EAVAN BOLAND’IN THE HISTORIANS ESERİNDE GÖÇEBE HAFIZA VE KADIN TEMSİLİ

Year 2024, Issue: 2024, 259 - 268

Okaycan Dürükoğlu

https://doi.org/10.30794/pausbed.1508209

Abstract

Bu makale, Eavan Boland’ın The Historians (2020; Tarihçiler) adlı eserini Rosi Braidotti’nin göçebe hafızası kavramı bağlamında incelemeyi amaçlamaktadır. Ölümünden sonra yayınlanan bu şiir koleksiyonunda Boland, İrlandalı kadınların tarih ve resmî belgeler gibi geleneksel anlatılarda susturulmuş ve tekdüzeleştirilmiş temsilini reddetmek amacıyla bu kadınların marjinalleştirilmiş ve çoğunlukla unutulmuş hikâyelerini bir araya getirmektedir. Boland bunu yaparken hafızanın gücünden yararlanmakta ve hatırlama eylemini yaratıcı canlandırmalarla birleştirmektedir. Boland’ın The Historians eserinde sunduğu hatırlama eylemi, kadın özne konumlarına hareketlilik ile akışkanlık sağlaması ve sonuçta kadınların hâkim ataerkil tarih söyleminde desteklenen özcü temsillerini sorunsallaştırması bakımından göçebe hatırlamayla uyumludur. Dolayısıyla bu makale, The Historians eseri Braidotti’nin göçebe hafızası kavramı üzerinden okunduğunda, Boland’ın değişken kimliklere ve kendi tarihlerine sahip göçebe kadın özneler geliştirmek için göçebe hafızayı kullandığını ileri sürmektedir.

Keywords

Eavan Boland, The Historians, Göçebe hafızası, Tarih, Geçmiş, İrlandalı kadınlar, Göçebe öznellik

NOMADIC MEMORY AND REPRESENTATION OF WOMEN IN EAVAN BOLAND’S THE HISTORIANS

Abstract

This article aims to explore Eavan Boland’s The Historians (2020) through the lens of Rosi Braidotti’s concept of nomadic memory. In this posthumously published poetry collection, Boland brings together the marginalised and mostly forgotten stories of Irish women so as to reject their silenced and monolithic representation in traditional narratives such as history and official documents. While doing so, Boland uses the power of memory and fuses the act of remembering with imaginative recreations. The act of remembering Boland presents in The Historians is in line with nomadic remembering in that it provides mobility and fluidity for female subject positions, and eventually problematises the essentialist representations that are supported in the dominant patriarchal discourse of history. Accordingly, this paper argues that read through Braidotti’s notion of nomadic memory, Boland, in The Historians, uses nomadic memory to develop female nomadic subjects with fluid identities and their own history.

Keywords

Eavan Boland, The Historians, Nomadic memory, History, Past, Irish women, Momadic subjectivity

References

• Braidotti, R. (1994). Nomadic Subjects: Embodiment and Sexual Difference in Contemporary Feminist Theory, 1st ed., Columbia University Press, New York.
• Braidotti, R. (2011a). Nomadic Subjects: embodiment and sexual difference in contemporary feminist theory, 2nd ed., Columbia University Press, New York.
• Braidotti, R. (2011b). Nomadic Theory: the Portable Rosi Braidotti, Columbia University Press, New York.
• Braidotti, R. (2006). Transpositions: On Nomadic Ethics, Polity Press, Cambridge, UK.
• Braidotti, R. (2014). “Writing as a Nomadic Subject.” Comparative Critical Studies 11.(2-3), 163- 184. Edinburgh University Press.
• Brown, Jeffrey W. (2005). “Deleuze’s Nietzschean Revaluation: The Image of Thought / Thought Without Image.” Symposium, 9(1), 31-46.
• Boland, E. (2011). A Journey with Two Maps: Becoming a Woman Poet, W. W. Norton & Company, London.
• Boland, E. (1995). Object Lessons: The Life of the Woman and the Poet in Our Time, W. W. Norton & Company, New York.
• Boland, E. (1990). Outside History: Selected Poems 1980-1990, W. W. Norton & Company, New York.
• Boland, E. (2020). The Historians, Carcanet, Manchester.
• Clark, Heather. (2024). “Foreword.” Citizen Poet: New and Selected Essays. (ed. Jody Allen Randolph). W. W. Norton & Company, New York. vıı-xıv.
• Clutterbuck, C. (1999). “Irish Critical Responses to Self-Representation in Eavan Boland, 1987-1995.” Colby Quarterly, 35(4), 275-91.
• Connerton, P. (1989). How societies remember, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, UK.
• Cresswell, T. (2006). On the move: mobility in the modern Western world, Routledge, New York.
• Davis, K., Lutz, H. (2000). “Life in Theory: Three Feminist Thinkers on Transition(s).” European Journal of Women’s Studies, 7(3), 367-78. https://doi.org/10.1177/13505068000070030
• Deleuze, G. (1990). The Logic of Sense (Mark Lester, Trans.). The Athlone Press. (Original work published 1969)
• Dorgan, T. (2021, January 6). “Her Dance with History.” [Review of The Historians, by Eavan Boland]. Dublin Review of Books. https://drb.ie/articles/her-dance-with-history/
• Doyle, M. (2020, April 27). Eavan Boland, Leading Irish Poet and Champion of the Female Voice, Dies Aged 75. The Irish Times. https://www.irishtimes.com/culture/books/2020/04/27/eavan-boland-leading-irish- poet-and-champion-of-the-female-voice-dies-aged-75-1.4239274/
• Emmitt, Helen (2021). “Lacing Pages with Fire: Eavan Boland’s Historians.” Irish Literary Supplement, 40. (2), 14-15.
• Kilcoyne, C. (2007). “Eavan Boland and Strategic Memory.” Nordic Irish Studies, 6, 89-102.
• Luzecky, R. (2022). “Deleuze’s Elaboration of Eternity: Ontogenesis and Multiplicity.” Deleuze and Guattari Studies, 16. (1), 51-72. https://doi.org/10.3366/dlgs.2022.0465
• Randolph, J. A. (2020). “Remembering Eavan.” Poetry Ireland Review, 131, 67-71.
• Villar Argáiz, P. (2021). “Past, Secrecy and Absence in Eavan Boland’s The Historians.” ABEI Journal, 23(2), 69– 87. https://doi.org/10.37389/abei.v23i2.197753
• Villar, P., Boland, E. (2006). “‘The Text of It’: A Conversation with Eavan Boland.” New Hibernia Review 10(2), 52-67. https://doi.org/10.1353/nhr.2006.0045
• Tello, V. (2019). “Counter-Memory and and–and: Aesthetics and Temporalities for Living Together.” Memory Studies, 15(2), 390–401. https://doi.org/10.1177/1750698019876002