This Thesis is a theoretical attempt to analyze the emergence of Autism as a discourse and, through it, the emergence of the Autistic Subjectivity. My primary aim is to create a kind of history of the different modes by which autistic persons become subjects. I am following a post-structuralist methodology, based on Michel Foucault’s work on the birth of psychiatry and institutions, his analysis of power relations, his ideas on the objectification and subjectification of the individual, and finally his notions of governmentality and bio-power. More specifically, I am making use of the Foucauldian techniques of Archaeology and Genealogy in order to investigate the birth of Autism through, the psychiatric discipline, psychoses, classificatory systems and the Asylum of the late Eighteenth and Nineteenth century. Under the same methodological strand, I am treating the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual for Mental Disorders (DSM-IV), in relation to Autism, as a disciplinary tool and as a discursive event. I present the existing knowledge on Autism and more specifically on the ‘impairment in social interaction’ and ‘in pragmatic language’. Finally, I attempt an analysis of Autism as a apparatus, through its episteme, mechanisms, and elements. I give an overview of the two main epistemologies on Autism, that of psychoanalysis and TOM (Theory of Mind) and I introduce the notions of bio-power and governmentality as drive mechanisms, which inform the elements of the apparatus and turn them into regulators of the autistic subjectivity. I am making an analysis of specific elements that I recognize as most important for the objectification and subjectification of the autistic individual; these are: autobiographies and educational institutions. Moreover, I discuss how through a continuum of truth discourses, strategies of intervention, and modes of objectification, the Autistic individual finds itself in a battle of modes of power, where it either consents to normalization or shields its ‘pathology P’ by disobedience and resistance. Finally, I argue that the deconstruction of existed discursive entities and their reconstruction upon a different epistemological basis leads to a rethink of Autism in terms of Education. What is needed is an emphasis to the notion of παιδεία (paideia), which aims to the creation of free and self-fulfilled human beings, rather than exclusively to the notion of εκπαί δευσις (ekpaideusis), that gives emphasis to the development of capabilities, and in the case of autistic children, to the creation of docile, marginalized bodies.

In this dissertation I consider the question, "Is it possible to think the subject qua subject or must any theoretical attempt to understand the subject necessarily reify it?" To answer this question, I appealed to Immanuel Kant's distinction between theoretical and practical reason, noting that practical reason could think the subject as a free soul rather than as a naturally-determined object. I then divided the sciences of the subject into four general types to determine which science could think the subject qua subject. Three sciences were shown to necessarily reify the subject: empirical psychology, rational psychology, and heteronomous ethics. I then paralleled Kant's insight with Michel Foucault's analyses of the human sciences, showing the concrete consequences of objectification. Using Foucault's work on ethical practice and askesis as a guide, I returned to Kant and explained how practical reason can think the subject qua subject only insofar as it considers the subject as something to be made rather than a theoretical object to know. I then posed the question, “What are the necessary conditions for someone to be a subject of possible experience?” which led into a Kantian-inspired theory of love and intersubjectivity. Finally, I concluded that contemporary psychology is mired in an impasse between happiness and freedom, insofar as therapeutic practice is no longer an ethic. I suggest the need for a practical psychology to solve this impasse. / McAnulty College and Graduate School of Liberal Arts; / Philosophy / PhD; / Dissertation;

Syftet med studien var att undersöka vilka ställningstaganden gymnasielärare i ämnet idrott och hälsa gör för att inkludera funktionsnedsatta elever i den ordinarie ämnesundervisningen. Studien genomfördes med hjälp av en kvalitativ forskningsmetod i form av semistrukturerade intervjuer. Studiens deltagare bestod av fyra idrotts- och hälsalärare verksamma vid fyra olika gymnasieskolor i södra Sverige. I resultatet framkom det att det är viktigt att alla elever inkluderas i den ordinarie ämnesundervisningen, oavsett om eleverna har en funktionsnedsättning eller inte. Resultatet visade att det finns resurser för lärare i idrott och hälsa att inkludera elever med funktionsnedsättningar i ämnesundervisningen. Studiedeltagarna förklarade följaktligen att en idrotts- och hälsalärare måste vara kreativ. Slutligen påvisade resultatet att omständigheterna med att inkludera funktiosnedsatta elever i den ordinarie undervisningen, handlar om anpassning av undervisningen lektionsinnehållet så att det passar samtliga elever och andra elevers beteende. Studiedeltagarna berättade att elever som är ”störiga” försvårar inkluderingsprocessen. Resultat analyserades med utgångspunkt i Foucaults begrepp: subjektets konstituering och hans idéer om makt. Analysen visade bland annat att det som förr antagligen betraktades som det ”normala” beteendet under lektionerna i ämnet, numera räknas som avvikande.

