What is queer? What is queer? What is queer theory? Where can it go from here? This thesis sets out to explore the origins and influences of queer theory before investigating the present and the future spaces (ie, bodies and settlements) it can potentially move into. Three distinct experiments of fieldwork and ethnographic filmmaking test the truths and potentialities of queer theory when relating to queer bodies and settlements. That is to say that each chapter balances a film and its supporting text by embracing the value and urgency of practice led research. The first chapter questions queer history and details the importance of emerging trans politics in the post-gender, leftist, avant-garde, queer activist and militant space of Bologna. Queer bodies, case one: transgender and transsexual perspectives. Settlements, case one: Bologna and Lido di Classe (Italy). The second chapter considers the interface between disability theory and queer theory with particular attention paid to the practical theory of ‘curative education’. Defined by Rudolf Steiner in 1922 and further developed by Karl König with the foundation of the Camphill movement in 1944, curative education privileges the social model over the medical model in the field of disability so that disability is in fact ability. Queer bodies, case two: learning differences and disabilities perspectives. Settlements, case two: Berlin (Germany), Chatou and La Rochelle (France), Barry and Glasallt Fawr (Wales, United Kingdom). The third chapter uses queer perspectives to promote the relevance of quantum physics to the human body, thus involving contemporary dance, physical theatre and the arts more generally to address and redress the chiasm between science and technology on the one hand, and arts, humanities and socio-cultural sciences on the other. Queer bodies, case three: the inescapably queer reality of the physical world. Settlements, case three: multiple locations in Tuscany (Italy), and Thamesmead, London (England, United Kingdom). This thesis brings notions of queer and otherness deceptively close to notions of the self. Otherness and queerness become mirrors in which our own queerness comes into view.

This paper has two objectives. First: the humanistic idea of knowledge, philosophically formulated by Rudolf Steiner (1861-1925), should be presented in relation to history of ideas. In the meeting with different kinds of cultural and social needs in Central Europe during the decades of the turn of the 20th century, Steiner developed his idea of knowledge into a singular Thought Style (Ge. Denkstil). A Thought Style can be described as a selective and aimed cognitive preparedness. The idea of knowledge and the Thought Style are here described as anthroposophical humanism. The second objective is to show how the Thought Style, in a historical way, was established in Sweden, and how it, until the mid 1980s, changed and was adapted to Swedish culture, i.e. how the style in various ways became Swedish. Organisations and movements that were influenced by the anthroposophical humanism were The Anthroposophical Society, the biodynamic movement, the movement for anthroposophic medicine, the medical pedagogical movement with special pedagogical institutions and social therapeutic homes for treatment, the Waldorf movement, the Christian Society, anthroposophic architecture and art practice etc. Since they co-operated with a common background, they formed a Thought Collective (Ge. Denkkollektiv). The anthroposophical humanism has its roots relating to history of ideas far back in the Central European Middle Ages. During the new humanism era, the idea of knowledge had a renaissance in German culture life. Rudolf Steiner remodelled the idea at the end of the 19th century and developed it into the singular Thought Style. When Steiner was a theosophical teacher he gave it an esoteric design. After the First World War, when Steiner was working as a social reformer, he gave it a humanistic design. Within The Anthroposophical Society, the double image of the anthroposophical movement, internationally and in Sweden, led to severe opposition and conflicts. Right until the mid 1980s, reorganisations were common in order to handle the two directions of the Thought Style when it came to differences in traditions, ideology and sociology. In Sweden, the anthroposophical movement has undergone four stages of development: the reception period 1890-1935, the conversion period 1935-55, the expansion period 1955-1985 and the integration period as from 1985. As from 1913, when The Anthroposophical Society was established, until 1985, the development of ideas in the anthroposophical Thought Style and the Thought Collective can be described as a wandering from Christian esotericism to an anthroposophical humanistic idea of knowledge, with a cultural education in the ideological focus of the Thought Style. The traditional development of ideas can also be described as an anthroposophical process of secularisation. There are mainly four things that have contributed to the expansion of the anthroposophical movement in Sweden during the phase of expansion: the post-war period economic expansion, the development of the educational system, the renaissance of esotericism in the late 1960s, as well as the need for an alternative to the post-war abundance consumerism and waste of resources. The Swedish development indicates similarities with the international development within those areas where different activities have been adapted to Swedish legislation, traditions and views, mainly through care and education.