Akademik Veri Yönetim Sistemi
Tezin Türü: Yüksek Lisans
Tezin Yürütüldüğü Kurum: Dokuz Eylül Üniversitesi, Sosyal Bilimler Enstitüsü, Amerikan Kültürü ve Edebiyatı, Türkiye
Tezin Onay Tarihi: 2022
Tezin Dili: İngilizce
Öğrenci: BÜŞRA DOĞRU
Danışman: Esra Çöker
Açık Arşiv Koleksiyonu: AVESİS Açık Erişim Koleksiyonu
Özet:
Since the colonization of the North American continent by white settlers, Native
Americans have been subjected to oppression and victimization; their treaty
rights have been continuously violated and their legal status as sovereign nations
have been undermined by the United States government. While U.S. law
recognizes tribal sovereignty, the US federal government, paradoxically, has
always been the dominant power, claiming plenary, or complete power over
indigenoustribes. In the long run, this has led to a persistent demise of indigenous
languages, cultures and traditions; some Native American tribes have even
become landless, no longer functioning formally as a tribe. The works of the wellknown indigenous writer, Sherman Alexie have been noted mostly for voicing the
outcomes of this Native-American predicament in the contemporary reservation
life. His works often criticize whites for oppressing indigenous identity and
culture and Natives for conforming to the dominant white mindset. Drawing on
Giorgio Agamben's theory of homo sacer and Achille Mbembe's political concept
of necropolitics, this study examines Alexie's novels, The Absolutely True Diary of
a Part-Time Indian and Reservation Blues, as well as his collection of
interconnected short stories, The Lone Ranger and Tonto Fistfight in Heaven to
demonstrate how Indian reservations are essentially political areas in which state
v
of exception is applied consistently and permanently. Therefore, in all three
works, this study focuses on the cultural, social and economic dynamics of
reservation life that relegate Alexie’s characters to the status of the homo sacer,
the unhuman who lives without any rights whatever.