This essay investigates possible benefits of using Michel Foucault’s theories to understand how subjects constitute themselves as consumers. Foucault’s analysis of the neo-liberal notion of homo economicus, a subject of individual interest and an entrepreneur producing its own satisfaction, is discussed in relation to contemporary consumption. The essay departs from the hypothesis that Foucault’s diverse theory of subjectivation can bridge over opposing but equally limiting description of consuming subjects offered by Marxism and liberalism. Building on Foucault’s lectures on biopolitics and the ethics of the later Foucault, the possibility of liberation from dominance, offered from opposing positions by Marxism and liberalism, is challenged. From the perspective of Foucault, subjects are constituted in relations of power that always involve freedom, understood as the individual subject’s ability to participate in and influence these relations. Further, these relations are intertwined with games of truth, certain rationalities that are linked to institutions of power. This essay argues that the neo-liberal “truth” of consumer choice structure contemporary relations of power that are integrated parts of the subject, for good and worse. For the later Foucault’s ethics, as well as his critique, dispute the extent to which we are governed, and urge us to practice freedom.

The Iraq ‘Chilcot’ Inquiry is the last in a string of public inquiries tasked with understanding how the British state went to war with Iraq. In so doing, the inquiries have become defined by the problem of striking a balance between publicity and secrecy. While exposing foreign policy decision-making to public scrutiny should be the norm in a liberal democracy, this must be balanced by state secrecy, which is justified in exceptional circumstances when there is a threat to national security. Striking the right balance acts to maintain and legitimise a distinction between liberal and illiberal regimes by justifying exceptions as the mitigation of existential threats to liberal values. In contrast to the balance metaphor, this thesis shows how the inquiries are a site of contestation between two technologies of government: the public gaze and official secrecy. Drawing on Foucault, I demonstrate how both technologies support the liberal ‘security dispositif’: the exercise of freedom without too little or too much government. Each technology secures this liberal governmentality in a different but mutually supportive way. The public gaze seeks constitutes security of the liberal subject by exposing, criticising and disciplining statesmen and statecraft. Official secrecy, meanwhile, constitutes security of the state by protecting the value of privileged information used to support a necessary minimum of government. In this context, the balance metaphor may be recognized as the discursive framework that, in any moment, legitimises either the exercise of publicity in response to insecurity engendered by secrecy or vice versa. The balance metaphor thereby supports a further distinction between the responsible liberal self and the illiberal other. I show how the Iraq Inquiry legitimizes British official secrecy while re-inscribing the conditions of possibility for waging liberal war.

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This bachelor thesis concerns the impact of new media on thee-legal deposit in Sweden. The aim is to gain further knowledge onthe conceptions of digital media that are expressed in the textanalysed, and the impact of theese conceptions on the law ofe-legal deposit. It is commonly agreed that born-digital materialshould be comprised within legal deposit, but there seems to bedifferent views regarding the scope of what should be collectedwithin the law. The material analysed is the government bill onelectronic legal deposit from 2012 (Regeringens proposition2011/12:121). The method used is a discourse analysis inspired bythe theories of the french historian of ideas and social theoristMichel Foucault. Questions posed in this study are whichknowledge claims that can be found in the text about net producedand net distributed media content, and about the production andcirculation of this content. Another question posed is what impactthose conceptions and knowledge claims might have on theframing of the law on e-legal deposit in Sweden. The result of theanalysis is discussed in the light of the american media scholarHenry Jenkin’s theories on media convergence. The conclusion isamong other things that the statements in the text in a way shut outconceptions of a new media situation by clinging on to certaincriterias regarding what should be collected within the law one-legal deposit. Another conclusion is that it might be difficult tostick to the thought of completeness that always have been animportant idea concerning the law on legal deposit in Sweden.

