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چکیده
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Feminine identity has been one of the key thematic concepts in contemporary dystopian and post-apocalyptic fiction. The present study examined the representation of feminine identity in Tom Perrotta’s The Leftovers (2011) through the lens of Luce Irigaray’s poststructuralist feminist philosophy. Set in the aftermath of the Sudden Departure, an unexplained event in which two percent of the world’s population suddenly disappears, the novel depicts a society marked by loss, uncertainty, and the breakdown of shared meaning. Rather than offering theological or scientific explanations, the narrative focuses on the lives of the people left behind, affected by trauma and the reconfiguration of identity in a fractured social order. This study investigated how feminine identity is constructed, constrained, and navigated within this disrupted symbolic structure. Adopting a qualitative, interpretative approach, the analysis combined close thematic and characterological reading with qualitative content analysis. The study was guided by Irigaray’s key concepts, including sexual difference, phallocentrism, maternal subjectivity, and the politics of silence and voice. The analysis focused on two central female characters, namely Laurie Garvey and Nora Durst, whose contrasting narrative journeys enable a comparative examination of feminine subjectivity. The findings showed that The Leftovers represents feminine identity as unstable, fragmented, and deeply influenced by patriarchal symbolic structures. Laurie Garvey’s withdrawal into institutionalized silence reflects both a refusal of socially imposed roles and a repetition of symbolic erasure. By contrast, Nora Durst’s public display of grief allows for a partial persistence of subjectivity, though her identity remains confined by maternal symbolism. Through this comparison, the study demonstrated that in such novels feminine identity is not unified but heterogeneous, revealing both the limitations of the phallocentric symbolic order and the possibility of alternative modes of relational becoming.
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