This thesis argues that the end of Soviet Marxism and a bipolar global political imaginary at the dissolution of the short Twentieth Century poses an obstacle for anti-systemic political action. Such a blockage of alternate political imaginaries can be discerned by reading the work of Francis Fukuyama and "Endism" as performative invocations of the closure of political alternatives, and thus as an ideological proclamation which enables and constrains forms of social action. It is contended that the search through dialectical thought for a competing universal to posit against "liberal democracy" is a fruitless one, because it reinscribes the terms of teleological theories of history which work to effect closure. Rather, constructing a phenomenological analytic of the political conjuncture, the thesis suggests that the figure of messianism without a Messiah is central to a deconstructive reframing of the possibilities of political action - a reframing attentive to the rhetorical tone of texts. The project of recovering the political is viewed through a phenomenological lens. An agonistic political distinction must be made so as to memorialise the remainders and ghosts of progress, and thus to gesture towards an indeconstructible justice which would serve as a horizon for the articulation of an empty universal. This project is furthered by a return to a certain phenomenology inspired by Cornelius Castoriadis, Claude Lefort, Maurice Merleau-Ponty and Ernesto Laclau. The thesis provides a reading of Jacques Derrida and Walter Benjamin as thinkers of a minor universalism, a non-prescriptive utopia, and places their work in the context of new understandings of religion and the political as quasi-transcendentals which can be utilised to think through the aporias of political time in order to grasp shards of meaning. Derrida and Chantal Mouffe's deconstructive critique and supplement to Carl Schmitt's concept of the political is read as suggestive of a reframing of political thought which would leave the political question open and thus enable the articulation of social imaginary significations able to inscribe meaning in the field of political action. Thus, the thesis gestures towards a form of thought which enables rather than constrains action under the sign of justice.

This thesis investigates the counter-hegemonic formation of Danish-based transnational feminist curatorial collective Kuratorisk Aktion in a single-case study. It serves as a unique example, presenting how the collective engages to overcome the existing gap between curatorial aims and the implementation through curating. Their work and approach is shaped highly by their political mindset, aiming to resist tendencies of depoliticisation, right-wing populism or neoliberalism with the means of curating. Chantal Mouffe’s theory of radical democracy and her deliberations and notions concerning agonisms, citizenship, feminism, counter-hegemonic interventions and activism through art are used in order to contextualise and discuss the possibilities and limitations of the political work by Kuratorisk Aktion. An interview with the collective conducted by scholar Angela Dimitrakaki in 2010 as well as their realised curatorial projects enhanced the argumentation. The analysis exemplified, that over the years Kuratorisk Aktion has developed their personal and exceptional curatorial paradigm, which is able to counteract hegemonic structures. This reveals their radical democratic potential and aspiration through curating and the curatorial.

This thesis shows how democratic politics requires a commitment to pluralism as engagement and encounter of the other in their otherness. I contend that it is necessary to commit to such an idea of pluralism because of the problem of incomplete understanding. I establish this premise by drawing on Hans-Georg Gadamer’s account of human finitude. Based on this premise, I argue that the instantiation of Gadamer’s principle of openness leads democratic politics to pluralism as engagement and encounter of the other. Further, I develop accounts of asymmetric reciprocity, reflexivity, and agonism as modes of democratic politics that instantiate the principle of openness. In chapter 1, I establish discourse as a necessary element for democratic politics by drawing from the way Jurgen Habermas uses ‘discourse ethics’ to address the problems of understanding in plural societies. In chapter 2, I demonstrate how incomplete understanding poses a problem for discourse and gives rise to interpretive conflicts by drawing from Gadamer’s account of human finitude. Here I also develop an account of openness as a suitable principle for beings with incomplete understanding based on Gadamer’s idea of hermeneutical experience. In chapters 3-5, I develop accounts of asymmetric reciprocity, reflexivity, and agonism as modes of democratic politics that instantiate the principle of openness. I do so by drawing from Iris Young’s, John Dryzek’s, and Chantal Mouffe’s approaches to the problems that plurality poses to discourse ethics and democratic politics.

