This master essay starts with the author having an encounter with two 14-years old boys who claim that they are Nazis. In a school project where the pupils made films about norms in the society they made a film with a clearly racist and homophobic message. As a freelance artist the author was a part of a school development program in aesthetic learning, and the assignment in the actual school was supposed to teach the pupils about norms and how they effect people on an everyday basis. All the films fulfilled this purpose, but the actual film did something more: it revealed the zerotolerance rule in this particular school as a norm that silenced not only these boys, but also any pupil having a different opinion than the teachers. The situation described took place in a classroom in primary school in the area of Stockholm some years ago and even though the film was never shown to anybody that could be offended except the author herself, the author left the school with a feeling of total failure, and two questions craving for answers: Why couldn’t she, nor the teachers, find the time and space to meet the boys, taking their invitation to discuss the zere-tolerance-norm seriously? And what role did the fact that the school had a “zero-tolerance-for-racism rule” play in the cultivation of the boy’s feelings of exclusion and in the way the teachers treated their obvious need for recognition as sane and (soon-to-be) grown up men? Using Hannah Arendt’s ideas of action as the fundament of the investigation, the author poses questions about what space for action there is in the daily work of a teacher today, but also what happens when there is no room for action, when we become the blind administrators of homo faber. The method of the study includes 1) a dialogue seminar with teachers from elementary school, 2) examples and reflections from the author’s own teaching practice at the teacher education and 3) a philosophical investigation focusing on the concepts of aesthetic experience, aesthetic learning, not-knowing and unlearning. In dialogue with Sarah Ahmed, John Dewey, Hans-Georg Gadamer, Maurice Merleau-Ponty, Jacques Rancière, Cusanus and Jonna Bornemark, she further tries to understand what role the film, as an aesthetic experience, played in the example with the Nazi boys. Is there a radical possibility in art that can create space for action in Arendt’s sense? Further, in dialogue with the poet Wiszlava Szymborska, the clown Nalla Laanela, and two novelists; Rachel Cusk and Albert Camus, she tries to understand the possibilities that lie within aesthetic learning when it comes to re-thinking the role of the teacher aiming for a sustainable approach to teaching and learning in a society where teachers work themselves sick. / I inledningen till denna masteruppsats möter författaren två fjortonåriga pojkar som säger att de är nazister. I ett skolprojekt där eleverna skulle göra kortfilmer som gestaltade samhällsnormer gjorde de här pojkarna en film med ett tydligt rasistiskt och homofobiskt budskap. Författaren hade, i egenskap av frilansande konstnär inom skolutvecklingsprogrammet Skapa och Lära, uppdraget att leda eleverna i arbetet med filmerna och syftet var att eleverna skulle lära sig något om de olika normer som påverkar oss människor varje dag. Alla filmer uppfyllde syftet, men denna film gjorde något mer: den fick den här specifika skolans noll-tolerans-mot-rasism-regel att framstå som en norm som tystade inte bara de här två pojkarna, utan alla elever med –ur lärarnas perspektiv -avvikande åsikter. Den ovan beskrivna situationen utspelade sig i ett klassrum i Stockholmsområdet för ett antal år sedan och även om filmen aldrig visades för någon som hade kunnat ta illa upp –förutom författaren själv –lämnade författaren skolan med en känsla av totalt misslyckande och två frågor ringande i öronen: Varför kunde inte hon, och ingen av lärarna i skolan, ta sig tid att möta pojkarna genom att ta deras inbjudan till samtal om noll-tolerans-normen på allvar? Och vilken roll spelade det faktum att skolan hade en noll-tolerans-mot-rasism-regel i kultiverandet av pojkarnas känslor av exkludering och i lärarnas hanterande av deras uppenbara behov av erkännande som sunda, snart vuxna unga män? Med utgångspunkt i Hannah Arendts idéer om handlandet ställer författaren frågor om vilket handlingsutrymme lärare i dagens skola har, men hon undersöker också vad som händer när det inte finns något handlingsutrymme, när läraren blir en blind administratör, en homo faber. Metodologiskt använder sig författaren av 1) ett dialogseminarium med lärare från grundskolan, 2) exempel och reflektioner från hennes egen lärarpraktik, och 3) en filosofisk undersökning med fokus på begreppen estetisk erfarenhet, estetiska lärprocesser, icke-vetande och av-lärande. I dialog med Sarah Ahmed, John Dewey, Hans-Georg Gadamer, Maurice Merleau-Ponty, Jacques Rancière, Cusanus och Jonna Bornemark, försöker hon vidare förstå vilken roll filmen som en estetisk erfarenhet spelade I exemplet med de två nazistpojkarna. Finns det en radikal potential i konstnärliga uttryck som kan skapa handlingsutrymme i Arendts mening? Vidare,i dialog med poeten Wiszlava Szymborska, clownen Nalle Laanela, och två romanförfattare; Rachel Cusk and Albert Camus, försöker författaren utröna vilka möjligheter som kan rymmas i estetiska lärprocesser vad gäller att tänka om (om-tänka) lärarrollen med målet att finna ett hållbart förhållningssätt till undervisning och lärande i ett samhälle där lärare arbetar sig sjuka.

