Bereketli Topraklar Üzerinde : dialogic speech as subaltern insurgency

This paper will argue that Orhan Kemal’s 1954 novel, Bereketli Topraklar Üzerinde, uses a predominance of dialogic speech as a narratological strategy which allows for the represention (Darstellung) of subaltern voices rather than a speaking on their behalf (Vertretung). Countering Spivak’s claim that the intellectual erases the subaltern’s speech through his/her attempts to represent it, Orhan Kemal is able to portray rural Anatolia because dialogic speech is irreducibly indexical to the sociolinguistic complexities and political contestations of the social world. In additon, subaltern consciousness will be shown to emerge intersubjectively through dialogue rather than as a effect of discrete class positions or political revelations. This paper will perform a sociolinguistic analysis of the speech found in Bereketli Topraklar Üzerinde to show how individuals in conversational speech perform and contest identities, how they express and agree upon knowledge, and how the indeterminacy and open-ended nature of their speech holds open a space against the enclosing pressure for it to become a “text-for-knowledge”.