"World"-Travelling and Transnational Feminist Praxis in Women Who Blow on Knots

Abstract:In this paper I propose a transnational feminist reading of Turkish writer Ece Temelkuran's 2013 novel Women Who Blow on Knots through Lugones's "Playfulness, 'World'-Travelling, and Loving Perception." First of all, I argue that the concept of "world"-travelling Lugones recommended to women of color in the US continues to offer valuable insights to women across the world, especially within the frame of contemporary transnational feminist practices. Increasing geographical mobility, enormous circulation of ideas across cultures, and intriguing encounters of local and global paradigms continue to generate complex and nuanced "worlds," while also bringing new forms of oppression, assimilation, and stereotyping, hence new guises of "arrogant perception." Accordingly, travelling to "worlds" of ours and other women's and recognizing differences, plurality, and historical specificity becomes truly indispensable in creating feminist coalitions. Within this frame I argue that the trope of travel in Women Who Blow on Knots underlines the "world"-travelling of four women whose encounter with one another brings forward a transnational understanding of solidarity—one that is not a pernicious totalizing unity but a coalition constructed with a deep understanding of the nuanced plurality of different locations and histories. While the content presents a pluralistic context of a loving attitude, the playful narrative strategies constantly allow space for creative plurality and offer possibilities for a transnational, decolonial feminist writing.