Aesthetics of Displacement: Turkey and its Minorities on Screen
- Submitting institution
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The University of Westminster
- Unit of assessment
- 32 - Art and Design: History, Practice and Theory
- Output identifier
- q2840
- Type
- A - Authored book
- DOI
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10.5040/9781501306471
- Publisher
- Bloomsbury Academic
- ISBN
- 9781501320187
- Open access status
- Out of scope for open access requirements
- Month of publication
- January
- Year of publication
- 2016
- URL
-
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- Supplementary information
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- Request cross-referral to
- -
- Output has been delayed by COVID-19
- No
- COVID-19 affected output statement
- -
- Forensic science
- No
- Criminology
- No
- Interdisciplinary
- No
- Number of additional authors
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0
- Research group(s)
-
-
- Proposed double-weighted
- Yes
- Double-weighted statement
- Koksal’s 95,000 word monograph investigates around 40 feature and documentary films that had hardly been studied, in order to establish a new framework for analysing cinematic representations of minorities in Turkey. It involved 3 years of additional archival, historical and other primary research, enabling her to significantly expand the contextual and interpretative scope from her PhD thesis. Researching cinema’s relationship to Turkey’s political crisis, particularly the question of Kurdish citizens and the taboo concerning the Armenian genocide, necessitated a highly resourceful and multi-sited process of research, often entailing sourcing information and material through non-public and semi-public channels.
- Reserve for an output with double weighting
- No
- Additional information
- Koksal’s monograph investigates around 40 feature and documentary films that had hardly been studied, in order to establish a new framework for analysing cinematic representations of minorities in Turkey. Exploring the relation between cinema and memory, it analyses films that make visible taboo issues concerning the repression of ethnic and religious minorities.
Treating displacement as a structure of feeling, Koksal discusses the ways in which changing political and social conditions determine not only the types of stories told but also how they are told. Looking at films that represent the experience of displacement in relation to Turkey's minorities, she argues that there is aesthetic continuity among otherwise unrelated film examples and genres. Works analysed include Ararat (2002), Waiting for the Clouds (2003), Once Upon a Time in Anatolia (2011), and many others.
Incorporating contextual research, often using difficult to source non-English language materials, the book identifies five recurring themes and stylistic continuities: politics of language, silence, spatial relations, haunted narratives, and epistolary narratives. Koksal focuses on the relationship between film aesthetics and significant events concerning ethnic minorities in contemporary Turkey: population exchange between Greece and Turkey, Armenian genocide and its denial, and the ongoing Kurdish resurgence in reaction to the Turkish state’s policies of oppression.
The book was selected by the Knowledge Unlatched scheme to be turned into an open access title in 2020. It originated from Koksal’s PhD thesis, which won the LSE Turkish Chair Best Dissertation Award, but involved significant expansion of the scope of primary research and development of interpretative framework. Part of chapter four reworks a previously published article (‘Past Not-So-Perfect’) but is not a reproduction of it. While the article focuses on the reception of Ararat, the chapter looks the thematic and stylistic continuities in a body of films dealing with displacement.
- Author contribution statement
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- Non-English
- No
- English abstract
- -
