'Hafif bir Fısıltı': Alice Walker ve Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie'nin eserlerinde 'kaçış çizgisi' olarak cinsiyetleştirilmiş delilik

The present study regards the literary representation of female madness as an ambiguous textual strategy that disrupts the homogeneous conceptualizations of patriarchal and imperial normalcy. Framed within transatlantic feminist nuances, the study examines Purple Hibiscus (2003) and Half of a Yellow Sun (2006) by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie along with Meridian (1976) and Possessing the Secret of Joy (1992) by Alice Walker in an attempt to demonstrate the multi-dimensionality of the black madwoman. These works reflect the racial and gendered otherness inherent in the culturally circumscribed black female subjectivity through the madwoman paradigm. The study foregrounds the intertextual parallelism of this otherness within motherhood, sexuality and ethnic/racial identity formation, all of which are manifested in unconventional narrative structures. Applying the concept of 'the line of flight', coined by Félix Guattari and Gilles Deleuze, the study scrutinizes the inextricable link between the creative/destructive potential of madness and one's (in)ability to foster a heterogeneous identity. This link enables the madness narrative not only to expose social contradictions but also to transform individual and communal conceptions of gender, ethnicity/race and cultural history. Therefore, the study shifts the focus of female madness from the dichotomous interpretations of resistance and submission to the importance of internal heterogeneity. In this light, the study has observed a correlation between the black madwoman's potential to induce societal transformation and her ability to form a heterogeneous sense of self. This correlation indicates a transformational literary space in the selected works wherein monolithic discourses of madness and black femininity are diversified and reconstructed. Keywords: literary madness, African diaspora, line of flight, liminality, femininity