by the ontological status of these texts, the poetics of Indigo being more accentuated. Any exploration that concerns itself with these terms within the framework of postfeminist discourse inevitably takes symbolic or non-symbolic representations of femininity and the feminised other into its scope, and so does this study. v I would like to take this opportunity to express my happiness for having had the privilege to complete this study at a department which has fostered my appreciation of literature itself, and to thank quite a few people who have contributed to the completion of this study throughout what seemed to be a never-ending process. Above all, I owe a great debt to my advisor and chair Professor Esra Meliko ğlu. In marathon correspondence, she provided appreciative and tough- minded feedback, which strengthened me and my study. I must express my gratitude also for the time she allocated. I am likewise indebted to Professor Zeynep Ergun for her belief in my work crowned by her generous and encouraging words. Associate Professor Murat Seçkin has always been there for me for the last fifteen years without always making it apparent. I am deeply grateful for that. I also wish to thank Professor Sibel A. Arkonaç for her contributions during the Ph.D. advisory committee meetings. Along the way, several friends of mine have been supportive in ways for which I am grateful. Lecturer Dr. Leyla im şek (Department of Sociology, Marmara University) has given me the constant benefit of her intellectual insight. Research Assistant Özlem Gülgün Güner (Department of English Language and Literature, Beykent University) recommended me a book on the rhetoric of narrative, which was instrumental in provoking my thoughts on the subject. Research Assistant Dr. Zeynep Bilge (Department of English Language and Literature, Istanbul University) has given me bureaucratic support during times of crisis to make them seem like “merely tempests in a teapot.” I would like to thank Lecturer İrem Konca Üstünsöz, Lecturer Esra Birkan Baydan and Lecturer Ba şak Ergil, my colleagues from the Department of Translation and Interpreting Studies, Marmara University. I thoroughly enjoy our inspiring conversations. My parents, Ani and Karekin Boğosyan, have always actively supported my academic endeavours. I am deeply grateful to both. Markar Esayan has been everything I could have dreamt of in a husband and a fellow traveller: as well as willingly catering for me, he has engaged in prolonged “Socratean dialogues” with me on every matter, especially on ‘encounters’ and hybridity. Not least, Cudig, my pet name for my four-year-old niece, deserves a special thank-you for trying hard to understand my long absences. She has already learnt to ‘wait’. vi CONTENTS Öz / Abstract ........................................................................................................... iii Preface ................................................................................................................... v Contents ................................................................................................................. vii Introduction ............................................................................................................. 1 Chapter 1. The Tempest : A Dialogic Medium of the Patriarchal Text and Matriarchal Texts .......…………………………………………………