Basak Agin

• PhD
• Faculty Member at TED University

The recent material turn in the posthumanities has foregrounded the idea that agency is not unique to humans but is a shared capacity of all bodily natures of the planet. With this convolution – or rather the deconstruction – of the conventional ways of producing knowledge, the research methodologies at hand have experienced a turn towards a postqu...

Post-Theories in Literary and Cultural Studies focuses on the shifting paradigms in literary and cultural studies. Prompted by the changes and problems on the global scale, the last two decades have seen a resurgence of scholarly interest in theories which are more embedded in the social realities and human condition. This volume shows that theory...

This article analyzes Margaret Atwood’s Surfacing (1972) in light of Simon Estok’s ecophobia hypothesis. Based on Estok’s compelling argument that ecophobia inherently relates to other types of discriminatory and violent acts arising from xenophobia, homophobia, misogyny, sexism, racism, and speciesism, the article traces the links between ecophobi...

This bibliography, which covers English translations of literary works produced in Turkish—including the works penned by minorities living in Turkey—from 2004 to 2020, is a sequel to Saliha Paker and Melike Yılmaz’s bibliographic research published in the 2004 special issue “Turkish Literature and Its Translation” of Translation Review (vol. 68, no...

John Arden’s 1961 play Live like Pigs presents a mockery of the clash between British underclass, working class, and middle class. In its playful tone that is enhanced by the juxtaposition of the prosaic language with the poetic use of songs, the seventeen-scene play aims to make fun of class-conscious British society in a bitter way. With several...

This article extends the term "gothic ecocriticism" to encompass the study of literary texts as part of the task of bridging the great divide between the theoretical and practical dimensions of environmental thought. It illustrates an ecocritical reading of Bram Stoker's Dracula (1897), by especially focusing on its ecophobic configuration of natur...

This article analyses the British director Yousif Al-Khalifa's short animation End of an Era (2012) through a posthumanist lens. It opens with the argument that posthumanism is intrinsically disanthropocentric and that it can be considered the most recent ecological paradigm in cultural studies. Then, it briefly builds analogies between the animate...

First published in 1934, George Orwell's Burmese Days, which can be read as an example of both descriptive realism and fictional realism, is considered to be a colonial example of British literature because of its publication date. However, based on the personal experience of the author as an imperial officer in Burma, the novel has an anti-imperia...

In her article "The Ecological Posthuman in Lee's Tarboy and Tan and Ruhemann's The Lost Thing" Başak Ağın analyzes the posthumanist and ecological elements in two animated short films, James Lee's Tarboy (2009) and Shaun Tan's and Andrew Ruhemann's The Lost Thing (2010). Ağın posits that the two animated short films display a disanthropocentric wo...

David Fedele’s 20-minute documentary E-Wasteland (2012) sharply presents a serious environmental crisis emerging out of Accra, Ghana, reminding one of Alfred Crosby’s term “ecological imperialism.” The e-waste of the First World, sent on a regular basis to the Third World for recycling, causes an ongoing devastation in the more-than-human world. As...

The world of science-fiction in Turkey is like a closed circuit, only supported by fans and authors, but an outstanding example, Özlem Ada's Embriyogenesis (1997), provides the reader with a unique experience in the two stories titled "Hisse Senetleri" and "Çaya Yetiştirilir," which can be respectively translated as "Share Certificates" and "You Ca...