SavedAdd your journal

Journals / Uluslararası Dil Edebiyat ve Kültür Araştırmaları Dergisi / 2026 / Cilt: 9 Sayı: 1

STONES, SHADOWS, STRANGERS: OBJECT-ORIENTED ONTOLOGY AND THE POSTHUMAN CITY IN DICKENS’ “NIGHT WALKS"

TAŞLAR, GÖLGELER, YABANCILAR: DİCKENS’IN “GECE YÜRÜYÜŞLERİ” İSİMLİ YAZISINDA NESNE YÖNEMLİ ONTOLOJİ VE POSTHÜMAN ŞEHİR

Gökhan Albayrak(ANKARA UNIVERSITY)0000-0003-2703-4326
Pages
1–13
Publication Date
2026-03-31
🏛️Bibliographic metadata and full text access for this article are provided via DergiPark.
DergiPark Record ↗
✨

AI Summary & Key Takeaways

AI Insight
⚡ TL;DR(Too Long; Didn't Read)

In doing so, it reveals how the essay foreshadows contemporary debates around subjectivity, visibility, and the ethical stakes of living among withdrawn and unknowable others

📌 3 Key Takeaways

🎯
Objective & Hypothesis:This article re-reads Charles Dickens’ “Night Walks” (1860) through the lens of object-oriented ontology, arguing that Dickens’s nocturnal dérives through Victorian London anticipate a posthuman sensitivity to objects, environments, and withdrawn forms of being.
📊
Key Findings & Data:While traditionally interpreted as a piece of urban social commentary or journalism, “Night Walks” also enacts an encounter with the city as a nonhuman agent, one that exerts affective, ethical, and ontological pressure on the wandering subject.
💡
Conclusion & Impact:In doing so, it reveals how the essay foreshadows contemporary debates around subjectivity, visibility, and the ethical stakes of living among withdrawn and unknowable others
🔬Design:Araştırma Makalesi
📍Scope:Comprehensive Sample
⚙️Variables:Charles Dickens · Gece Yürüyüşleri · Viktorya Dönemi Londra'sı

Abstract

This article re-reads Charles Dickens’ “Night Walks” (1860) through the lens of object-oriented ontology, arguing that Dickens’s nocturnal dérives through Victorian London anticipate a posthuman sensitivity to objects, environments, and withdrawn forms of being. While traditionally interpreted as a piece of urban social commentary or journalism, “Night Walks” also enacts an encounter with the city as a nonhuman agent, one that exerts affective, ethical, and ontological pressure on the wandering subject. Dickens' attention to streets, urban architecture, and bodily dispossession destabilizes anthropocentric hierarchies, presenting both people and things as part of a flat ontology in which no entity is ontologically privileged. This article explores how inanimate urban elements acquire narrative agency and how marginalized human figures are rendered as withdrawn objects, blurring the distinction between the sentient and the material. By foregrounding Dickens’ epistemic humility, that is his repeated acknowledgment of what he cannot know or fully perceive, the paper positions “Night Walks” as an early experiment in literary object-oriented thinking. In doing so, it reveals how the essay foreshadows contemporary debates around subjectivity, visibility, and the ethical stakes of living among withdrawn and unknowable others

Özet

Bu makale, Charles Dickens’ın “Gece Yürüyüşleri” (1860) adlı yazısını nesne yönelimli ontoloji merceğinden yeniden okumakta ve Dickens’ın Viktorya dönemi Londra’sında yaptığı gece yürüyüşlerinin, nesnelere, çevrelere ve geri çekilmiş varlık biçimlerine yönelik posthüman bir duyarlılığı önceden sezinlediğini savunmaktadır. Geleneksel olarak kentsel toplumsal bir yorum ya da gazetecilik olarak değerlendirilen “Gece Yürüyüşleri”, aynı zamanda kenti insan-dışı bir fail olarak deneyimleyen, gezgin özne üzerinde duygulanımsal, etik ve ontolojik bir baskı oluşturan bir karşılaşmayı da sahneler. Dickens’ın sokaklara, kentsel mimariye ve bedenin çözülmesine dikkat kesilmesi, antropomerkezci hiyerarşileri sarsar; insanları ve şeyleri ontolojik açıdan ayrıcalıklı olmayan, düz bir ontolojinin parçası olarak sunar. Bu makale, cansız kentsel unsurların nasıl anlatısal bir fail haline geldiğini ve marjinalleşmiş insan figürlerinin geri çekilmiş, kendi gizini açmayan nesneler halinde tasvir edilerek canlı ile maddi olan arasındaki ayrımın nasıl bulanıklaştığını inceler. Dickens’ın epistemik alçakgönüllülüğünü, yani bilmediğini ya da tam olarak kavrayamadığını defaatle kabul edişini, öne çıkaran bu çalışma, “Gece Yürüyüşleri”ni edebi anlamda nesne-odaklı düşüncenin erken bir deneyimlenmesi olarak konumlandırır. Böylece, metnin öznellik, görünürlük ve geri çekilmiş, bilinemez ötekiler arasında yaşamanın etik boyutlarına dair güncel tartışmalara nasıl öncülük ettiğini ortaya koyar.

