Sahnede hauntoloji: Amerikan oyunlarında psikanalitik ve travma merceğinden spektral anlatıların incelenmesi

ABSTRACT This thesis examines the construction of "traumatic identity" in Richard Nelson's Apple Family cycle: That Hopey Changey Thing (2010), Sweet and Sad (2011), Sorry (2012), and Regular Singing (2013) as collected in The Apple Family: Scenes from Life in the Country (2014). It argues that these plays organize identity through spectral returns of unresolved histories acting in the present. Drawing on Derridean hauntology, Caruth's trauma theory, Freud's defense mechanisms, and Lauren Berlant's concept of "cruel optimism," the thesis develops a critical framework that treats the "specter" not as a supernatural entity but as a figure for what remains unassimilated in both personal and collective experience. The cycle is strategically set at four pivotal moments in recent U.S. history: the 2010 midterm elections, the 10th anniversary of 9/11, the 2012 Obama re-election, and the 50th anniversary of JFK's assassination. Rather than treating these events as mere backdrops, this dissertation analyzes how they function as distinct "specters" of family, of election, of terror, and of national grief that intrude upon the domestic specters. Nelson uses these historical intersections to exhibit how "traumatic identity" is formed not through linear progression, but through the cyclical recurrence of unresolved history, where the silence of the dinner table serves as a vessel for the nation's rupture. The findings reveal that Nelson's cycle dramatizes a state of permanent suspension, where the boundaries between the personal psyche and the political state dissolve. By synthesizing Berlant's "cruel optimism" with hauntology, the dissertation establishes that the characters do not merely witness history; they are constituted by it. Ultimately, the study challenges traditional models that locate trauma solely in catastrophic events, concluding that identity in contemporary America is shaped by the spectral recurrence of unresolved history, where the past is never truly dead but is constantly waiting to be performed again. Keywords: Hauntology, Psychoanalysis, Trauma, Contemporary American Drama, Richard Nelson