UC Irvine

This dissertation analyzes literary and filmic works to point to the post-national and post-catastrophic nature of diaspora Armenian culture in or involving the Western Armenian language. After the 1915 Catastrophe, Western Armenian survivors were forced into exile from their ancestral lands, carrying with them a modern national literary language. By analyzing the works of Shahan Shahnour, Nigoghos Sarafian, Gariné Torossian, Vahé Oshagan and Krikor Beledian, this study traces the various forms in which the emergence of a diasporic Armenian culture is inscribed at the limits of realist and positivist practices of representation informing modern notions of national literature and history. It then theorizes multilingual diasporic culture on the basis of such analyses and positions the latter as a critique of post-colonial multiculturalism.