Syftet med denna studie är att utifrån ett posthumanistiskt perspektiv observera och belysa materialet och hur det liksom människan har likvärdig betydelse för vad som sker i lek i en naturmiljö. Detta gjorde vi genom att observera de meningar som uppstår i intra-aktion mellan och inom de performativa agenterna. Studiens empiriska material är producerad genom partiellt deltagande videoobservationer och är analyserad genom Karen Barads agentiella realism. De begrepp som användes i bearbetningen av analysen är: intra-aktion, transformation, mening och performativ agent. Studiens resultat visar på hur agenterna samhandlar och att leken tar olika vägar beroende på vilket material, vilken miljö och vilka barn som för stunden sammanflätas. Det framgår att platsen och dess naturmaterial står i ständig transformation med de andra performativa agenterna som de intra-agerar med och bör på så sätt ses som medskapare av leken. Resultatet visar även på vikten av en närvarande pedagog som hjälper barnen att materiellt artikulera de nya meningar som uppstår.

The purpose of this study is to examine children's intra-active relations with sounds in an explorative work at a preschool (1-to 2-year old children) analyzed through the lens of agential realism (Barad 2007, 2008), and to examine its didactical effects. This study has a transdisciplinary and cross-disciplinary design based on preschool didactics and the natural sciences, mainly physics andbiology. Research data consist of pedagogical documen-tation in the form of a short video sequence generated in a preschool sound project. An agential realistic approach in this study means an analysis of how sound is produced intra-actively in children's play and exploration in a pre-school. Barad’s agential realism also defines specific ethical stances for both the researcher’s involvement in the production of knowledge and the ethical implications of what that new knowledge and reality reveals(Barad 2007, 2008). The results of this study demonstrate the possibility to work with young preschool children around sound and how sound can be understood as a significant partner in children's play and exploration. This work ́s transdis-ciplinary goal, which is to work across the boundaries of preschool practice and scientific theory, contributes new knowledge about how sound vibration, frequency, loudness, hearingand acoustics intra-acts with children ́sbodies, feelings and thoughtsand the educational environmentsand discourses that children face in preschool. This study's specific impact on practice is that preschool staff can gain a greater understanding on the significance and im-pact of furnishings, architecture and organization according to time and place on how children express themselves and explore sound as a material-discursive phenomenon.

“Doctor Moreau and The Hunt for The Ethical Figure. From unsuccessful man-making to respectful relations with Jacques Derrida, Donna Haraway and H. G. Wells” In H. G. Wells’ science fiction novel, The Island of Doctor Moreau (1896), a scientist on a remote island in the Pacific Ocean attempts to create humans from animals. Wells draws on Charles Darwin’s theories on the origins of species and the descent of man to create a horror story in which the uniqueness of the human is called into question. This study uses the novel to investigate the re-emergent interest in human-animal relations, within the natural sciences as well as the arts and humanities, in the past twenty years. In what is often termed “the Animal Turn,” theorists such as Jacques Derrida and Donna Haraway, who are at the centre of this study, have dedicated a significant amount of their work to the animal question and in particular to the ethics of inter-species relationships. Furthermore this essay stages the interaction of fiction and theoretical discourse in an analysis that probes challenges inherent to the relations of humans to other species, such as the practice of eating meat, the killing of animals, and animal rights. Moreover, it considers how the figure of the animal has been used to define the human, as well as to dehumanize people in the justification of abuse and persecution. However, human-animal ethics also has positive connotations, discussed through the figures of positivity and possibility in play, sharing, contact and responsive responsibility. Taking its inspiration from Karen Barad’s method of diffraction, this study foregrounds new pattern-making while exploring how Derrida’s and Haraway’s strategies for formulating a new ethics are present in their use of tropes and figures. / Science fiction-romanen The Island of Doctor Moreau skrevs 1896 och handlar om hur en vetenskapsman på en avlägsen ö i Stilla havet försöker skapa människor av djur. Författaren H. G. Wells inspirerades av Darwins teorier om arternas uppkomst till att skriva en skräckberättelse där mänsklighetens unikhet sätts ur spel. Den här studien använder Wells text i syfte att undersöka hur relationen mellan människor och andra arter har kommit att få ett nytt intresse inom en mängd olika vetenskapliga, praktiska och konstnärliga ämnen i slutet av 1900-talet och början av 2000-talet, något som har kommit att kallas ”The Animal Turn”.  I centrum för studien återfinns teorier formulerade av filosofen Jacques Derrida och den feministiska vetenskapsteoretikern och biologen Donna Haraway. Båda två har ägnat stor del av sina respektive arbeten åt djurfrågan, framför allt med enträget intresse för hur ett etiskt förhållande mellan arter kan se ut. Studien låter romanen och de teoretiska texterna samverka i en analys som diskuterar utmaningar i människa-djur-relationer – som köttätande, dödande och rättigheter. Människan har till exempel använt sig av djuret för att definiera sig som människa, men också för att dehumanisera andra människor, och därmed kunnat utnyttja eller våldföra sig på dessa människor. Men människa-djur-etiken har också positiva aspekter: kontakt över språkgränser, att tillsammans utgöra världsmedborgare som alla består av och är beroende av varandra, att dela lek och arbete, att se och upptäcka den andre.  Med inspiration från Karen Barads användning av metoden diffraktion vill den här uppsatsen utforska Derridas och Haraways strategier för att formulera en ny etik genom bruket av figurer och troper.

