Paper Presentation by Res. Asst. Eda Çekemci!

Res. Asst. Eda Çekemci made a presentation on the third day of the International Cinema and Philosophy Symposium, which was held for the fifth time this year in Ankara by SineFilozofi Magazine and lasted for three days. In addition to academic presentations, the symposium, where panels and film screenings were held on various topics, came to the fore with the participation of many academics who conduct current research from both domestic and abroad and with a large audience.

Hospitality of the Ghost: I’m Thinking of Ending Things  

Res. Asst. Eda Çekemci benefited from the concepts of Jacques Derrida, who argued that the meanings and concepts produced by the language contain contradictions and that in order to reach the real meaning, one should look beyond the existing contradictions in her presentation titled "Hospitality of the Ghost: I’m Thinking of Ending Things (Kaufman, 2020)". Cekemci, who preferred to apply Derrida's deconstruction technique to the visual language of cinema, examined the narrative of the film with the concepts of haunting, ghost, hospitality, learning from the other and game.

Interpreting Derrida's concepts of politics and migration through the relationship between self and the other, Çekemci addressed the concept of hospitality according to the structure of relations between inside and outside. He deepened Derrida's distinction between conditional and unconditional hospitality with the work of Immanuel Kant and Emmanuel Levinas. By matching the identity transitions and mental depressions experienced by the character of the film with the aforementioned concepts, Çekemci stated that the struggle of the character with the ghosts inside and outside of himself and the surprise guest of the ghost that haunts him and his being is embodied in the narrative of the film, which becomes increasingly unreal from beginning to end.

We congratulate Res. Asst. Eda Çekemci and wish her continued success.