Derrida ve bir palimpsest-metin olarak Kurtlar Vadisi’nin yapısökümü

Abstract

This study aims to examine the duality between law and violence, which Derrida deconstructs using the concept of the fable, through metaphorical narratives in the television series Kurtlar Vadisi. According to Derrida, in fables, we encounter violence that blurs the boundaries between humans and animals, rendering them permeable and ambiguous. At the root of this violence is a natural drive that presents itself as law but is autonomous from the law. For Derrida, such violence is represented in an animal (bete) or in a narrative form in which the animal is made to speak, as this disrupts the hypothetical bond between power and right. The animal is outside the law since it is guided by its natural drive; but in fables, the animal is made to speak as a figure that justifies the law, which is an expression of transcending nature, through its own natural drive. In the narratives of the Kurtlar Vadisi series, a similar dynamic can be seen: a desire for power which is assumed to derive from the law but which also seeks to become autonomous from the law. This study aims to interpret the narratives in the series through Derridean deconstruction. In the narratives based on animals in the series, violence is given a natural reality. This natural reality implies that violence is the only and supreme law, because "natural" violence refers to a mythic and fundamental law that exists prior to all other laws. The characters representing the two sides of violence in the series (the state and the mafia) give meaning to their own acts by referring to this mythic, originary, and at the same time "animalistic" nature of violence. However, the representation of violence through animalistic narratives not only gives meaning to the act but also gives it an autonomy that cannot be questioned or judged by civil-political law. Violence is recorded in these narratives not as illegality, but as a kind of legality that is autonomous from the law or beyond the reach of the law. Interpreting the narratives in the series through Derrida's perspective allows for a different approach to the tense relationship, very familiar in Turkey, between violence and the law.