This thesis project explores the question of the death of architecture; the declaration of the lost abilities of architecture to achieve political influence and the architect as a social actor. As I have found myself in agreement with this Tafurian perspective on the subject, I wanted to use this thesis project to explore the question of architecture and its political potential, as well as breaking from the paralyzing condition of the incentives of architecture's incapabilities. This, in suggesting that architecture can act as a catalyst for doing things differently. The project investigates, on the one hand,  how a building can encourage political action and engagement, and, on the other, how ideological ideas and intentions can concretize spatially, materially and aesthetically, The project is an design exploration concretized in a specific architectural proposal – a building for a political organization operating in the city of Stockholm.

Before the regulation of opium as a “narcotic” in Sweden in 1923, opium was not regulated for its intoxicating properties and was freely available. But not in any kind of shop. Opium was legally available only through the pharmacies. This thesis explores how this free availability of a narcotic was understood by its traders, the pharmacists. The title of this thesis – The Value of Poison – indicates how opium could be conceptualized both as a safe, everyday remedy essential to keep freely available and as a drug of intoxication. As a poison it could be articulated as a matter of primarily pharmacological, not moral or medical, concern. This also gave the pharmacists, with their special knowledge of pharmaka (drugs, poisons), an autonomous space of knowledge free from the ever more intruding “medical gaze”. But, in order to articulate this kind of understanding of opium, another kind of knowledge was needed to be acknowledged: that of the user. In this articulation a “sensus communis” was tied in with a broader cultural knowledge of drugs. Problems with opium were focused on the danger of acute poisoning, not recreational intoxication. Concepts that could have problematized this kind of use were rearticulated as problems either of illegitimate trade, unregulated markets and advertising or of draconian regulation by greedy or sloppy doctors. These rather opposite elements were made equivalent through the articulation of ignorance in both cases, thus further emphasizing the special knowledge of the pharmacist. The thesis locates a process of contradiction that contributes to the eventual diminishing of the discourse of poison towards the end of the period. The pharmaceutical knowledge that guaranteed the discourse was based on a “pharmaceutical gaze” on pharmaka. It pierced through the drug to identify its constituent parts. In this process it was promised that the different effects of opium would be separated. “Narcotic” could be a by-product, to be discarded or controlled, without dispensing of other therapeutic effects. With this ever deeper knowledge of opium, knowledge in the pharmacies was made insufficient for the full understanding or opium, and so too was that of the traditional user. The era of opium as a poison was over. / Före den första särlagstiftningen om narkotika i Sverige 1923 reglerades inte opiumets rusgivande egenskaper. Drogen var fritt tillgänglig i handeln. Men inte i vilken butik som helst. Opium kunde bara köpas lagligt på landets apotek. Den här avhandlingen undersöker hur denna fria tillgänglighet av narkotika förstods av droghandlarna själva, apotekarna. Titeln pekar på hur opium på en och samma gång kunde tänkas som en säker husmedicin vars tillgänglighet var avgörande för folkhälsan och som en rusgivande drog. Som ”gift” artikulerades det som en i första hand farmakologisk angelägenhet, inte en moralisk eller medicinsk. När de talade på detta sätt upprättade apotekarna, genom sin särskilda kunskap om farmaka, ett eget rum för sitt vetande, fritt från läkarnas allt mer genomträngande ”kliniska blick”. Men för att kunna artikulera denna förståelse av opium krävdes också att en annan typ av kunskap vidkändes: brukarens. Genom denna artikulation knöts brukarnas ”sensus communis” samman med en bredare kulturell kunskap om droger. De av opiumets problem som lyftes fram handlade om akut förgiftning, inte rekreationellt rusbruk. De begrepp som hade varit möjliga att användas för att problematisera denna senare form av bruk reartikulerades: antingen förpassades de till den olagliga handeln, de oreglerade marknaderna och reklamen, eller också till de drakoniska regleringarna som giriga och slarviga läkare stod bakom. Apotekarna artikulerade dessa båda helt motstående element som ekvivalenta genom en brist på kunskap, vilket i sin tur ytterligare stärkte deras egen kunskapsmakt. Avhandlingen lokaliserar även en processande motsägelse som sker när giftets diskurs tynar bort vid slutet av den undersökta perioden. Den farmaceutiska kunskap som underbyggde diskursen vilade på en ”farmaceutisk blick” på farmaka. Denna genomborrade drogämnet för att avslöja dess beståndsdelar. Genom denna process utlovades att opiumets olika effekter skulle kunna skiljas från varandra. ”Narkotikan” kunde ses som en bieffekt, som kunde kastas åt sidan eller kontrolleras separat, utan att opiumets kvarvarande terapeutiska effekter minskade. Denna allt djupare kunskap medförde att de enskilda apotekarnas eget vetande på apoteken inte räckte till för att fullt ut förstå opium, och därmed bröts även samartikulationen med brukarnas kunskap. Tidseran när opium var ett gift tog därmed slut under mellankrigsperioden.

