Judith Butler é mais conhecida como autora de Gender Trouble, no qual problematiza a maneira pela qual se pensava o gênero até então. A partir daí, ela publica diversas obras nas quais aprofunda e desenvolve sua filosofia, calcada em larga medida em considerações inicialmente propostas por Michel Foucault, partindo de sua noção de um poder produtivo dos sujeitos. Butler investiga os termos que desenham o campo de possibilidade dos sujeitos, desnudando como nossas noções de realidade são informadas pela linguagem, que indica apenas descrever aquilo que efetivamente molda e orquestra, chamando por transformação social e propondo uma ampliação da categoria de humano. / Judith Butler is better known for her best-seller Gender Trouble, that aims at troubling how gender has been thought until then. Afterwards she publishes several works that deepen and further develop her philosophy, largely based on considerations Michel Foucault has originally made, taking into account his idea of a power that positively produces the subjects. Butler inquires the terms that draw the field of possibility of the subjects, unveiling how our notions of reality are informed to us by language, that denotes to merely describe that which it actually frames into existence and orquestrates. She calls for social transformation and proposes an enlargement of the category of human.

This essay seeks to understand Hannah Arendt’s notion of the political as an “in-between.” The in-between appears to be the intersubjectivity and relations of interaction in a public sphere, which Arendt suggests as a way of understanding the political as an end in itself. Judith Butler has distinguished Arendt’s notion of the political as essentially relational, but which dismisses the material interdependence as a precondition to political participation. This essay argues that Arendt's notion of the political must be seen in context of her critique of modernity in which the public sphere is dominated by economic terms, “the social”. This essay provides a background for this critique, and how Arendt's distinction between the political and "the social" can be understood. The result is a politics separated from economics, but in which we can stress the question of intersubjectivity at its core. The conclusion is that Arendt certainly recognizes material interdependence as a precondition for politics, but the political in Arendtentian terms insist on a political commonality beyond any common ground, for which the in-between and the relation can emerge as the (non)essence.

Syftet med studien är att undersöka vilka performativa diskurser kring barns kön som framträder i de kollegiala samtalen i förskolan. Metoden som användes var fokusgruppssamtal där deltagarna fick tre dilemman att diskutera kring kopplat till förskolans jämställdhetsarbete. Samtalen spelades in för att sedan kunna transkriberas och analyseras.Resultatet visar på att man kan lyfta ur vissa performativa yttranden som förekommer i samtalen mellan pedagogerna. Yttranden som kan ligga till grund för att pedagoger många gånger bemöter pojkar och flickor olika. Det framkommer att pojkar och flickor tillskrivs olika beteenden som också kan ligga till grund till hur barn formar sina könsidentiteter. Flera pedagoger lyfter också in samhällets och vårdnadshavares normer som en stark faktor vilket påverkar pojkar och flickor, vad man som barn förväntas leva upp till i sin könsroll. Pedagogerna samtalar om maktbegreppet i samband med att mansnormen har en starkare position, att det är generellt mer accepterat att en flicka väljer en pojkroll än att en pojke väljer en flickroll.

Uppsatsen är en redogörelse för en dekonstruktivistisk läsning av Karin Boyes första prosaverk Astarte (1931), utifrån James L. Calderwoods teori om creative uncreation i det poetiska skapandet. Med denna blick på texten så som varande en akt av nedmontering och med utgångspunkt i Judith Butlers teori om könets performativitet, framträder i läsningen av Boyes roman en strävan efter att plocka isär samhälleliga (van)föreställningar och schabloner gällande konsten, poesin, modet osv. i allmänhet och kvinnan, i synnerhet. Analysen är strukturerad efter Calderwoods idé om att det poetiska skapandet kan vara en rörelse från ingenting mot ett någonting eller en rörelse från någonting mot ett ingenting, och är således ordnad i två delar: en som behandlar creation, skapandet av föreställningar, och en rörande creative uncreation, nedmonterandet av dessa. I slutdiskussionen aktualiseras två essäer av Boye, ”Dagdrömmeriet som livsåskådning” och ”Språket bortom logiken”. Boyes tankar kring konst och litteratur som stelnad i konvention och hennes längtan efter ett nytt språk som kan söka sig bortom vedertagna symboler och tecken, sätts här i samband med resultaten för den dekonstruktivistiska läsningen av romanen. Uppsatsen innehåller även en kort redogörelse för Astartes mottagande vid dess utgivning och synen på romanen i tidigare forskning.

The field of rhetorical aesthetics has a long and rich history. Despite that history, however, aesthetic artifacts have yet to be considered with the same weight that conventional rhetorical artifacts are. My project is to consider the rhetorical effectiveness of aesthetic artifacts, making a case for more inclusion of these types of artifacts in rhetorical theory. I will demonstrate the effectiveness of the aesthetic by performing a comparative analysis of both an aesthetic and conventional reaction to the 2019 fires at Notre Dame de Paris. By considering the constitutive power of the aesthetic, I will argue that the depth of analysis that the aesthetic allows makes it, in some cases, a more effective space for rhetorical analysis than conventional artifacts.

The purpose of this study is to see how present the heteronormative is perceived to be within Christian contexts in Sweden today. I have conducted an interview study with priests, pastors, and deacons who either belong to the Swedish Church or the Equmenia Church to get an insight into what their experiences are about norms connected to gender identity and sexuality. I have also included a perspective on the culture of silence that has been shown to be present in previous research to see if it is something the informants have noticed in their workplaces. The interviews have been of a qualitative nature and carried out semi-structured. The material on which the analysis is based is the experiences of the informants. The study's theoretical framework is based on Judith Butler's gender theory of heteronormative and what consequences this can have for those who do not fit into the template for how the norm says a person should be. The results show that heteronormativity is present in the Swedish Christian contexts today, but that there are many people who want to work so that everyone can feel welcome. All informants believe that silence arises in some way related to LGBTQI, even if not all mention a pronounced culture of silence. There is still much to do so that the church can be a safe place for all people, but there are people who want to work for a church that affirms the identities of all people.

