Cinsiyetlendirilen sözlü gelenek türleri: Dersim deneyiminde sözlü şiir ve ağlama pratikleri

Abstract

This article analyzes the issue of performing self in the genres of oral poetry and weeping, which are performed by Dersimli women in the course of their everyday life practices. The personal narratives or social issues presented with these genres include a range of topics like dissatisfaction about life, a deceased child, loneliness, poverty, forced migration from the villages in the mid 1990s, regret of a woman for her marriage and old love stories. I found that performing those genres as repetitive actions in the course of everyday life practices has an important role both in the construction and the positioning of self. This study deals with saying/singing/weeping processes. In these processes, performers express their experiences, emotions, and ideas which are not narrated or spoken, or have limited expression, in the social interaction of everyday life. I discuss issues such as the possibility and legitimacy of singing/saying practices, the interaction between the performer and the audience, the critique of the narrative on the basis of socially constructed meaning and consistency, the construction of the self and the possibilities of agency.