In this essay I try to find out how the local political climate in the Swedish Municipal Örebro looks like through the eyes of Michel Foucault. I’ve been focusing on the concept power, knowledge and politic. I’ve been applying the discourse theory on the study and the founder of that theory is Chantal Mouffe and Ernesto Laclau, the discoursetheory is a refinement of Foucaults thoughts about discourse. The object of study is the Mayor of Örebro, Staffan Werme and the position connected to that post. I’ve used the method “shadowing”, and I’ve been following the Mayor in every physical room that he appears in for nearly two weeks. The aim is too see which subject-position that the Mayor ascribes to in those different rooms, and also how the concept of power is used.

This research examines how the practice of curating has been used to further counter-hegemonic agendas in public art institutions since 1989. The central aim is to provide a fuller, contextualised, and medium specific understanding of the how the institutional exhibition might be used to challenge the hegemony of neoliberalism and the post-political consensus politics that sustains its dominance. It provides insights, through both historic case studies and reflective practice, that problematise the idea that the institutional art exhibition is a viable medium for counter-hegemonic critique, or represents the ideal space for the development of an agonistic public discourse. This thesis presents collaborative research undertaken with Tate Liverpool and Liverpool John Moores University. The research presented both extrapolated from, and contributed to, the development of an exhibition, co-curated with Tate Liverpool, entitled Art Turning Left (8 November 2013 – 2 February 2014) and a supplementary publication of the same name. The first section investigates how the idea that curators can counter neoliberal dominance, through institutional exhibition-making, developed. It draws from analyses of previous exhibitions, and the theory of Chantal Mouffe, in order to critically evaluate the curatorial application of counter-hegemonic critique and agonistic practice. It also provides a review of how exhibitions (held in major art institutions since 1989) have articulated politics, in order to determine their relationship to neoliberal dominance, and to identify significant gaps in the dialogue facilitated by these institutions. These analyses provides the theoretical and contextual grounding for the final two chapters, which provide a rationale and critical evaluation of my own attempt to develop an alternative counter-hegemonic curatorial strategy for the exhibition at Tate Liverpool. They document, and analyse, the areas of dissensus, and the ideological and pragmatic limitations that emerged, in trying to realise these theoretical propositions (in practice) in a public art museum. The thesis therefore provides a critical framework for the development of an alternative practice that positions the exhibition as a form of post-political critique and specifically targets the hegemonic role that institutional exhibitions play in reinforcing class distinctions and devaluing nonprofessional creativity.

