From the Imaginary to the Symbolic and from Structuralism to Poststructuralism: Reflections in Tahsin Yücel's Mirror

Abstract

Tahsin Yücel's short story “Ayna” (Mirror), in his book Aykırı Öyküler, depicts a day when the protagonist Professor Tarık Uysal engages in introspection after his wife breaks up with him, holds a mirror to the transition from Structuralism to Poststructuralism and from the Imaginary to the Symbolic, and examines the conict between these two distinct periods and states of awareness. Although the transition from the Imaginary to the Symbolic may mean a change for Tarık Uysal, it could also mean becoming assimilated and being unable to keep one's distinctive traits, which is the inevitable end for the socalled individuals imprisoned in bourgeois discourses and are bound to lose their distinguishing features. Through the protagonist, Yücel portrays the ctitious and arbitrary nature of truth, narrates the transition from the Imaginary to the Symbolic and from Structuralism to Poststructuralism, and displays how the bourgeois discourses culminate in the dissolution of individual characteristics and the construction of stereotypes replacing individuals.

Keywords

• Lacan
• Derrida
• Yapısalcılıksonrası
• Gösteren
• Gösterilen
• Psikanaliz
• Tahsin Yücel
• Yapısalcılık