ABSTRACT
Human communication with non-human entities in fiction has gained a new relevance with regard to the nonanthropocentric view of the world in literature which undermines ego-based consciousness while introducing eco-based consciousness. Literature explores the vital relation of people with various temporal and spatial realms. Yet, it also focuses on the non-human life and its relational dimension in encountering with the other. In this sense, as Emmanuel Levinas decenters the self, championed by Descartes, and suggests a state of being only sustained with the other in his ethics, literature also makes the other a central focal point through an eco-based consciousness. With regard to non-human life and its relation to people, the imaginative narrative strategies of Bilge Karasu (1930–1995) and Sema Kaygusuz (1972–) are wide open to the realities of others, particularly to the underappreciated and understudied animals in Turkish literature. This chapter argues that Karasu’s representations of animals and environment in The Garden of Departed Cats and A Long Day’s Evening, as well as Kaygusuz’s first theater play The Sultan and the Poet, in which we see the bluefish of Istanbul as a mourning protagonist, call forth eco-consciousness.
