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A Phenomenology of Closet Trauma: Visual Empathy in Contemporary French Film and Graphic Novels

Childress, Kirby
http://orcid.org/0000-0003-1150-4100
http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=osu1618915090413157

Abstract Details

2021, Doctor of Philosophy, Ohio State University, French and Italian.
The primary goal of this dissertation is to conceptualize a phenomenology of `closet trauma’. In order to develop this concept, I bring together Sara Ahmed’s queer approach to phenomenology with literary trauma theory. While the latter has been largely dominated by psychoanalytic theory, I use queer phenomenology to analyze the experience of being closeted. However, throughout my work I distinguish between being in the closet and experiencing closet trauma. While being closeted involves performing a constructed identity, private spaces offer the possibility to discover one’s closeted self. Closet trauma, on the other hand, is the result of the shattered absolutism that one is safe to explore one’s queerness. Identity formation is therefore stifled. I place this concept in the context of the French Republic because of its emphasis on universalism, which encourages self-suppression of identities contrary to the normative `universal’. I begin by outlining a phenomenology of queer sexual awakening as experiencing disorientation: a blossoming away from normativity. Remaining in this state leads to emotional dissonance: inescapable discomfort in one’s environment and distress in regard to one’s potential future. I extend the concept of closet trauma to seropositivity, as diagnosis is portrayed as an experience similar to disorientation linked to self-perception. Throughout each chapter, in my analyses of film and bandes dessinees, I use the term `visual empathy’ to describe the ways authors, illustrators, and filmmakers create a phenomenological reading/viewing experience through formal techniques that are useful in ways beyond witnessing to help the reader/viewer experience disorientation and dissonance. I intend for this to contribute to recent scholarship in terms of visual narratives of trauma as witnesses. While others such as Roger Hallas, Hillary Chute, Harriet Earle use psychoanalytical approaches to documentary trauma narratives, visual empathy takes a phenomenological approach to trauma. The selected works depict trauma as a disorienting experience that leads to dissonance in regard to one's self-perception and sense of being in the world. I take a hermeneutic approach to phenomenology as I outline the way literature can be approached as dialogue. In this way, viewing and reading visual narratives, with the intent to understand the experience of some Other, are immersive and transformative experiences.
Margaret Flinn (Advisor)
Dana Renga (Committee Member)
Lucille Toth (Committee Member)
250 p.
Film Studies; Foreign Language; Gender Studies; Literature
Graphic Novels; Bande Dessinee; French Film; Queer; Trauma; Empathy

Recommended Citations

Citations

  • Childress, K. (2021). A Phenomenology of Closet Trauma: Visual Empathy in Contemporary French Film and Graphic Novels [Doctoral dissertation, Ohio State University]. OhioLINK Electronic Theses and Dissertations Center. http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=osu1618915090413157

    APA Style (7th edition)

  • Childress, Kirby. A Phenomenology of Closet Trauma: Visual Empathy in Contemporary French Film and Graphic Novels. 2021. Ohio State University, Doctoral dissertation. OhioLINK Electronic Theses and Dissertations Center, http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=osu1618915090413157.

    MLA Style (8th edition)

  • Childress, Kirby. "A Phenomenology of Closet Trauma: Visual Empathy in Contemporary French Film and Graphic Novels." Doctoral dissertation, Ohio State University, 2021. http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=osu1618915090413157

    Chicago Manual of Style (17th edition)

osu1618915090413157
252
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This open access ETD is published by The Ohio State University and OhioLINK.