民主原則之規範性困境，今日已於所有民主國家的政治生活中，展現為層出不窮的民主危機。尤其因為民粹威權主義於成熟民主國家的大行其道，民主危機的解決已成為當代民主迫在眉睫的問題。為求取釜底抽薪的解決之道，則必須從理論層面出發，對民主之概念進行徹底的反省。然而，法學本身顯然難以克服此一困境，而必須將道德哲學與政治哲學的理論資源與方法納入視野之內，以便從規範性證立民主的基本內涵開始，循序漸進地獲致其反映於制度層面應有的具體內容。 　　過往的民主理論證立民主之所以具有無法克服的困難，是因為其終須依賴當代多元社會下有爭議的道德信念。對此，本文以Jürgen Habermas的「論辯倫理學」為基礎，從而對民主的基本精神提出無爭議的規範性證立。透過論辯倫理學的進一步推演，Habermas亦導出「法律論辯理論」，以說明法律作為施展強制力的工具是如何被證立的。藉由結合論辯倫理學與法律論辯理論，便能將民主強制付諸於日常生活的實踐之中，據此呈現出民主作為憲法原則的應有樣貌。植基於此一的路徑，本文拓展了Habermas的理念，從而證立並闡發民主的核心精神。 　　此一依循論辯倫理學及法律論辯理論所獲致的民主原則內容，即為審議民主理論。依據前述的理論奠基，本文認為審議民主理論蘊含的內容可歸結為「論辯之基本權」以及「政治平等諸規則」兩大理念，並能透過基進民主理論的批判以深化對後者的理解，從而闡發審議民主理論的基進意涵。「基進審議民主」明確而豐富的內容不僅宣告著民主原則規範性困境之解決，也同時於實踐上提出了化解民主危機的制度建議。 / In the political life of all democracies, the normative dilemma of principle of democracy has appeared as endless crises of democracy. Accrodingly, to solve the crisis of democracy thus becomes an urgent issue for the contemporary democracy. As populist authoritarianism propagated on a upsetting scale around developed democracies, finding a resolution also grows more significant. To solve this problems once and for all, we must proceed forward from a theoretical perspective that indicate a profound reflection on the concept of democracy. Because jurisprudence becomes manifest in lack of proper paths to overcome this dilemma by itself, incorporating the theoretical resources and methods of ethics and political philosophy into the field of vision may be imperative and necessary. With the foundation that justifies fundamental connotations of democracy in a normative approch, we will obtain the specific contents that democracy reflects at the institutional level progressively. 　　Previous works on democratic theory are so difficult to justify democracy per se because their justifications depending on controversial moral beliefs in contemporary plural society drift into failure. In this regard, Jürgen Habermas advanced the “Discourse Ethics” which suggests a non-controversial normative justification of democratic essences as the most promising theory at present. Through employing Discourse Ethics, Habermas deduced “Discourse Theory of Law” to explain how to justify law as a compulsory instrument. In this manner, democracy can be forced into daily life, via combining Discourse Ethics and Discourse Theory of Law, to draw a ideal form as a a constitutional principle. Through the illustration of Habermas's doctrine, this thesis tries to broaden the ways to understand and describe the democracy. 　　“Deliberative Democracy” is the very idea derived from Discourse Ethics and Discourse Theory of Law. Based on the foundations of the above, this thesis suggests that the contents of Deliberative Democracy can be attributed to the two basic concepts including “fundamental rights of discourse” and “rules of political equality”, which, through criticisms of radical democracy, shall be further deepen the understanding of the latter to elucidate what radical meanings do Deliberative Democracy have. With specific and profuse contents, radical deliberative democracy not only invents a solution to the normative dilemma of principle of democracy, but puts forward institutional proposals to resolving crises of democracy in practice simultaneously.

