White is For Witching: A Postcolonial Gothic

Yıl 2023, Cilt: 21 Sayı: 2, 321 - 331, 24.06.2023

Reyhan Özer Taniyan

https://doi.org/10.18026/cbayarsos.1276598

Öz

In White is for Witching (2009), Helen Oyeyemi defamiliarizes traditional narratives, subverts the classical doctrines and inserts recent issues. Although her novels are mostly read within the scope of gothic literature, she introduces ethnic mythology and folklore that provide myriad perspectives. As well as incorporating the traditional gothic features, Oyeyemi draws from the cultural motifs of her Nigerian roots to highlight the recurring patterns of immigration, coexistence, and integration in English history. Using the vocabulary and the pattern of gothic narration, the novel constructs a postcolonial story to question the xenophobic tendencies of the English nation as a legacy of the colonial era that endures today through immigration policies. Therefore, in this article, I read the novel as a postcolonial gothic criticising the xenophobic concerns of pure white Englishness against racial others and immigrants labelled as invaders of English identity through the elements of cultural gothic.

Anahtar Kelimeler

Helen Oyeyemi, xenophobia, Gothic, Soucouyant

Beyaz Cadı Avında: Postkolonyal Bir Gotik

Öz

Helen Oyeyemi, Beyaz Cadı Avında (2009), geleneksel anlatıları yabancılaştırır, klasik doktrinleri alt üst eder ve eserine gündemi ekler. Romanları daha çok gotik edebiyat kapsamında okunsa da etnik mitoloji ve folkloru da içine alarak sayısız bakış açısı sağlar. Oyeyemi, geleneksel gotik özellikleri birleştirmenin yanı sıra, İngiliz tarihinde tekrar eden göç, bir arada yaşama ve entegrasyon modellerini vurgulamak için kültürel motiflerinden de yararlanır. Gotik söz dağarcığını ve anlatım modelini kullanan roman, İngiliz ulusunun yabancı düşmanı eğilimlerini, günümüzde göç politikalarıyla devam eden sömürge döneminin bir mirası olarak sorgulamak için sömürge sonrası bir hikaye inşa eder. Bu nedenle, bu makale, romanı, kültürel gotik unsurları aracılığıyla İngiliz kimliğinin işgalcileri olarak etiketlenen ırksal ötekilere ve göçmenlere karşı saf beyaz İngilizliğin yabancı düşmanı endişelerini eleştiren bir postkolonyal gotik olarak yorumlamaktadır.

Anahtar Kelimeler

Helen Oyeyemi, Yabancı Düşmanlığı, Gotik, Cadı Vampir

Kaynakça

• Arata, S. D. (1990). The Occidental tourist: Dracula and the anxiety of reverse colonization. Victorian Studies 33(4), 621-45.
• Brantlinger, P. (2006). Imperial Gothic. A. Powell and A. Smith (Eds.), Teaching the Gothic (p. 153-167). New York: Palgrave Macmillan.
• Botting, F. (1996). Gothic. London: Routledge.
• Buckley, C. and Ilott, S. (2017). Introduction. C. Buckley and S. Ilott (Eds.), Telling it slant : critical approaches to Helen Oyeyemi (p. 1-22). Brighton: Sussex Academic Press.
• Burton, K. (2017). ‘Why do people go to these places, these places that are not for them?’: (De)constructing Borders in White Is for Witching and The Opposite House. B. Chloé and S. Ilott (Eds.), Telling it slant : critical approaches to Helen Oyeyemi (p. 74-92). Brighton: Sussex Academic Press.
• Cousins, H. (2012). Helen Oyeyemi and the Yoruba gothic: White is for Witching. The Journal of Commonwealth Literature 47(1) 47–58 . DOI: 10.1177/0021989411431672
• Deleuze, G. and Guattari, F. (1987). A thousand plateaus. Brian Massumi (Trans). Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.
• Ellis, A. B. (1894). Chapter VI. Egungun, Oro, Abiku, and various superstitions. Yoruba-Speaking Peoples of the Slave Coast of West Africa. Available at: https://www.sacred-texts.com/afr/yor/yor07.htm
• Gadsby, M. M. (2006). Sucking salt: Caribbean women writers, migration, and survival. Colombia: University of Missouri Press.
• Hughes, W. and Smith A. (2009). ‘Introduction: Queering the Gothic’, Hughes, William, and Andrew Smith (eds), Queering the Gothic, Manchester: Manchester University Press, pp. 1–10.
• Höglund, J. (2005). Gothic haunting empire. M. H. Troy and E. Wennö (Eds.) Memory, Haunting, Discourse (p. 243-254). Karlstad: Karlstad University Press.
• Ilott, S. (2015). New postcolonial british genres: Shifting the boundaries. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan.
• Khair, T. (2009). The Gothic, postcolonialism and otherness: Ghosts from elsewhere. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan.
• Ng, A. H. (2007), Interrogating Interstices: Gothic Aesthetics in Postcolonial Asian and Asian American Literature, Oxford and New York: Peter Lang.
• Oyeyemi, H. (2009). White Is for Witching. HH Canada, Penguin Group, epub.
• Paravisini-Gebert, L. (2002). Colonial and postcolonial gothic: The Caribbean. J. E. Hogle (Ed.). The Cambridge Companion to Gothic Fiction. Cambridge: Cambridge Collections Online. DOI: 10.1017/CCOL0521791243
• Rudd, A. (2010). Postcolonial gothic fictions from the Caribbean, Canada, Australia, and New Zealand. Wales: University of Wales Press.
• Sage, V. and Smith, A. L. (1996). Introduction. V. Sage and A. L. Smith (eds). Modern Gothic: A Reader (p. 1-5). Manchester: Manchester University Press.
• Schmitt, C. (1997). Alien nation: Nineteenth-Century gothic fictions and english nationality. Philadelphia, PA: University of Pennsylvania Press.
• Ware, V. (2009). The white fear factor. E. Boehmer and S. Morton (Eds.). Terror and the Postcolonial (p. 99-112). Chichester: Wiley-Blackwell.