Akademik Veri Yönetim Sistemi
CRITIQUE-STUDIES IN CONTEMPORARY FICTION, cilt.62, sa.1, ss.57-68, 2021 (AHCI)
This paper argues that resonating with references to the 1980 coup and inspired by the 2013 Gezi Park Protests, Ece Temelkuran'sThe Time of Mute Swanscreates a cross-temporal communication and gives insight into both the past and the present contexts of Turkey. The novel represents the past in ways to revisit, contest and reconstruct its hegemonic and silenced spaces. By doing so, it brings awareness to the formation of institutionalized forms of memory, knowledge, and discourses through which brutality, violence, oppression, inequality and injustice can be consolidated. Remarkably, while communicating the workings of such oppressions, the novel also cycles the acts of resistance. It shows that remembering, asking questions, demanding justice, and creating something different and beautiful are not merely personal contemplations but powerful alternative narratives manifesting the spirit of resistance, activism and solidarity. Accentuating the ways literature and acts of memory can facilitate hopeful cross-generational dialogs to prevent the brutal cycles of oppression,Mute Swansthus enhances our understanding of resistance.