Fosfor är ett nödvändigt näringsämne inom jordbruket, trots detta är vi på väg att använda upp den fosfor vi har tillgång till i marken. Denna studie har därför valt att fokusera på en stor källa till fosfor som inte tas till vara på i många av dagens samhällen: mänsklig avföring. Många samhällen har genom historien använt mänsklig avföring som en resurs, bland annat som gödsel vid matodling, vilket återför en stor del av fosforn till marken. I dagens samhällen ses mänsklig avföring som någonting oönskat och äckligt. Vad är det som skapat denna ovilja att använda denna källa till fosfor? Varför slutade samhällen använda mänsklig avföring som gödsel vid matodling? Syftet med denna studie är att belysa de anledningar som ligger bakom att människor slutar att använda mänsklig avföring vid odling av mat. En tematisk analys, och utvalda delar av en komparativ analys, har använts för att analysera lämpligt publicerat material. Denna analys har skapat resultatet som sedan har ställts mot studiens teoretiska ramverk vilket inkluderar: människans syn på sin egen avföring, smuts och renhet, och mänsklig avföring som resurs. Studiens resultat tyder på att det främst är en accelererad urbanisering och en modernisering av samhället som leder till att människor slutar att använda mänsklig avföring som gödsel inom matodling. Människans syn på renhet ställs mot synen av mänsklig avföring som en resurs. Valet att använda mänsklig avföring eller ej styrs av den kulturella uppfattningen om vad som är rent och smutsigt. När de negativa associationerna kring mänsklig avföring överväger de positiva så leder det till att människor tar avstånd från mänsklig avföring trots att exkrementer fortfarande skulle kunna användas som en resurs. / Phosphorus is an essential nutrient in agriculture, despite this fact we are well on our way to using up the phosphorus we have access to in the ground. This study has therefore focused on a major source of phosphorus that is not taken into consideration in a vast majority of today’s societies: human excrement. Many countries have used human excreta as a resource throughout history, including as a fertilizer when producing food, which ensured that a major part of the phosphorus was returned to the soil. In societies today human excrement is viewed as something unwanted and disgusting. What is it that makes humans hesitant to use this source of phosphorus? Why did societies stop using human excrement as a fertilizer when growing food? The purpose of this study is to examine the underlying causes for why people stop using human excrement as a fertilizer when producing food. A thematic analysis, combined with selected parts of a comparative analysis, has been used to analyze apt publicized material. This analysis has resulted in the study’s result, which has then been pitted against the theoretical framework for this study. The theoretical framework includes: people’s view of their own excreta, dirt and cleanliness, and human excreta as a resource. The result suggests that it primarily is an increased urbanization and a modernization of society that leads people to stop using human excrement as a fertilizer when producing food. Human perception of purity is pitched against the view of human excrement as a resource. The choice of using human excrement or not is governed by the cultural perception of what is clean and what is dirty. When the negative associations connected to human excrement outweigh the positive, then humans distance themselves from it, even though the excrement could still be used as a resource.

This essay deals with recurring grotesque motifs in Mikael Niemi’s novels Kyrkdjävulen, Populärmusik från Vittula (Popular Music from Vittula), Fallvatten and Koka björn (To Cook a Bear). It aims to widen the academic understanding of Niemi’s works by focusing on their aesthetics in relation to previous studies, which have mostly been concerned with placing Niemi in a context of Tornedalian minority literature. With the grotesque defined as monstrous and boundary breaking imagery that challenges common rational, ideological or moral world views, this study shows that these motifs can both strengthen, nuance and undermine postcolonial interpretations of the novels.Through Mikhail Bakhtin’s theory of the grotesque, emphasis is placed on the subversive and utopian aspects of the grotesque motifs. With the use of Sigmund Freud’s term the uncanny (das unheimliche) and Julia Kristeva’s term the abject, psychological and emotional aspects of the selected motifs are drawn to the surface. And, by turning to Sara Ahmed’s thoughts on emotions and performativity, the function of disgust in said motifs is examined. The grotesque motifs in question are: the degradation of the mouth, the lower animals, the boy with the knife, the witch mother, and the androgyne. The first part of the analysis shows that in Niemi’sworks the mouth is associated with storytelling, power, agency and the subject’s ability to both knowand express himself, but also to take the world into himself and be changed by it. The mouth is often degraded, which in a carnivalesque manner results in a linguistic revival. The second part of the analysis argues that lower animals, such as rats, reptiles and bat-like devil spawn, are symbols of the abject – that which man must cast out in order to exist. The motifs of the rats and devils are associated with themes of language, identity and writing, but also allude to a threatening feminine principle. In the third part of the analysis, the motifs of the boy with the knife, the witch mother and the androgyne are found to be juxtaposed to and interwoven with each other in narratives concerning gender, sexuality and coming of age. The results of the study show that Mikael Niemi utilizes grotesque aesthetics to give shape toprocesses of growth and change, captivity and liberation, and a complicated sense of identity that eludes clear and rational definitions. The grotesque in these novels is not purely utopian in a Bakhtinian sense, but more emotionally ambivalent. A determining factor to whether the grotesque image brings true renewal or only a repetition of past pain is the will and choice of the individual. Thus, Mikael Niemi’s novels speak not so much of the power of a minority identity, as of the power and potential of the individual to reinvigorate that identity. They form an individualized, existential project in a Tornedalian context.

This essay explores and examines disgust in five literary figures and books based on scent, bodyfluids and abjection. Together with Julia Kristeva's Powers of Horror: An Essay on Abjection and Sara Ahmed's "The Performativity of Disgust" in The Cultural Politics of Emotion, I analyze these books, and my position as a researchsubject. The questions I ask are: What does disgust mean? How do the subject's boundaries shift when things penetrate the body? How are scents, body fluids and disgust expressed in relation to power and the female body? And what does it mean that I stick my reading experiences on the texts I read?   The analysis begins in Mare Kandre's novel Aliide, Aliide and how gaze, power and girlhood are made, as well as how abjection takes place in the intake of milk and larvae. Body in body and body against body are analyzed based on Aliide's disgust in the novel. I discuss how something growing inside is experienced as disgusting and frightening and connect it to the pregnant body and the fetus as abjection. In the second chapter of the analyze, it is Parfymen: berättelsen om en mördare by Patrick Süskind that focuses on the scent of the female body that Grenouille, the main character tries to extract and master. The gaze on the female body and the extraction of fragrance is in focus here and in Nekrofilen by Gabrielle Wittkop, Lucien's desire for the dead body is examined. The body fluids, such as the vomit that the bodies excrete can be read as limits to life and death. In the third and final analysis section, I read these books with affect. I reconnect to my introduction where Ulf Lundell's poems made me feel disgusted. I use Ahmed's concept of performativity to discuss how cannibalism - reading - eating body fluids are connected, and how writing about disgust, is a form om vomiting. I examine my own writing subject and what an affective reading does to literary studies and the research position. In conclusion, I discuss how the universal and the subjective making of disgust effect research.