Becoming-woman in Amin Maalouf's "The First Century After Beatrice" Amin Maalouf'un "Béatrice'ten Sonra Birinci Yüzyil" Adli Yapitinda Kadin-Oluş


Alp E.

Folklor/Edebiyat, vol.28, no.111, pp.791-808, 2022 (ESCI) identifier identifier identifier

  • Publication Type: Article / Article
  • Volume: 28 Issue: 111
  • Publication Date: 2022
  • Doi Number: 10.22559/folklor.2225
  • Journal Name: Folklor/Edebiyat
  • Journal Indexes: Emerging Sources Citation Index (ESCI), Scopus, MLA - Modern Language Association Database, Directory of Open Access Journals, TR DİZİN (ULAKBİM)
  • Page Numbers: pp.791-808
  • Keywords: Amin Maalouf, The First Century after Beatrice, Deleuze and Guattari, becoming-woman, ecofeminism
  • Hacettepe University Affiliated: Yes

Abstract

Although Lebanese-French author Amin Maalouf mostly deals with the issues on history, society, East-West dichotomy, cultural diversity, immigration, exile, and identity in his works, he questions the future of all humanity through women who are endangered by scientific developments as portrayed in the novel The First Century after Beatrice. This article aims to convey how Amin Maalouf's writings emphasize the quantitative dimension regarding the inequality between women and men and his concerns about the future of women, by adding a new dimension to the situation as well as the future of women. With this, first we will evaluate the technological and scientific developments affirmed by today's societies within the ecofeminist movement scope, which emphasizes the relationship between the exploitation of women and nature. In addition, this article emphasizes that a world who loses its women will bring its own end. Finally, we will examine the loss of femininity within the conceptual framework of becoming-woman as set forth by Deleuze and Guattari. Deleuze and Guattari attache importance to the concept of becoming, which pushes the limits of human beings in the context of their potential to develop by approaching the current conditions via the other realities they encounter. While emphasizing that the multiplicity and diversity of a world is destroyed without women, Maalouf indicates that with the deprivation of daughters to be born through Béatrice, not only women but all humanity will gradually lose its hope pertaining to the realization of the process of becoming-woman. The concept of becoming, which aims to establish a suitable foundation for the questioning of the existing order rather than be seen as a goal to be reached, requires rattling the existing order. By constructing a world whose balance is deteriorated with the decrease of the female population and the elimination of the possibilities of becoming, Amin Maalouf provides the necessary disorder for the reader to enter both the chaotic and the dystopic world he constructs. Consequently, the image of the corrupted order de-territorializes the reader and paves the way for them to be critical towards the idealized scientific development.