The reception and the study of the novel Spring Snow by Yukio Mishima has – as always with the novels of Yukio Mishima – focused on the writer himself according to his spectacular way of life and death. Opposite to the studies and the reception, this master thesis focuses on the novel itself by following two more or less hidden traces in the novel: the protagonist Kiyoaki and his attitude to responsibility and dreams. This examination deepens the novel, by showing how the mechanisms of its inherent complexity work. It has been made by freely applying Roland Barthes´ method “rewriting the text”.

This study is an attempt to develop the discussion about self-injury with the aid of philosophical discussions about understanding. I will present a reading of the discussion between Michel Foucault and Jacques Derrida about reason and madness, and also an interpretation of the Derrida and Hans-Georg Gadamer encounter. These readings focus on the concept of understanding, on the possibility to understand the other and on the possibility to reach out from reason toward the irrational. The project to formulate an ethical approach to self-injury by Nancy Nyquist Potter is then used to bring the question about understanding to life. I conclude that the project of Potter, formulated as “uptake”, is weakened by the fact that she fails to recognize the underlying philosophical problems in stating the possibility to understand the meaning of something that until today has been considered meaningless.

Skolan styrs av olika styrdokument, dessa dokument finns på nationell- kommunal- och skolnivå. Det är kommunen som ansvarar att upprätthålla målen som står skrivna i de olika styrdokumenten. Syfte med arbetet är att studera texterna som styr skolan, specifikt förändringen av begreppet elev. Studien fokuserar på eleven i tre styrdokument, SOU 1992:94, Lpf 94 och en kommunal skolplan. Metoden som används är textanalys med två inriktningar, innehållsanalys och diskursanalys. