Kendine Ait Bir Sihir: Diana Evans’ın 26a Romanında Büyülü Gerçekçilik

Blending organically the ordinary with the otherworldly, magical realism is a narrative mode, which seemingly appeared in the literary hemisphere within the second half of the twentieth century. Coming primarily into existence with the ‘Boom’ of Latin American literature in the 1960s, magical realism subverts considerably the monolithic dominance of European realism by the inclusion of the fantastic and mythic in a matter-of-fact world. In accordance with its hybrid mode mingling the physical reality with the supernatural, this mode of fiction highly becomes an eligible mechanism to deconstruct binary oppositions in terms of gender, race, and class, reinforced by the philosophy of the Enlightenment. Magical realism, blurring the boundaries between hierarchical structures based on the Western thinking prioritizing the values and doctrines of the white European male, establishes a multivocal space where ‘other voices’ are also heard. In this manner, it provides an alternative realm, in which male/female, rational/irrational, and truth/fiction entangle with one another, exceeding the established and misogynist norms of the patriarchal society scythed for women. Magical realism, therefore, proves significantly to be a fictional mode appropriate for women writers to scrutinize and overturn the marginalization and silencing of women within the social, economic, cultural and historical sphere. By incorporating the so-called irrationality, superstition, and occultism of womanhood into the ‘rational’ and ‘real’ world of men, magical realism, provides female characters with a voice and agency by virtue of supernatural and otherworldly powers. Likewise, this paper purports to stress female agency, empowerment, and emancipation magical realism ensures by examining Diana Evans’ 26a as a magical feminist text.