The Awakening of the Locked Up Female Body in That Scorching Season of Youth

Year 2020, , 141 - 148, 20.12.2020

Muzaffer Derya Nazlıpınar Subaşı

https://doi.org/10.46655/federgi.842986

Abstract

The dichotomies of 'self/other', ‘subject/object’, 'mind/body', ‘reason/emotion’ and
'materiality/rationality', having been initiated and systematized by Plato and Aristotle respectively,
and accepted as ‘Cartesian Duality’ with the ideas of French philosopher René Descartes, have been
gradually turned into strongly established binary opposition of ‘male/female’ by patriarchal
societies. This transformation process deriving from female body and sexuality has defined and
marginalized woman in accordance with androcentric terms and imprisoned her within patriarchal
constraints. Women and women writers, aiming to subvert male hegemony, have been in a struggle
for articulating the unspoken female body and sexuality, and giving voice to muted fellows with the
required words and awareness. Erendiz Atasü, knowing all the difficulties and limitations as a
woman and a woman writer in a patriarchal society, is one of those women writers seeking
alternative ways to change women’s constructed submissive and secondary position. In accordance
with those considerations, Atasü strives for transcending beyond long-established gender
dichotomies emanated from primary ‘male/female’ opposition and emphasizes the significance of
unshackling and de(con)structing the phallocentric discourses and unspoken taboos in regard to
female body and experiences. In this respect, based on the theories of post-structuralist feminism,
this study analyzes Atasü’s poetic work, That Scorching Season of Youth, and aims to prove how
women can establish a new, female-oriented tradition that will allow, justify and acknowledge their
female existence through the rejecting the constructed phallocentric discourses and hierarchical
binary oppositions

Keywords

female body and sexuality, phallocentric discourse, de(con)struction, mind-body, unspoken

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