The Renunciation, distortion and subversion of hegemonic discourses in Liz Lochhead’s plays

Download

index.pdf

Date

2019

Author

Yakut Tütüncüoğlu, Özge

Metadata

Show full item record

Item Usage Stats

195
views

96
downloads

This dissertation argues that Liz Lochhead challenges and reconsiders the patriarchal epistemological categories in her plays and creates an alternative space of existence which grants acknowledgement to women’s responses to the social and empirical reality by reworking the taken for granted notions of patriarchy. To this end, this dissertation analyzes Lochhead’s three plays Medea, Thebans and Mary Queen of Scots Got Her Head Chopped against the backdrop of Lacanian theory and yet attempts to transgress his entrapment in phallogocentricism by reading his epistemology subversively, re-employing the terms he has formulated and opening up an alternative feminine space, which, in the end, will direct this study towards a post-Lacanian position. In relevance to the aim of this study, Lochhead’s above-mentioned plays will be discussed so as to display the employment of language as a political and an ideological tool to construct realities, to give voice to liminal figures and to appropriate already existent categories in its own terms. Lochhead’s revisiting of European history and myths, and reconstructing them from a feminine and Scottish point of view through her fluid and decentred language engender an alternative space renouncing the hegemonic discourses embedded in language, out of which counter hegemonic ones arise. This dissertation comes to the conclusion that a global look at her plays testifies to her success in creating an alternative space, which subverts grand narratives, phallocentric history and its hegemony in artistic and dramatic production.

Subject Keywords

Scottish literatüre

URI

http://etd.lib.metu.edu.tr/upload/12622943/index.pdf
https://hdl.handle.net/11511/27907

Collections

Graduate School of Social Sciences, Thesis

Suggestions

OpenMETU
Core

The Function of the fantastic in the works of Angela Carter and Jeanette Winterson Özyurt Kılıç, Mine; İçöz, Nursel; Department of English Literature (2005) This study sets out from the premise that the fantastic, in the hands of the women writers with feminist awareness,can be used as a tool to subvert patriarchal gender roles that are culturally constructed. The dissertation aims at analysing the fantastic novels by Angela Carter, The Infernal Desire Machines of Doctor Hoffman and Nights at the Circus, and by Jeannette Winterson, The Passion and The.PowerBook as examples in which the transgression of gender roles is achieved through the use of fantastic image...
THE STUDY OF TERF DEBATE IN THE CONTEXTS OF US, UK & TURKEY & THE EMBRACEMENT OF INTERSECTIONAL FEMINISM FOR RECONCILIATION PROPOSAL Tanrıver, Pınar; Alpan, Başak Zeynep; Department of Political Science and Public Administration (2022-7-18) This study examines the relationality of the trans-exclusionary radical feminism (TERF) debate, which has become the focus of contemporary feminist literature with intersectional feminism. After the introduction of the term, “TERF” in 2008, the debate on trans-exclusion has flared up and pushed feminist actors into a significant polarisation. At the same time, the trans-exclusionary legal and structural changes made by states, institutions and organisations worldwide caused the gap between the parties to wi...
Woman's Writing and the Body in a Turkish Context: Erendiz Atasu's The Other Side of the Mountain Korkut Naykı, Nil (2014-09-01) The mind-body dualism and woman's perception of her body in patriarchal culture have been major concerns for feminist thinking in the West. This essay attempts to place this issue within a non-western context through an analysis of the Turkish author Erendiz Atasu's novel, The Other Side of the Mountain (2000). The essay explores the way Atasu's novel employs a variety of thematic and formal devices to represent the modern emancipated Turkish woman's relationship with her body. It also discusses how these c...
The Construction of female identity in Timberlake Wertenbaker's The Grace of Mary Traverse and The Break of Day Öztürk, Gülüzar; Çileli, Fatma Meral; Department of Foreign Language Education (2012) This thesis aims to analyse the construction of female identity from the beginning of the feminist activism in Victorian era whose rationale was formed during the eighteenth century, to the contemporary times in terms of patriarchy and motherhood in Timberlake Wertenbaker’s The Grace of Mary Traverse and The Break of Day. This study is conducted with the historical development of the feminist movement that has had different agendas at different periods of history being taken into account. Fighting for women...
Women’s writings under state feminism in Turkey: an analysis of “Kadın gazetesi” from 1947 to 1960 / Güngör, Melike; Çırakman Deveci, Aslı; Department of Political Science and Public Administration (2016) This thesis analyzes a woman’s journal called ‘Kadın Gazetesi’ in relation with the concept of state feminism. The study is based on an analysis of the issues of the journal published from 1947 to 1960. This thesis investigates how the journal described the images of women in relation to the prevailing hegemonic discourse on womanhood. Thus, the main intention of the study is to discuss the meanings of women’s portrayals in the journal with historical changes resulted to the dominant effect of state feminis...

Citation Formats

Ö. Yakut Tütüncüoğlu, “The Renunciation, distortion and subversion of hegemonic discourses in Liz Lochhead’s plays,” Ph.D. - Doctoral Program, Middle East Technical University, 2019.