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Entwined Narratives: Latife Tekin’s Ecopoetics

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The Ecopoetics of Entanglement in Contemporary Turkish and American Literatures

Part of the book series: Literatures, Cultures, and the Environment ((LCE))

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Abstract

This chapter investigates Latife Tekin’s ecopoetics to tease out formal and linguistic entanglements. Tekin’s work borrows elements from different Turkish literary traditions and genres, while not limiting herself to any single one of them. Like Spahr, she uses a connective reading methodology to explore the relationship between language, ecology, and politics. Ergin first focuses on Rüyalar ve Uyanışlar Defteri, a poetic account of an unnamed narrator whose nightly dreams reenact existing ecopolitical problems in Turkey. In a pre-apocalyptic dream narrative, where quotidian life is penetrated by capitalist nightmare, Tekin revives a heterogeneous language—including languages of ethnic minorities, of women, and the voices of animals on the brink of extinction—as the ultimate form of resistance. She then turns to Berji Kristin: Tales from the Garbage Hills, the account of a desolate community that collects garbage to survive, to examine material-semantic entanglements and the relationship between waste and language.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    Currently, three works by Tekin exist in English translation : Berji Kristin: Tales from the Garbage Hills (1996), Dear Shameless Death (2001), and Swords of Ice (2007). When discussing Berji Kristin: Tales from the Garbage Hills, I refer to the English translation . When writing about Rüyalar ve Uyanışlar Defteri, I use the original work in Turkish and provide my own translations of the cited passages.

  2. 2.

    In Sevgili Arsız Ölüm (Dear Shameless Death), Tekin narrates a family’s migration from a small Turkish village to Istanbul . In this semi-autobiographical work, she focuses particularly on the sentimental education of the young daughter who overcomes solitude and familial oppression through literary and musical creation, and an animistic relationship with nature.

  3. 3.

    Literally translated as “old woman” or “crone,” the word alludes to a female figure from an old wives’ tale.

  4. 4.

    The ancient name of Bodrum peninsula that stretches from Turkey’s southwest into the Aegean Sea.

  5. 5.

    It is hard to translate this title precisely. The phrase “dik ȃlȃsı” is used in Turkish to express the excess or extremity of a situtation. Dik Âlâ can thus be understood as an extremity, but it can also be taken as a pun on “pekâlâ” (“âlâ” means “well,” and “pekâlâ” means both “very well” and “certainly” to connote agreement). Replacing “pek” with “dik” (an adjective used to define someone who is obstinate as well as contrary) to construe “dik âlâ” connotes strong-mindedness and a revolting stance.

  6. 6.

    The word “dik” has a double meaning in Turkish: “vertical” as well as “obstinate and contrary”.

  7. 7.

    Gecekondu can be translated literally as “built overnight.” Mahalle means “neighborhood.” Gecekondu mahalle leri refer to neighborhoods that consists of squatter houses that are built overnight.

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  1. Koç University, Istanbul, Turkey

    Meliz Ergin

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  1. Meliz Ergin
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Ergin, M. (2017). Entwined Narratives: Latife Tekin’s Ecopoetics. In: The Ecopoetics of Entanglement in Contemporary Turkish and American Literatures. Literatures, Cultures, and the Environment. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-63263-6_5

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