abstract: Since the Enlightenment, humanist philosophy has understood materiality as an inert and determinate world categorically separate from the sphere of consciousness and language. However, after evolving significantly during the 20th century, the natural sciences now recognize the complexity, indeterminacy and agency of matter. A parallel transformation can be observed in contemporary Spanish and Latin American literature and is exemplified in the works of Cristina Peri Rossi and Cecilia Vicuña. Drawing on knowledge which emerges from the natural sciences, the humanities and personal experience, these poets explore multiple dimensions of materiality from the microscopic world of subatomic particles and DNA molecules to the macroscopic world of the body and the structure of the universe. The theoretical orientation of this study emerges from posthumanism, which critiques the epistemological foundations of humanist thought and reconfigures reductionist concepts of matter, discourse, the subject, and agency which are grounded in dualistic ontology. Material feminist theorists explore materiality through interdisciplinary approaches which establish a dialogue between posthumanism, feminist theory and the natural sciences. The material feminist Karen Barad proposes an agential realist ontology which constitutes the principal theoretical framework of this thesis. According to Barad, phenomena are not exclusively social or material but rather material-discursive practices, and the concept of agency is reconfigured as the product of the dynamics of intra-action rather than an as an attribute restricted to the human sphere. Furthermore, this thesis utilizes diverse materials from the areas of literary criticism and scientific research in order to achieve an authentically interdisciplinary interpretation of materiality in the poetry. Peri Rossi and Vicuña express a profound questioning of the fundamental assumptions of humanism and offer perspectives which take into account matter's agency and dynamism. Their poetry presents materiality as a constant process of creation and as an active participant in the unfolding of reality, thereby opening up new horizons of investigation. By interpreting the works of Peri Rossi and Vicuña through the lens of posthumanist theory, this study contributes to a growing body of interdisciplinary approaches to contemporary Spanish and Latin American literature. / Dissertation/Thesis / M.A. Spanish 2013

The aim of this paper is to examine the possibility to be impossible, to examine how the socially intelligible can come to exist. This is done through the concept of sex/gender, as sex/gender has such a determining place in the production of what can be understood as human, it also has the properties to shed light on the possibility to be and exist beyond the socially intelligible. In this paper I will interview and analyze how four genderqueer people understand themselves and their identity in relation to the phenomenon sex/gender. Through Karen Barad’s concept of posthumanist performativity and her conceptualization of phenomena and intra-action I understand sex/gender, not as entities, but as phenomena of ever changing and ever intra-acting agents. The study suggests that the limitations of the concept of sex/gender can be addressed through an understanding of the body as itself a web of intra-actions, that is, the body as a phenomenon.

Den här uppsatsen undersöker graviditetsskildringarna i Helena Granströms prosalyriska kortroman Hysteros (2013). Med stöd i nymaterialisten Karen Barads teori om materiella-diskursiva apparaturer och ett antal begrepp lånade från ekokritikern Timothy Mortons mörka ekologi, försöker den genom närläsningar att ta reda på hur graviditet – ett motiv som genomsyrar hela Granströms författarskap – i den aktuella texten fungerar som ingång till den form av ekologisk medvetenhet som Morton kallar ”ecognosis”. Läsningarna äger rum mot bakgrund av den nya moderskapslitteraturen, vilken definieras med hjälp av forskaren Lily Gurton-Wachter. Ett latent syfte med uppsatsen, utöver att beskriva graviditetsskildringarna och visa på deras relevans för det ekologiska tänkandet, är att demonstrera potentialen som finns i denna litteratur, liksom i studiet av den, både vad gäller förståelsen av de specifika erfarenheter den utgår från och utforskandet av andra filosofiska spörsmål med hjälp av dessa erfarenheter. Uppsatsen argumenterar i slutändan för att Granström framvisar graviditet som en miniatyr av antropocen, med vilket jag menar att graviditeten skildras som en aktiv materialitet som decentraliserar och löser upp gränserna för det autonoma mänskliga subjektet. Graviditeten ställer således Hysteros berättarjag inför samma svårigheter som antropocen enligt ekokritiken ställer mänskligheten inför.

