The Awakening of the Locked Up Female Body in That Scorching Season of Youth

Abstract

The dichotomies of 'self/other', ‘subject/object’, 'mind/body', ‘reason/emotion’ and 'materiality/rationality', having been initiated and systematized by Plato and Aristotle respectively, and accepted as ‘Cartesian Duality’ with the ideas of French philosopher Rene Descartes, have been gradually turned into strongly established binary opposition of ‘male/female’ by patriarchal societies. This transformation process deriving from female body and sexuality has defined and marginalized woman in accordance with androcentric terms and imprisoned her within patriarchal constraints. Women and women writers, aiming to subvert male hegemony, have been in a struggle for articulating the unspoken female body and sexuality, and giving voice to muted fellows with the required words and awareness. Erendiz Atasu, knowing all the difficulties and limitations as a woman and a woman writer in a patriarchal society, is one of those women writers seeking alternative ways to change women’s constructed submissive and secondary position. In accordance with those considerations, Atasu strives for transcending beyond long-established gender dichotomies emanated from primary ‘male/female’ opposition and emphasizes the significance of unshackling and de(con)structing the phallocentric discourses and unspoken taboos in regard to female body and experiences. In this respect, based on the theories of post-structuralist feminism, this study analyzes Atasu’s poetic work, That Scorching Season of Youth, and aims to prove how women can establish a new, female-oriented tradition that will allow, justify and acknowledge their female existence through the rejecting the constructed phallocentric discourses and hierarchical binary oppositions