🔖

Cite This Article

Albayrak, G. (2026). STONES, SHADOWS, STRANGERS: OBJECT-ORIENTED ONTOLOGY AND THE POSTHUMAN CITY IN DICKENS’ “NIGHT WALKS". Uluslararası Dil Edebiyat ve Kültür Araştırmaları Dergisi, Cilt: 9 Sayı: 1, 1–13. https://doi.org/10.37999/udekad.1794711

📄 Full Text PDF Viewer

📄

PDF görüntüleyici hazırlanıyor...

References (29)

  1. Ackroyd, P. (1996). Dickens. Minerva.
  2. Baumgarten, M. Fictions of the city. In J. O. Jordan (Ed.), The Cambridge companion to Charles Dickens (pp. 106-119). Cambridge University Press.
  3. Beaumont, M. (2016). Night walking: A nocturnal history of London. Verso.
  4. Chesterton, G. K. (2001). Charles Dickens. House of Stratus.
  5. Cohen, J. J. (2012). Undead (a zombie-oriented ontology). Journal of the Fantastic in the Arts, 23(3), 397–412.
  6. David, D. (2001). Introduction. In D. David (Ed.), The Victorian novel (pp. 1–16). Cambridge University Press.
  7. Dickens, C. (1860). Night walks. The uncommercial traveller. Heron Books.
  8. Elsaesser, T., & Hagener, M. (2015). Film theory: An introduction through the senses. Routledge.
  9. Gordon, J. (2011). Sensation and sublimation in Charles Dickens. Palgrave Macmillan.
  10. Harman, G. (2017). Object-oriented ontology: A new theory of everything. Pelican.
  11. Harman, G. (2018). Speculative realism: An introduction. Polity Press.
  12. Hartley, J. (2016). Charles Dickens: An introduction. Oxford University Press.
  13. Ketabgian, T. (2011). The lives of machines: The industrial imaginary in Victorian literature and culture. University of Michigan Press.
  14. Ledger, S. (2011). Dickens, natural history, and Our Mutula Friend. Partial Answers: Journal of Literature and the History of Ideas 9(2), 363-378. https://dx.doi.org/10.1353/pan.2011.0027.
  15. Marcus, S. (1965). Dickens: From Pickwick to Dombey. Chatto and Windus.
  16. McDonell, J. (2018). Dickens and animal studies. In R. L. Patten, J. O. Jordan & Catherine Waters (Eds.), The Oxford handbook of Charles Dickens (pp. 550-565). Oxford University Press.
  17. Moore, G. (2016). Dickens and empire: Discourses of class, race, and colonialism in the works of Charles Dickens. Routledge.
  18. Morton, T. (2010). The ecological thought. Harvard University Press.
  19. Morton, T. (2013). Hyperobjects: Philosophy and ecology after the end of the world. University of Minnesota Press.
  20. Morton, T. (2016). Dark ecology: For a logic of future coexistence. Columbia University Press
  21. Parrinder, P. (2004). “Turn again, Dick Whittington!”: Dickens, Wordsworth, and the boundaries of the city. Victorian Literature and Culture, 32(2), 407-419. http://www.jstor.org/stable/25058676.
  22. Pykett, L. (2001). Sensation and the fantastic in the Victorian novel. In D. David (Ed.), The Victorian novel (pp. 192–211). Cambridge University Press.
  23. Slater, M. (2009). Charles Dickens: A life defined by writing. Yale University Press.
  24. Smeele, W. (2022). Victorian posthumanism. In S. Herbrechter, I. Callus, M. Rossini, M. Grech, M. de Bruin-Molé, & C. J. Müller (Eds.), The Palgrave handbook of critical posthumanism (pp. 167–186). Palgrave Macmillan.
  25. Sussman, H., & Joseph, G. (2004). Prefiguring the posthuman: Dickens and prosthesis. Victorian Literature and Culture, 32(2), 617–628. doi:10.1017/S1060150304000695.
  26. Waters, C. (2006). Reforming culture. In J. Bowen & R. L. Patten (eds.), Palgrave advances in Charles Dickens studies (pp. 155-175). Palgrave Macmillan.
  27. Williams, R. (1975). The country and the city. Paladin.
  28. Winter, S. (2018). The Old Curiosity Shop and Master Humprey’s Clock. In R. L. Patten, J. O. Jordan & Catherine Waters (Eds.), The Oxford handbook of Charles Dickens (pp. 134-152). Oxford University Press.
  29. Wood, C. (2018). Material culture. In R. L. Patten, J. O. Jordan & Catherine Waters (Eds.), The Oxford handbook of Charles Dickens (pp. 452-467). Oxford University Press.