Master of Arts / Department of English / Gregory J. Eiselein / The presence and persistence of ethnicity in Sri Lanka has led scholars such as Jayadeva Uyangoda to describe Sri Lanka as an “ethnocracy” and is identified as one of the major challenges for attempts to reconcile communities after a 26-year-long civil war that ended in 2009. The emphasis on ethnicity, however, often makes it difficult for scholars to examine the discontinuities that have shaped the emergence of ethnicity as the most significant social category in the country. This thesis addresses this lacuna by providing a careful re-reading of the conditions under which ethnicity became the focus of both politics and epistemology at the turn of the 20th century in colonial Ceylon. Michel Foucault’s conceptualization of governmentality enables this examination by demonstrating how ethnicity became the terrain on which political rationalities and governmental technologies were deployed in order to shift how populations were constructed as the focus of colonial governance between 1901 and 1911. Colonial political rationalities are explored through an examination of the debate that emerged in the Census reports of P. Arunachalam (1902) and E.B. Denham (1912) over whether Ceylon is constituted by many nationalities or by one nationality—the Sinhalese—and many races. The emergence of this debate also coincided with the Crewe-McCallum Reforms of 1912 which aimed to reform the colonial state in response to the demands of the local population. Like the debate between Arunachalam and Denham, what is at stake in the reforms of 1912 is the question of whether the Island is constituted by many racial populations or a single population. The terms of these debates over ethnicity that took place over a century ago, continue to shape the tenor of Sri Lanka’s post-war political landscape and therefore provides a pathway for understanding how Sri Lanka’s post-war challenges are imbricated in the dilemmas of inhabiting its colonial present(s).

Facultad de Filosofía y Humanidades / Informe de Seminario para optar al grado de Licenciado en Filosofía / Llenos de temores nos aproximamos a lo que se sigue llamando experiencia. Si sirviera de algo, nos consolaríamos diciendo que al menos no se trata tanto de la experiencia en general como de una forma particular de ella. Pero esto no resuelve nada. Que no se trate tanto de algo como de otra cosa, siempre deja un margen por el que es capaz de volver a entrar todo lo que se había excluido e incluso mucho más. Y a fin de cuentas, se trata de vislumbrar lo casi invisible: las palabras, aquel murmullo casi interminable y que pese a perderse en los albores de los tiempos posee una data demasiado reciente. Como motivo de apertura, entonces, la pregunta por el ser del lenguaje, por el ser de cierta experiencia llamada lenguaje; pregunta que no puede dejar de lado la cuestión de su persistente ambigüedad, ya que si hay algo de lo que decir el ser cuesta o incluso es penoso, son las palabras. Es por lo mismo que cierta necesidad de aligerar el ser nos obliga a cuestionar ya no solo por aquel sino que también por el simulacro del lenguaje, a fin de poner en juego no otra cosa que la posibilidad de una contaminación, e incluso confusión, entre ser y simulacro.

Tesis para optar al grado de Doctor en Filosofía con Mención en Filosofía Moral y Política / El presente trabajo de tesis pretende problematizar la escuela como un lugar en donde se reproducen prácticas gubernamentales y psicopolíticas. Para ello se entretejen distintas aristas conceptuales elaboradas en un inicio a partir de los conceptos de escena y gubernamentalidad, permitiendo reflexionar formas de subjetivación y nuevas relaciones de poder. El análisis a partir de estos conceptos permitirá a esta investigación tener un marco conceptual reflexivo que sirva de soporte al estudio del desplazamiento de la mirada. Siguiendo los lineamientos de esta investigación se han considerado los desplazamientos de la mirada que han realizado autores como Althusser, Ranciére y Freire. Quienes comparten la reflexión crítica sobre las prácticas de la escuela. Tienen la particularidad de realizar dicha reflexión crítica con acentos distintos. Comparten, además, la visión de la escuela como eminentemente política; reflexión realizada fuera de los cánones hegemónicos de sus contextos. Así, sus miradas contribuyen al ejercicio reflexivo propuesto en este escrito: tratar de visibilizar lo visible respecto de un lugar tan cercano y conocido, la escuela. Por último, el desplazamiento de la mirada que Foucault realiza respecto del concepto de gubernamentalidad y la propuesta de Althusser respecto del concepto de ideología en íntima relación con la reflexión de la escuela, permitirá a este trabajo acercarse a un análisis respecto a la psicologización del mundo vivido como técnica de gobierno, es generando formas de subjetivación y nuevas relaciones de poder y, al mismo tiempo, reflexionar cómo ello sirve de insumo o, incluso, como eje articulador para pensar la escuela, a partir de acercamientos sucesivos, a la propuesta de la psicopolítica de Byung- Chul Han. El eje central es hacer un diagnóstico del presente, respecto de las nuevas relaciones de poder que han logrado acceder a la psiquis humana, convirtiéndola en un elemento político de producción y reproducción del sistema neoliberal y cómo la escuela reproduce dichas prácticas, es decir, prácticas gubernamentales y psicopolíticas.