Proceedings of the 2nd International Academic Conference on Humanities and Social Science
Year: 2019
DOI:
John Berger and His Deconstructive Way of Telling Stories
Gülden Kazaz Çelik
ABSTRACT:
John Peter Berger born in 1926 in London, England, led a long life with so many inspiring ideas and a vast array of works until his death in 2017 in Antony, France where he spent much of his life. Being a prolific writer, he has been tried to be defined by so many people around the world. As a consequence of these evaluations, he has been very frequently described as an art historian and critic, painter and theorist as well as a feminist or a Marxist. However, the way he recognises himself can be hardly limited to these qualifications due to his deconstructive ways of seeing life which avoids him being labelled as merely one ‘thing’. Thus, beyond all these qualifications, he simply introduces himself as a storyteller, but obviously not a conventional one. Believing that the difference between reality and fact is blurry, Berger’s stories reveal a part of reality which is anchored in real pain and suffering of people whose experiences voiced by one of the characters of the story. Therefore, when observed, it is noticeable that Berger’s stories serve as a medium for telling the pain and suffering of people and thereby telling a part of their reality through the most appropriate voice. However, in doing so, they also open up new interpretations and meanings to the reader to speculate more on what Berger prefers not to say. To The Wedding is such a story blending what is spoken in the story with what it leaves out unspoken.
Keywords: deconstructive; pain; real; storyteller; voice.