L'objectif de ce mémoire est de démontrer certaines propriétés géométriques des fonctions propres de l'oscillateur harmonique quantique. Nous étudierons les domaines nodaux, c'est-à-dire les composantes connexes du complément de l'ensemble nodal. Supposons que les valeurs propres ont été ordonnées en ordre croissant. Selon un théorème fondamental dû à Courant, une fonction propre associée à la $n$-ième valeur propre ne peut avoir plus de $n$ domaines nodaux. Ce résultat a été prouvé initialement pour le laplacien de Dirichlet sur un domaine borné mais il est aussi vrai pour l'oscillateur harmonique quantique isotrope. Le théorème a été amélioré par Pleijel en 1956 pour le laplacien de Dirichlet. En effet, on peut donner un résultat asymptotique plus fort pour le nombre de domaines nodaux lorsque les valeurs propres tendent vers l'infini. Dans ce mémoire, nous prouvons un résultat du même type pour l'oscillateur harmonique quantique isotrope. Pour ce faire, nous utiliserons une combinaison d'outils classiques de la géométrie spectrale (dont certains ont été utilisés dans la preuve originale de Pleijel) et de plusieurs nouvelles idées, notamment l'application de certaines techniques tirées de la géométrie algébrique et l'étude des domaines nodaux non-bornés. / The aim of this thesis is to explore the geometric properties of eigenfunctions of the isotropic quantum harmonic oscillator. We focus on studying the nodal domains, which are the connected components of the complement of the nodal (i.e. zero) set of an eigenfunction. Assume that the eigenvalues are listed in an increasing order. According to a fundamental theorem due to Courant, an eigenfunction corresponding to the $n$-th eigenvalue has at most $n$ nodal domains. This result has been originally proved for the Dirichlet eigenvalue problem on a bounded Euclidean domain, but it also holds for the eigenfunctions of a quantum harmonic oscillator. Courant's theorem was refined by Pleijel in 1956, who proved a more precise result on the asymptotic behaviour of the number of nodal domains of the Dirichlet eigenfunctions on bounded domains as the eigenvalues tend to infinity. In the thesis we prove a similar result in the case of the isotropic quantum harmonic oscillator. To do so, we use a combination of classical tools from spectral geometry (some of which were used in Pleijel’s original argument) with a number of new ideas, which include applications of techniques from algebraic geometry and the study of unbounded nodal domains.

This research investigates the Neo-Baroque aesthetic of excess in contemporary South African art, and explores reasons for the emergence of this style. It investigates artists who use their bodies as a site of resistance, to contest or reconstruct the dominant social values which establish differences between bodies to place them within the marginal position of ‘Other’. This investigation relates to post-colonial concerns. The artists’ exploitation of the Neo-Baroque aesthetic of excess as a comment on social concerns reveals a sense of crisis within South African society, similar to the conditions from which the seventeenth century Baroque style evolved. Neo-Baroque aesthetics of excess manifest in a variety of ways, and are particularly evident when artists transgress social boundaries placed on the body through abject and erotic associations. Excess ultimately arises from complexity, as hybrid art forms are created from the combination of media and content found within the art work. / Dissertation (MA)--University of Pretoria, 2012. / Visual Arts / unrestricted

The screen, as recent studies in a number of fields indicate, is a cultural object due for critical reappraisal. Work on the theoretical status of screen objects tends to focus upon the materialisation of surface; in other words, it attempts to rethink the relationship between the supposedly 'superficial' facade and the 'functional' object itself. I suggest that this work, while usefully chipping away at the dichotomy between the 'superficial' and the 'functional', can lead us to a more radical conclusion when read in the context of subjectivity. By rethinking the relationship between the surface and the obverse face of the screen as the terms of a dialectic, we can ‘read’ the screen as the vital component in a process which constitutes the Subject. In order to demonstrate this, I analyse productions of subjectivity in literary texts of the twenty-first century — in doing so, I assume the novel as nonpareil arena of the dramatisation of subjectivity — and I propose a reading of the work of Jacques Lacan as hitherto unacknowledged theorist par excellence of the form and function of the screen. Lacan describes, with the function of desire and the formation of the screen of fantasy, the primary position this ‘screen-form' inhabits in the constitution of the Subject. Lacan’s work forms a critical juncture through which we must proceed if we are to properly read and understand the chosen texts: The Book of Strange New Things by Michel Faber; The Tain by China Miéville; Oryx and Crake by Margaret Atwood; and Austerlitz by W.G. Sebald. In each text, I analyse the particular materialisations of the screen and interrogate the constitution of the subject and the locus of desire. By analysing the vicissitudes of subjectivity in these texts, I make a claim for the study of the screen as constituting a central question in the field of contemporary literature.

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