Item: Vişnenin Cinsiyeti
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01 Haziran 2020 13:12

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Sexing the Cherry Postmodernism has become an important part of our life and culture in many ways. Although it is a very common word in today's world, it cannot be expressed as a complete definition. Postmodernism is known for its rebellious approach and willingness to test boundaries. It is an indisputable fact that the word ‘master narrative’ which is so popular among people has collapsed. According to Jean François Lyotard , the postmodern concept is the total expression of a process that includes both changes in material conditions and breaks in the intellectual field. First of all, it is a deep disbelief, or in other words, a radical suspicion. It is a skepticism of modernity and is concerned with the basic notions of an entire modern project. Lyotard traces and makes sense of this suspicion. In other words, ıt is determined that a dozen concepts related to modernism,called great narrative, such as progress, enlightenment, rationality, freedom, universality are not believable. We can call the new lifestyle that started with this state of doubt postmodernism. Therefore, it is not possible to believe in a single truth, a mere mind, a universal life position and it is impossible to believe that history and progress is a single and universal aspect and to theoretically base it. Undoubtedly, literature is one of the most critical area influenced by postmodernism. One of the most important figures to be categorized as both absurdist and postmodern is Samuel Beckett. A list of postmodern authors often varies; the following are some names of authors often so classified, most of them belonging to the generation born in the interwar period: William Burroughs (1914-1997) Kurt Vonnegut (1922-2007), John Barth (b. 1930), Donald Barthelme (1931-1989), E. L. Doctorow (b. 1931), Robert Coover (1932), Jerzy Kosinski. It goes without saying that Jeannette Winterson’s Sexing the Cherry is a marjinal example for postmodernist literature. It is obvious that a contemporary British woman writer, uses allegory, myth, symbolism, fairy tale, mysticism, history, and interweaves modernist and postmodernist techniques to explore the ambiguous nature of reality. I mean, she has considered postmodernism from a different perspective compared to other authors. The aim of this study is to examine Winterson’s Sexing the Cherry with the elements of postmodernis To be succesful this target, I have organized my paper into three main sections. Firstly, I will deal with the process of postmodernity and the main features of postmodern novels by by explaining the ideas of some scholars such as Derrida, Baudrillard, Foucault and Fredric Jameson. In my second part, I will mention about Winterson's Sexing of Cherry and examine the postmodernist elements in the book. Finally, I will try to conclude my writing in the light of postmodernism. Postmodern literature is a form of literature which is marked both stylistically and ideologically, by a reliance on such literary conventions as fragmentation, paradox, unreliable narrators, often unrealistic and downright impossible plots, games, parody, paranoia, dark humour , and authorial self- reference as a cliche definition. I have more different thoughts on my mind after reading my articles about postmodernism or postmodern literature. Postmodernists have actually done a due diligence, starting with Liotard. I think they are right because they make a self-criticism. Especially in the west, a group of people thought that we should not reflect our own lifestyle, our own law, our principles as something universal. Furthermore, They may have adopted a separation of powers, parliamentary democracy, and a free market economy, but made a self-criticism by saying that it is not necessary to present them to the world as if they were absolutely correct. If we embrace postmodernism happily, we accept that the west is right. I mean that we support sentences like truths are plural, the mind of the west is not universal, science is not universal. In other words, People of every culture think that we are children of another civilization. When something is done right or wrong, we get the idea of normalizing this thing by saying it is specific to their culture under the influence of postmodernism. It is clear that postmodernists argue that there is no objective reality independent of cultures. I say that postmodernism does not give us the right to criticize. It silences us in many ways because it puts everything on the same classification. In light of this information we can definitely infer that “You do you” says postmodernist. “There is no absolute truth, truth is relative or subjective and is different for everyone. “ Postmodernism seeks to remove all absolutes so that the only absolute that there is: that there are no absolutes. There is no definition of postmodernism as any set definition of