本篇論文企圖探討史蒂芬‧佛瑞爾斯 ( Stephen Frears ) 的電影《美麗壞東西》( Dirty Pretty Things ) 中的公民權與人權之議題。片中描述從奈及利亞非法入境的奧奎 (Okwe) 與來自土耳其申請政治庇護的桑娜 (Senay) 因其游移的身分，遭逢英國政府監控與資本主義社會剝削，並揭露倫敦城市中非法難民販賣器官以求生存的黑暗面。本篇論文著重分析政治庇護者的矛盾身分如何擾亂民族國家的監視、暴露僅以公民權利保障境內人民的缺失，並主張唯有透過跨種族、階級，與性別的聯合 ( solidarity ) 才能對抗國家機制裡的矛盾與全球資本主義的剝削。論文第二章以德希達 ( Jacques Derrida ) 的制約款待 ( conditional hospitality )，與傅柯 ( Michel Foucault ) 的監視 ( Panopticon ) 概念，探討片中監控 ( surveillance ) 機制的形成。第三章引進布斯克與夏弗 (Alison Brysk and Gershon Shafir ) 提出公民權 (citizenship) 與人權 ( human rights ) 的差距，來揭發片中政治庇護者與外籍勞工在地主國 ( host countries ) 因為缺乏公民權而導致人權被忽視的困境。第四章從傅柯 ( Michel Foucault ) 的反抗 ( resistance ) 與拉克勞 ( Ernesto Laclau ) 與穆芙 ( Chantal Mouffe ) 的激進多元民主 ( radical plural democracy ) 的概念，探討以跨種族、階級，與性別的聯合 ( solidarity ) 來對抗國家制度本身的裂縫與經濟全球化的無情剝削。最後總結在全球化時代，唯有檢視國家制度的缺失，並揚棄封閉排他的意識形態，才能體現種族與文化的差異與多元性，並促進跨界聯合之實現。 / This thesis aims to explore the issue of citizenship and human rights in Stephen Frears’s Dirty Pretty Things. Dirty Pretty Things describes the British government’s surveillance on asylum seekers, such as Okwe, an illegal refugee from Nigeria, and Senay, the Turkish asylum applicant, and unveils illegal refugees’ organ trade in exchange for passports in London. The thesis attempts to decipher how the ambivalent status of asylum seekers disturbs the surveillance of nation-states, exposes the defect of the citizenship gap and argues only through solidarity among different ethnicity, class and gender, could the subordinated fight against deficiencies in the mechanism of nation-states and exploitation of global capitalism. Through the perspectives of Derrida’s conditional hospitality and Foucault’s Panopticon, Chapter Two examines the surveillance of nation-states on asylum seekers in Dirty Pretty Things. In Chapter Three, I adopt Brysk and Shafir’s analysis to explore the citizenship gap between citizenship and human rights in the film, which reflects the difficulty in handling the cases of legal and illegal asylum seekers in nation-states on the basis of citizenship in the era of globalization. In Chapter Four, I will utilize the perceptive of Foucault’s resistance and Laclau and Mouffe’s radical plural democracy to suggest how counter strategies and solidarity could rebel against fissures in nation-states’ apparatuses and reveal a new possibility of alliance beyond borders in the era of globalization. The last chapter concludes by summing up the gaps in the system of nation-states and rejecting any enclosed ideology so as to articulate multiplicities and differences beyond limitations of ethnicity, class and gender across borders in the era of globalization.

Working at the intersection of narrative studies and political theory, this thesis performs an original critical intervention in Gulliver’s Travels studies to establish the work as an intertextual response to the hegemonic articulations of European travel writing produced between the 15th and 18th centuries under the discourse of Discovery. My argument proceeds through two movements. First, an archeology of studies on Gulliver’s Travels that identifies key developments and points of significance in analyses of the satire’s intertextual relationship with travel writing. Second, a discursive analysis of the role of Discovery generally, and travel writing specifically, in constructing European hegemony within a newly global context. Together these movements allow me to locate Gulliver’s Travels firmly within the discourse of Discovery and to specify the politics of the text and the poetics of its operations. For this analysis I adopt a conceptualization of hegemony elaborated by Ernesto Laclau and Chantal Mouffe in Hegemony and Socialist Strategy (1985), which defines discourse as a structured totality of elements of signification, wherein the meaning and identify of each element is constituted by articulatory practices competing to fix the differences and equivalences between it and others within the discourse. An hegemonic discourse is one that successfully limits the possibility of novel articulations according to a particular governing logic. In the Age of Discovery, this governing logic, I argue, is a socio-spatial logic that constructed the “European” subject through its difference from the “Non-European,” the “civilized” subject through its difference from the “savage,” and the “free land” of the “savage” peoples through its difference from the occupied lands of the “civilized.” To conduct the concomitant critical analysis of Gulliver’s Travels, I draw upon Jacques Rancière’s conception of the “distribution of the sensible,” which refers both to the partitions determined in sensory experience that anticipate the distributions of parts and wholes, the orders of visibility and invisibility, and the relationships of address or comportment beneath every community; and to the specific practices that partake of these distributions to establish the “common sense” about the objects that make up the common world, the ways in which it is organized, and the capacities of the people within it. This enables me to establish travel writing as an articulatory practice that utilized a narrative modality to “reveal” the globe in a Eurocentric image dependent upon the logic of Discovery: a discursively constructed paradigm that I identify as what others have labeled “travel realism,” which organized the globe into a single field of discursivity predicated upon the “civilizational” and “rational” superiority of Europeans over their non-European Others. Gulliver’s Travels, I conclude, intervenes in this distribution of the sensible by utilizing the satirical form as a recomposing logic to upend the paradigm of travel realism and break away from the “sense” that it makes of the bodies, beings, and lands it re-presents. / Graduate