English Language and Literature

“My Father’s Suitcase” presents a pseudo-autobiographical narrative that depicts Pamuk’s relationship with his father by delving into the concept of othering. Expressing the pseudo-Orhan’s experiences about writing and authorship, Pamuk employs a self-reflexive confessional writing style in the Romantic tradition and discloses an intellectual superiority accompanied by a certain nostalgia, escapism, melancholia, and frustration. Additionally, he reflects his critical views on society. This situation leads to a search for identity, making the persona revive his memories and reconcile with his father. This chapter discusses the father and son interaction and the father’s influence on Orhan Pamuk’s character formation. Besides, the study questions the narrator’s reliability in the story by viewing the text as metafiction.

The term 'cyborg' has long been used to represent a human being whose cognitive and physical abilities have been expanded through technology and a 'cybernetic organism' with biological and mechanical qualities. Due to its hybrid nature, the cyborg breaks down the boundaries between nature/culture, human/non-human, body/mind and self/other. In Nineteen Eighty-Four (1949), George Orwell uses language as a tool to resist a system based on totalitarianism. He also points to the strategies used by power to exert authority over individuals. In both cases, language deconstructs itself and blurs the distinction between fiction and reality by revealing discrepancies between what is intended and what is realized. Along with producing a new language called Newspeak, the novel reveals deceptions about history, media and memory. This paper discusses the role of language in Nineteen Eighty-Four and how language operates like a cyborg in a dystopian world, acquiring organic and mechanical qualities.

Postcolonialism incorporates all cultures affected by colonialism from the beginning of colonization to the present day. Aiming to express the ways the colonizer shapes society, postcolonial writers frequently reverse the colonial discourse and maintain that colonized countries have a national identity. In this respect, prominent Nigerian writer Chinua Achebe indicates the effects of colonization on both cultural and individual levels in his works. Besides, he highlights the postcolonial subject in a manner that not only the colonizers but also the colonized find themselves in a situation of ambivalence. The purpose of this study is to present the ways in which the characters in Achebe' s Things Fall Apart (1958) are first shaped by the colonizer and later reshaped by the colonized counterpart. The process the characters undergo to achieve integration in society and whether they are liberated is discussed with references to the novel.

Recently, numerous scientific and technological advances have taken place and the humanist attitude that man is the measure of all things has been challenged by the flourishing manifestations of trans-/posthumanism. Therefore, what it means to be human has been questioned by various theoreticians like Cary Wolfe, N. Katherine Hayles, and Donna Haraway. In this regard, concepts like Self/Other, human/nonhuman, body/mind are analysed anew in the framework of trans- and posthumanism. As part of dystopian literature, Kazuo Ishiguro’s Never Let Me Go (2005) and Margaret Atwood’s Oryx and Crake (2003) not only indicate a posthuman condition but also illustrate the question of identity regarding the characters. Consequently, this study discloses breaking points which involve issues of authenticity, othering, as well as identity explorations of the individuals based on post-/transhumanist theories and significant issues of the contemporary age. Besides developing self-awareness to gain individual autonomy, the subjects’ ability to liberate themselves through the rejection of grand narratives is discussed with references to posthuman ethics in Never Let Me Go and Oryx and Crake in a comparative manner.

Charlotte Perkins Gilman’s 1892 short story “The Yellow Wallpaper” is widely criticized for its depiction of madness in nineteenth-century male-dominated Western society. Despite the ridicule directed at Gilman, notably by physicians, the text sheds light on one of the major concerns of the period. Because women are confined to the domestic sphere as angels in the house, writers of the age depict mental illnesses resulting from societal restrictions in their works. From Mary Wollstonecraft to Emily Dickinson, influential women writers associate womanhood with affliction. As a result, insanity comes to symbolize the imprisonment of the female gender. Unlike the general consensus, Gilman’s “The Yellow Wallpaper” deviates from the traditional understanding of lunacy by presenting a female character who rejects social roles through her madness. Besides, it reveals the discursive practices produced by the opposite sex to control women. The relationship between the unnamed first-person narrator and her husband John illustrates this situation through their lack of communication. Although John is a respected medical doctor, his disregard for his wife’s wishes and needs leads the wife to search for identity. The more she isolates herself from society, the more passionate she becomes about her desires, which can be seen in her willingness to write and lie about what she does. This study aims to analyze the concept of madness in the light of Derrida’s deconstruction, where madness emerges as a strategy for the assertion of female identity rather than as a negative trait signifying women’s imprisonment. The study also examines the author’s use of the unreliable narrator and its role, since unreliability serves as a path to freedom, thus exposing the narrator’s sanity in the story.