Didem Alkan Defends Dissertation
Didem Alkan, a doctoral candidate in our French Language & Literature program, has successfully defended her dissertation. Congratulations, Didem!
Didem’s dissertation is titled Tout cela pour dire: La Quête du transmissible dans l’ecriture de l’indicible et le cinéma de l’inmontrable.
From Didem’s abstract:
“Language limitations impose challenges to artistic productions. The “unspeakable” and “unrepresentable” refer to the moments when language barriers become obstacles to conveying meaning. How do contemporary Francophone literatures and film deal with the complexities of the representation of unrepresentable things? How do artists portray something that exceeds meaning, such as violence, which, according to Jean-Luc Nancy, ‘does not participate in any order of reasons […] does not transform what it assaults; rather, it takes away its form and meaning’?
This interdisciplinary work examines the representation of violence and trauma in contemporary literature and film and brings together the representation of three different types of violence: extreme, social, and intimate. The artist’s acknowledgement of the limitations of language in such contexts affects the representation itself and enables a different kind of representation: alternative discourses that would sensitize readers/spectators. These new discourses make them active participants in the symbolization process, allowing them to fill the semantic, unrepresentable gaps through their imagination.”