“Dialectical Perception” in Postmodern Literature: “Kambur” by Şule Gürbüz

Abstract

Postmodern world comprises of many components in accordance with the chaotic structure which it is included. The disharmony caused by the fragmentation seen in this multiple structure directly affects human life. This situation, which manifests itself in all fields based on human productivity, from technology to architecture, from science to art, necessitates the shaping of a complex image for the person making it. The artist also reveals the consequences of this effect for herself by giving products in various forms / arranging this image according to herself. In terms of the novel genre, such a product/reaction is possible only through language. The universe of discourse, developed depending on the use of language, aims to reflect the complexity of the postmodern world both in content and form.

It should be considered that the diversity and complexity caused by the polyphony experienced in the Turkish novel after 1980 played an important role in transforming our novel. Şule Gürbüz one of the novel writers who produced works in this period, carried the novel genre to a different place in terms of both style and content. The author revealed the first clues about the reflections of her own discourse universe in her first work Kambur dated 1992, which will be discussed in this study. It is thought that Gürbüz who supported the discourse that tried to be established in Kambur in the works she wrote in the genres of novels, stories and essays in the later periods, aimed to destroy/smash the classical literary style in various ways. While the author sometimes builds her discourse on the basis of “dialectical sense” over two diametrically opposite situations, sometimes it is seen that the discourses that feed this dialectical sense approach are built on indirect connections. In this context, it will be focused on how Gürbüz as a postmodern novelist, tries to create a language by adopting such a discourse form, and the possibilities provided by the “dialectical sense” approach at the point of the existence of the postmodern novel will be emphasized at the point of what the work wants to tell. The meaning areas of the novel in question will be discussed with the “reader-centered” interpretation technique, and evaluations will be made about the intellectual universe in the background of the “Humpback” type, especially chosen as the hero of the novel. Thus, it will be determined to what extent the dialectic is made visible in the novel universe that the author is trying to establish, and it will be tried to be determined to the extent that the traces of postmodern discourse are reflected in the novel discourse. While doing this, an evaluation process based on the direct interpretation of the discourse will be operated by including the expressions in the novel.