it, would be an absolute. When there is no certainty, no absolute truth, why do we continue? Why do we continue to live and hold onto any ideas or morality? If truth is subjective we have no meaning and no purpose. You may believe your meaning is to have as much fun as you can, make millions of dollars or to have many friends. Another point I want to mention that people perceive postmodernism as opposed to modernism. Post-modernism cannot be understood by ignoring modernism. Modernism originated from the thought of ‘European Enlightment’ that roughly began in the middle of 18th century. Modernism appreciates human intellect as the significant strength and identifies this strength as the basis of a scientific mentality. Modernity can be characterized as an era of scientific mentality that stemmed from the revolutionary development in the disciplines like physics and biology. Social scientists thought of using the methodology of natural sciences in the social sciences. Technology and giant industries became the most dominant characteristics of modernist society. The reader is expected to be active in both modernist and postmodernist texts. The fact that the reader is active is that the author can fill the fictional gaps left by the conscious. We should not forget that postmodernist texts generally coincide with formalist modernist texts. Douglas Kellner (1994) states that in postmodernism, popular culture is blended with high culture as opposed to modernism, and consumption capitalism is replicated by pushing aesthetic and artistic boundaries. The high art concept in modernism is replaced by the motto “anything goes” in postmodernism. Not only the structure but the content of Postmodernist art is eclectic. Modernist art is directed towards the future and the new, and postmodernist art fuses with fascination with the past. Modernist art wants to transform art and life - like the classic novel-but postmodernist art does no more than bring play and aesthetics together on the pluralistic plane. Most of the post- modern thoughts have mainly been originated from the nonsociologist‟ like Derrida , Lyotard, Jameson and others. Apart from them, some other prominent writers were Foucault and Baudrillard . I will continue to deal with the thoughts of these prominent post-modern scholars. Derrida was a French-born Algerian philosopher who practiced a Deconstructive Mentality. He used 'discourse' as the word. In analyzing Foucault 's work Derrida emphasized the hermeneutical method. French scholar Baudrillard argued that the significators we use construct our identification or subject-matter. Therefore the social status of a individual is determined by the labels he uses for his car or everyday consumer goods. Aside from reflecting on post-modern reality, the value of knowledge is discussed. French philosopher Foucault also put great focus on discourse. He said that reality is a subjective concept and it is through a social mechanism called debate that we can understand reality. American scholar Fredric Jameson equated postmodernism with late capitalism. In late capitalism, consumerism and mass media govern the culture. In all the aspects of our lives, whether it is socialization ,education or leisure, we get influenced by mass media. He also believes that in case of consumerism production , the issue of ‘aesthetics’ became more important in this postmodern era. Jeanette Winterson is among the most marginal of British contemporary female writers. She uses allegory, myth, symbolism, fairy tale, mysticism and history, while combining realistic, modernist and postmodernist techniques in her works, which she explores the ambiguous nature of "objective" reality. It refers to the ancient world, the Renaissance, the seventeenth century, to Romanticism. Winterson texts are filled with images, representations and metaphors of space and time that are not appropriate to Western rational norms. By using a mixture of postmodernist and modernist theoretical considerations to interrogate the true nature of this author’s writing, a much clearer sense of the peculiar impact of modernism upon her work emerges.She describes the "human who lives within the borders of a patriarchal, traditional and polarized culture" that transcends the familiar time-space boundaries and the liberation moments from these borders. According to Winterson, “A world without miracles is not a real world”(Winterson: "Sexing The Cherry", http: //jeanettewinterson.com/book/sexing-the...). With its fairy-tale and magical atmosphere and time-spanning characters, the Sex of Cherry is one of the most fantastic works of the author. Jeannette Winterson's Sexing the Cherry is a novel that examines the relationship between Jordan and his mother, the Dog-Woman, as well as the notion of time that is thoroughly discussed in the book. It begins in England of the seventeenth century,or not. A baby is found floating in the Thames. The child is rescued by the Dog Woman, a murderous gentle giant who names her newfound