Located subjecthoods :|gender and lived body in An Atlas of the Difficult World and Afiş

Abstract

This thesis investigates whether feminist critical discourse analysis (FCDA) could be applied to poetry via the notion of lived body (corps vivant), as opposed to the conventional methods of poetry analysis which centralize male-oriented post- Cartesian subjecthoods based on rationale, transcendental agency, and coherency. It embraces lived body as a central theme in the poems and abandons the conventions of poetry analysis which have regarded poems as separate works, unaffected by the geographical and chronological locatedness the poets. With the aid of Elizabeth Grosz’s corporeal feminism which adapts the notion of lived body, the thesis applies feminist critical discourse analysis to explore the poetry collections An Atlas of the Difficult World and Afiş [Poster], published by Adrienne Rich (US) and Sennur Sezer (Turkey), respectively. Identifying the common discursive categories in the books as corporeality of subjecthoods and locatedness of subjecthoods within a community, the thesis suggests that together with FCDA, (feminist) lived body provides feminist scholars the grounds to approach poetry as a cultural text and identify the discursive methods in poetry to defy patriarchal power relations.