One way that children explore concepts of gender is through make-believe and performative play. One of the most prevalent presentations of gender that is packaged for children's play is the Disney Princess brand. In 2007 the Walt Disney Princess campaign profited over four billion dollars and expanded to include over 25,000 items for sale. Princess paraphernalia reflects a change in the way that young girls (ages 3-5) engage in imaginary play by creating a whole new paradigm of thought. As these girls project themselves into the role of a certain Princess, typical play transforms into a consumer based theatrical experience. Girls not only identify with the ideas of playing princess, but of being a Princess as well. Judith Butler examines gender as consisting of performative “acts” that are stylized, repeated, and public. Gender identity usually includes aligning one's self with socially accepted definitions of male or female. Using Butler's idea's about gender performance, this thesis looks closely at the Disney Princess brand and how it contributes to the idea of a gender identity through films, live performances at Disneyland, and merchandise designed for enhancing play. As media and consumerism plays an increasingly large role in children's lives, careful attention must be made to the influence of such brands, especially as the Princesses become defining models of the word female.

Published in 1977, Wendell Berry's book The Unsettling of America: Culture and Agriculture gained widespread popularity. More than half a century later, many of the notions of the body and the earth presented in its seventh chapter, "The Body and the Earth," remain relevant and important for environmental discourse today. Berry's discussion of the body and the earth examines their mutuality and codependence from an ontological, theological, agricultural, and even biological perspective. The coupling of this text with Judith Butler's, Frames of War: When is Life Grievable? contemporizes his argument through its more socio-political and philosophical claims regarding life and the body. Through the discussion of societal frames that often prescribe the value of life and bodies, Butler introduces the concept of precarity, or the imposition of violence and its resultant instability of the body. Driven by the external forces of society, precarity weakens, commodifies, and exploits the body, creating unsustainable social systems. As we learn from Berry, this bodily precarity parallels the violence and mistreatment of the earth. The body, and its ecological and anthropological interconnectedness, establishes both material and immaterial ties to the earth, suggesting that any damage done to the body affects not just itself, but the entire system. In bringing together Butler and Berry through an ecocritical dialogue, a new ethic regarding the formation and meaning of a life emerges, prompting revision of the current societal parameters that establish the definitions of the body and the earth. Berry's resurgent relevance comes from his admonitions to repair the relationships of all bodies and the networks of which they are a part. Thus, the connection between an individual and their body, other bodies, and the earth must be restored for an environmental ethic to both persist and establish productive environmental change.

This poststructuralist research into managerial subjectivity follows ten senior managers’ experience, during significant organizational restructuring in the National Health Service. Located in the North of England the managers were interviewed three times during an eighteen-month period. An autoethnographic component is integral to the study; this recognises the researcher was a practising manager undergoing the same organizational change, whilst researching the field. Judith Butler’s theories provide the principle theoretical framework for the study. Whilst the managers narrated a fantasy of having a ‘true’ and coherent self, the research illustrated how fragile, fleeting and temporary each managerial self is and how passionately attached to their managerial subjectivity (despite how painful) they were. Emotion is presented as inextricably tied up with gender performativity and managerial subjectivity; despite best efforts the emotional ‘dirt’ of organizations cannot be ordered away; there is a constant seepage and spillage of emotion – as illustrated in the vignettes and profiled in the Butlerian deconstruction. During organizational change there was a fear of a social (organizational) death and even the most senior of managers were profoundly vulnerable. This fear and vulnerability heightened in contact with others perceived as more powerful (in critical conversations and interviews). Failure to receive the desired recognition and the risk of being organizationally unintelligible compounded this vulnerability and triggered recurrent, unpredictable patterns of loss, ek-stasis and unravelling of the managerial self. This acute vulnerability during restructuring anticipates and therefore (re) enacts a Machiavellian discourse, one that excuses unethical behaviour and relations as a ‘necessary evil’.

In this essay I examine how conceptions of gender can expand the emancipatory ability of feminism. To achieve this the essay analyzes and discusses two conceptions of gender. The first can be found in Virginia Held’s “The Ethics of Care”, while the second can be found in Chandra Talpade Mohanty’s “Feminism without Borders”. By comparing these the essay examines the limits of a stricter conception of gender, in comparison to a more complex conception of gender. These are in turn compared to Judith Butler’s “Gender Trouble” and Simone de Beauvoir’s “The Second Sex”.  Through the analysis and discussion, it is shown that stricter conceptions of gender give a more simplified view of the real lives of women in different parts of the world. These conceptions may include ideas about contextuality and social factors such as race, ethnicity, class, and sexuality, but these are added to an already established idea of “the woman”. Through complex conceptions of gender these social factors are instead viewed as intersected with gender. Gender is thus seen as a social construct, contextually differentiated by different conceptions of both sexuality and gender expression, as well as other social factors. These social factors are seen as both constructed and used by systems and power structures to oppress women. Complex conceptions of gender can thus expand the emancipatory ability of feminism by bringing both an intersectional and materialistic perspective into view. This perspective shows how gender can both be constructed in problematic ways through discursive representations and feminist theories, but also shows how gender is constructed through social practices and are used to affect women in a material way.