This thesis problematizes early cyberfeminist claims that heralded the Internet as a liberating space for women. Cyberfeminism emerged in the early 1990s, at the dawn of the “Internet Age,” and is heavily influenced by Donna Haraway’s 1985 “A Cyborg Manifesto.” Haraway theorized a new way of looking at the nature of female identity, using the figure of the cyborg found in science fiction literature and films. Traditionally, women have been explained in terms of sexual difference and have been forced to uphold a gender binary that privileges men. By contrast, Haraway argues that the cyborg, a hybrid of human and machine, escapes binary logic, thereby resisting categories and hierarchies, and embraces a more fluid understanding of identity. This model contains powerful ramifications for women. Every day, we become more like Haraway’s cyborgs as our physical bodies become increasingly intertwined with modern technologies, specifically in our ever-growing relationship with the Internet. In online interactions, users are no longer confined to their physical bodies and are free to play with identity. Early cyberfeminists believe that this leads to a more fluid understanding of identity and, more importantly, allows for the deconstruction of gender. These claims, however, do not apply in practice as well as they do in theory. From the anonymous text-based spaces that early cyberfeminists describe to social networking sites like Facebook, Internet spaces tend to polarize the gender binary rather than blur it, and women are now colonized on a new front. This becomes increasingly dangerous as the boundaries between our virtual and real lives continue to blur.

The purpose of this thesis has been to explore in what ways Franz Kafka’s ”The Metamorphosis” can be read as a story of gender. By bringing together Judith Butler’s theory of materialization and Lennard J. Davis’s crip theory I have spoken of Dismodernity as the domain of abject bodies that have been repudiated by (post)modern societies as untintelligible and dysfunctional. From this vantage point ”The Metamorphosis” can be seen as an allegory of Dismodernity and the protagonist, Gregor Samsa, can be seen as a political figure of Dismodernity. Therefore, I have tried to draw a feminist insect politics out of his metamorphosis from (hu)man into insect. By doing a close reading, through the theoretical lenses of Judith Butler, Lennard J. Davis and Donna Haraway, Gregor Samsa can be read as an abject non-masculinity which is both produced and made impossible by a heterosexual matrix’s need of intelligible genders and a capitalist system’s need of functional workers. As an abject non-masculinity Gregor Samsa works as a queer (unintelligible) and dismodern (dysfunctional) trickster that both disturbs and makes visible the established gendered norms of (un)intelligibility and (dis)ability through a blurring of the boundaries between human/animal, public/private and masculinity/femininity. As an involuntary trickster he also challenges gender studies and its seeking for ultimate representations for oppositional consciousness pure in their radical potential.

In this thesis I aim to examine the ways in which cultural beliefs and norms about gender and sexuality are shaped by discourses on animals and nature. I have done a participatory observation on two different guided tours of animals and analyze some information about the animals at a Swedish zoo. With a discourse analytical approach, I analyzed transcribed material from the guided tours of animals and information about animals from a gender and queer theoretical perspective, based on Judith Butler's understanding of the heterosexual matrix and her performativity theory. In my analysis, based on my chosen theoretical framework and with support of previous research, I have seen that the way people talk about animals is characterized by human notions of gender and sexuality. In addition to human notions of gender and sexuality, I have seen human notions of ethnocentrism and the division of labor between male and female. Furthermore, I have seen that some of these texts about animals challenge ideas about the division of labor in the home between male and female.

Wangechi Mutu is an internationally recognized Kenyan-born artist who lives and works in Brooklyn. She creates collaged female figures composed of human, animal, object, and machine parts. Mutu’s constructions of the female body provide a transcultural critique on the female persona in Western culture. This paper contextualizes Mutu’s work and artistic strategies within feminist, postmodern, and postcolonial narratives on collage, while exploring whether collage strategies are particularly useful for feminist artists. In their fusion of machine and organism, Mutu’s characters are visual metaphors for feminist cyborgs, particularly those outlined by Donna Haraway. In this paper, I examine parallels between collage as an aesthetic strategy and the figure of the cyborg to suggest meaningful ways of approaching differences between women and how they experience life in contemporary Western culture.

Within the field of Disability Studies, research on cognitive and developmental disabilities is relatively rare in comparison to other types of disabilities. Using Clifford Geertz's anthropological approach, "thick description," autism can be better understood by placing both fiction and non-fiction accounts of the disorder into a larger theoretical context. Applying concepts from existing works in Disability Studies to the major writings of Jacques Derrida, Julia Kristeva, Jacques Lacan, and Donna Haraway also proves to be mutually enlightening. This ethnographic approach within the context of analysis of literary texts provides a model by which representations of individuals who are cognitively or developmentally disabled can be included in the academy.

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.

luftgäster, och andra försvinnande akter, behandlar ett antal olika sammankopplade teman; representation av lantbruk, ickemänniskors agens och olika akter av att komma nära natur, t.ex. naturkultur. den handlar om att lämna en plats; och att kolla i backspeglar med hjälp av framlidne ingegerd möllers karaktär luftgästen ställer jag frågor om närhet och distans. förutom en undersökande (och stundvis meandrande) text så innehåller den ett antal instruktionsverk och teckningar av växter från landskapet lantbruk.  luftgäster, och andra försvinnande akter, är skapad som ett komplement och en nyckel till min kandidatutställning utom jord: ish

Feminist philosophy of science has long been considered a fringe element of philosophy of science as a whole. A careful consideration of the treatment of the key concept of objectivity by such philosophical heavyweights as Thomas Kuhn and Karl Popper, followed by an analysis of the concept of objectivity with the work of such feminist philosophers of science as Donna Haraway, Lynn Hankinson Nelson, and Sandra Harding, reveals that feminist philosophers of science are not members of some fringe movement of philosophy of science, but rather are doing philosophical work which is both crucial and connected to the work of other, "mainstream" philosophers of science. / Master of Arts

Through an experimental theatre play, this thesis explores the development of human-like agency in contemporary “social robot” technology. The entrance point of this study is the gender gap and lack of diversity in contemporary AI/robot development, with an emerging need for interdisciplinary research across robot technology and social sciences. Using feminist technoscience and critical posthumanism as the theoretical framework, this research involves an analysis of a particular social robot case, currently being developed at Furhat Robotics in Stockholm. Inspired by Judy Wajcman (2004), I analyze how socially intelligent machines impact perceptions of human agency, body, gender, and identity within cultural contexts and through interaction. The first part of the empirical research is carried out in the robot-lab. The robot is then, in the second part, invited to perform as an actor in a theatre play. Entangled amidst the other players and audience members, a queered agency starts to reveal itself through human-machine “intra-action” and embodiment (Barad 2003). Human-like agency in machines is shown to be a complex matter, drawing the conclusion that human-beings are vulnerable to a myriad of entanglements and preconceptions that artificial intelligence potentially embodies.