trophy Jordan and takes him out for walks on a leash. When he grows up, Jordan, like Gulliver, travels the world, but finds that the strangest wonders are spun out of his own head. The strangest wonder of all is Time. The book and its characters defies time and matter, location and reality. It plays with the concept of truth and history and explores imagination 's infinite domain. The Dog-Woman is certainly a creature of opposites and, like a true postmodernist narrator, is also highly unreliable because the reader can never fully trust her stories about herself, nor resolve the contradictions she embodies. She is not a monistic entity gravitating to one side in a binary list of physical , moral, or philosophical elements. She is at times comically literal-minded and skillfully manipulative towards others, and boasts a vocabulary well beyond the ken of the poor village woman she calls herself. While more than willing to kill men who oppress women, she is also a staunch advocate of the Church and monarchy, both strongly patriarchal institutions. Jordan is often depicted as a contrast to the qualities of his parents: he is sensitive, fragile and actively trying to be a hero while, at the same time, being trapped in metaphysical divisions of the true natures of time , space, gender and reality that his parents and Fortunata seem to have already problematized. Modern-day England's environmental activist leads a one-woman campaign against mercury contamination, a solitary evangelist for her cause much as the Dog-Woman is for sexual freedom. Jordan’s journeys suggest that the boundaries between the real and the fantastical are porous. Besides, the verifiable and the fantastical, the experienced and the imagined, appear to be complementary and reversible. These journeys are also postmodern insofar as they question the stability of time and space, and cut through intertextual worlds (a fairy tale, references to Sindbad, Gulliver, and the myth of Artemis) that are fully appropriated and re-configured into the main fabric of the narrative. Postmodern feminist philosophy has repeatedly stated that gender is not a "fact" but rather a social construct. It is "... a void in mental life, a hole or gap in identity into which images, archetypes, or stereotypes in terms of male and female are projected. This is also personified by the figures of Jordan and the Dog-Woman who show a clash of conventional gender roles: she is filled with typically masculine power, reasoning, and fearlessness, while he is sensitive, intuitive, and creative. There are also traces of postmodernist self-reflexivity and self-conscious narrators in the novel. For example, Jordan acknowledges that there is written documentation of his adventures, but his own life is a fictional piece: “I discovered that my own life was written invisibly, was squashed between the facts, was flying without me like the Twelve Dancing Princesses who shot from their window every night and returned home every morning...” The grafted cherry plant is an example of hybridity, too. Hybridity shakes our perceptions about the boundaries between the sexes and between species" and it in various ways breaches definitions. The novel ends with the following words: "And even the most strong of things and the most true, the best-loved and the well-known are on the wall only hand-shadows." It exactly sums up what I called a postmodernist effects of the novel. CONCLUSION Postmodernism; It refers to a viewpoint or lifestyle in which irregularity is a rule, unprincipled as a principle. If people try to criticize, categorize, judge you or your work or the ideas for some reasons you are pursuing for one reason or another, you may say 'Mine is a postmodern approach.' On one hand, multi-culturalism is becoming a common matter. Social problems and movements are also taking new turns. Each individual is shaping himself / herself in a different order, according to own choice. I mean ıt contribute so many thing in terms of expressing yourself. On the other hand, postmodernism makes everything normal under every condition. That’s why ıt does not give a chance to choice for criticizing something. We always have to be in a hush mood. So, I think the end of postmodernism appears on the horizon. I predict a new version of old modernity will come again with the end of postmodernism. Actually what matters; is what "classical" modernist or postmodernist literature gives us. Undoubtedly, we witness that a lot of elements postmodern literature in Sexing the Cherry in my article. Jeanette Winterson is a powerful and successful writer who challenges patriarchal and heterosexist discourses and of course can question ‘grand narrative’. I'd like to end my writing with a unique quote in Winterson's book Sexing the Cherry: ’There’s so little wonder left in the world because we’ve seen everything one way or another’.

Vişnenin CinsiyetiJeanette Winterson · Sel Yayınları · 20191,734 okunma

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