The economy of sense in Oktay Rifat’s poetry

Abstract

This dissertation examines the conditions of production, emergence and circulation of poetic sense in Oktay Rifat’s (1914-1988) poetry. Using the notion of “economy of sense”, it explores the problematic of poetic creation and verbal event. By focusing on Rifat’s complete poetic works, it argues that the poetic sense in the way Rifat performs and textualizes it is produced as a non-economic excess. The sense as a non-economic excess unfolds within the framework of contemporary thought (Derrida, Malabou, Stiegler). According to Rifat, sense is a movement that is unrepresentable and impossible to present within a verbal structure. Poetic sense is conceived in three main metaphysical dimensions: Space, time, nature. Oktay Rifat spatialized the poetic sense in the figure of shoreline. Shoreline functions as an emblem so as to mark the limit of presence. The figures of beginning as the way the sense is temporalized shows that time does not work in the mode of chronological succession but instead it entails a peculiar dynamic which is fully open to self differentiation. Rifat’s intransitive type of beginnings unfolds the spacing between poetic text and presence. Beside space and time, the third dimension in which sense revolves around is the irreducible distance between nature and technology. Nature is never natural, but always already technological. Poetic sense as an non-economic excess is produced at where nature surpasses itself. Thus the poetic sense in Oktay Rifat’s poetry shows an essentially prosthetic and plastic character.