THE CAR AS A THING: LATİFE TEKİN’S SWORDS OF ICE AND JOSÉ SARAMAGO’S “EMBARGO”

From a transnational and trans-historical perspective, this paper lays stress upon the car as a technological material and its fictional representations in Latife Tekin’s Swords of Ice (1989) and José Saramago’s “Embargo” (1978). Readers from different cultures have been attracted to car narratives because they are “thing-driven” – based on cars – as a representative of the matter which can speak for themselves, as it were. This study claims that the significance of the car in Tekin’s Swords of Ice and Saramago’s “Embargo” can be explained through the theoretical lens provided by the new materialisms. In order to explore ideas on the subject-object interactions and elucidate the independent and autonomous life of things, this article will first briefly refer to the theories of new materialisms, and then read works of fiction by Latife Tekin, and José Saramago concentrating on the agency and power of the car as a quasi-object in both texts.