Wonder has had a rich and diverse history in the western philosophical tradition. Both Plato and Aristotle claim that philosophy begins in wonder, while Descartes marks it as the first of the passions and Heidegger uses it as a signpost for a new trajectory of philosophy away from idealism and nihilism. Despite such a rich history, wonder is almost always thought to be exhausted by the acquisition of knowledge. That is, wonder is thought of almost exclusively in epistemological terms and is discarded as soon as knowledge has been achieved. In this dissertation, I argue for an ontological reorientation of wonder that values wonder beyond its epistemic uses. To do this, I read the phenomenological and ontological work of Maurice Merleau-Ponty through recent developments in object-oriented ontology and new materialism. Much of Merleau-Ponty's work is directed toward dissolving the distinction between subject and object. His insights regarding the mutual constitution of the world lead to the possibility of an operative wonder that occurs between subject and object. Both object-oriented ontology and new materialism radicalize these insights by articulating them in terms of a vibrant or quasi-agential material world. Objects and assemblages of objects are capable of performing the becoming of the world that includes human activity, but is not reduced to it. As such, the world is capable of both self-organization and practice. Ultimately I use the philosophy-physics of Karen Barad to argue that operative wonder acts like a kind of superposition of relations between objects, and thereby accounts for a concept of wonder that is both ontologically significant and acutely generative.

Using postmodern, feminist and queer notions of utopia/dystopia and narrative theory, this thesis contains an analysis of The Handmaid’s Tale (novel 1985; film 1990; TV series S01 2017) based on theoretical and methodological understandings of utopia/dystopia and narrative as deeply connected with notions of temporality and relationality, and of violence and resistance as the modes of expression of utopia and dystopia in the source texts. The analysis is carried out in an explorative manner (Czarniawska 2004) and utilises the notion of “disidentification” (Butler 1993; Muñoz 1999) and the concepts of “diffraction” (Haraway 1992, 1997; Barad 2007, 2010), and “entanglement” (Barad 2007). The conclusion becomes that utopia and dystopia in The Handmaid’s Tale are, to a great extent, imagined within the same system of understanding, but that utopian hope can be found in the relationality and temporality of resistance, and that the radically different utopian place is the queer horizon.

This essay analyzes Mette Edvardsens performative work oslo, which usually falls under the label of dance and choreography. The performance is in many ways making use of and staging language though, so the aim here is to examine how the linguistic and textual material of the performance is enacted in relation to its mediating devices and vice versa. The essay is making use of the media theory by David J. Bolter and Richard A. Grusin to show that no medium stands by itself but always exists and works in a web-like relation to other medias. Language will therefore not be seen as isolated but always interacting with other mediating instances. Their theory will also stand as a base in trying to track different medias ideological origin. With inspiration from actor-network theory, this essay tries to map the performance as a network made up by components. The components will be understood, through material- semiotic theorists as Donna Haraway and Karen Barad, to exhibit agency. That is, they are seen to be doing something, they affect the network in a way which is beyond the control and possible intention by an author. The essay shows that Edvardsens performance is being enacted by its network, wherein the author or choreographer is one but not the only actor. The essay also examines how we come to understand a body or and object for what they are, how we define their borders, and will argue that borders are not static but are open for negotiation.

Within the interdisciplinary field of new materialism Karen Barad’s theory of agential realism deconstructs our current euro-western metaphysical perception of the world and our existence within it, to then re-build an understanding based on relatively new findings within quantum physics. In this thesis I try to recreate Barad’s theory to see what ethical consequences might come from it. Together with practical examples within the discourse of today’s social world and our global connectedness I hope to create a better understanding of the impact of our actions and being on our culture and what we call the natural world. Removing the unique agency given to human culture and language to instead, with the help of post-humanistic ideas, add agency as a universal enactment rather than an attribute, we should start to see ourselves as active and real parts of the world-building that is our home. One main question that I see arise in the end is: what does responsibility entail when we all are one and the same?