BEN JONSON’IN VOLPONE’SİNDE ERKEN DÖNEM İNGİLİZ KAPİTALİZMİNİN POSTHÜMANİST HAYVAN METAFORLARI YOLUYLA ELEŞTİRİSİ

Year 2024, Volume: 64 Issue: 1, 228 - 247, 25.06.2024

Türkan Yılmaz

https://doi.org/10.33171/dtcfjournal.2024.64.1.10

Abstract

Ben Jonson’ın Volpone (1606) adlı oyunu, insanın doğuştan gelen rasyonel kapasitesine dair çeşitli örtülü veya açık göndermelerle dolu olsa da aslında eğitilmiş insan aklının cüretkâr uç edimlerine inanan, ağırlıklı olarak Avrupa merkezci ve çoğunlukla insan merkezci Rönesans hümanist reformu ülkülerinin alt üst edilmesini konu alan bir kara mizahtır. İnsan rasyonelliğinin bir sonucu olarak Rönesans, aynı zamanda erken dönem kapitalist burjuvazinin üyesi olmaya can atan bireyler arasında maddi rekabeti tırmandıran henüz yerleşik olmasa da gelmekte olan piyasa ekonomisi yüzünden meydana gelen değişikliklere maruz kalmış ekonomik ve politik dengeleriyle de göze çarpar. Dolasıyla, bu çalışmanın incelemeyi amaçladığı gibi, Jonson, açgözlü miras avcısı karakterlerine karga, akbaba gibi isimler vererek insanın miras avcılığına olan eğilimini ve sosyal parazitliği güç ve haz elde etmenin ön gerekliliği olarak dayatan erken dönem kapitalist sistemi eleştirirken aynı zamanda insan ve hayvan arasında kurulan biyolojik hiyerarşiye de saldırır. Jonson, insan ve hayvanın sözde ait olduğu farklı yerlere dair klasik değer yargılarına sahip bir yazar olsa da onun Volpone adlı oyununda karakter komedyası kullanımı, insan ve hayvan arasında türsel benzerliklere gönderme yapan politik, biyolojik ve psikolojik bir istiare halini alır. Böylelikle, Jonson insan/hayvan ayrımını göz ardı eder. Bu türcü yaklaşım yerine, Jonson, Kartezyen düalizmi gölgesinde birbirinden ayrıştırılan rasyonelliği ve fizyolojiyi konu edinen post hümanist bir okumaya oyunun kapılarını açar ve doğaya ait tüm canlıların uyum içerisinde bir arada var olabildiği bir yaklaşımı benimser. Onun karakter komedyası tercihi de bu uyum için gerekli olan iki tür arasındaki zihinsel, fiziksel ve psikolojik benzerlikleri açığa çıkarırken, insan ve hayvan arasında var olduğu varsayılan sınırları çiğneyerek iki türün ait oldukları aynı doğada birlikte varoluşuna işaret eder.

Keywords

Ben Jonson, Volpone, Rönesans İngiliz tiyatrosu, posthümanizm, erken dönem kapitalizm, hayvan çalışmaları

POSTHUMANIST ANIMETAPHORS FOR CRITICISM OF THE ENGLISH PROTOCAPITALISM IN BEN JONSON’S VOLPONE

Abstract

Though being filled with numerous veiled or direct allusions to innate human rational capacity, Ben Jonson’s Volpone (1606) is, indeed, a very cruel irony and subversion of the predominant Eurocentric and mostly anthropocentric ideals of Renaissance humanist reform clinging to an optimistic belief in the daring extreme deeds of well-educated human reason. As a result of supposedly cultivated human rationality, the Renaissance is also marked by its economic and political balances, embroiled in the bourgeoisie and exposed to tremendous changes due in part to the not yet settled but upcoming free market economy which steadily escalated financial rivalry among individuals longing for being one of the members of the protocapitalist haute bourgeoisies. Accordingly, as this article aims to show, while Jonson criticises social hierarchy caused by a humane inclination towards legacy hunting and the protocapitalist system forcing parasitism as a licence to own power and carnal pleasure, he also attacks the biological hierarchy established between human and nonhuman beings. Though Jonson was a playwright who has a classicist set of values regarding the place of human and nonhuman entities, his use of humours in Volpone becomes a fully functioning political, biological and psychological metaphor for certain generic similarities between the two species. By doing so, Jonson displaces the human/animal distinction, and instead; celebrates the co-existence of all natural beings in harmony, which enables the play to be open to a posthumanist reading involving the co-existence of mental entities and physical matter, which were conventionally separated from each other under the deep shadow of Cartesian dualism.

Keywords

Ben Jonson, Volpone, the Renaissance English drama, posthumanism, protocapitalism, animal studies

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