Cultural Studies MA student Cihan Yılmaz attended 'Eighth International Conference on Interdisciplinary Social Sciences' organized by the Charles University, Faculty of Social Sciences in Prague on 30 July - 1 August, 2013.
Cihan Yılmaz presented a paper entitled "The Obscuring Gaze of Belonging: An Analysis of Identity Politics and Reconciliation in Former Guerilla Accounts" at the conference.
Click the link for the conference program:
http://thesocialsciences.com/_uploads/I13_Full_Program_7-22.pdf
Cihan Yılmaz's abstract:
Bejan Matur's book, "Looking Behind The Mountain" has been celebrated for as a testament to the possibility of reconciliation and forgiveness with respect to low intensity war that has been going on at the southeast region of Turkey for 30 years between PKK and Turkish state. As she focuses on the testimonies of former guerillas, she emphasizes on and founds the answer to this turmoil in the humanness which intrinsically binds humanity together. This article however, through discourse analysis, claims that Matur's account with its uttermost emphasis on discourses of Renaissance humanism, not only misses the very conditions revolve around this conflict, it also coincides with the official discourses of Turkish state when it converges to these conditions of possibilities.
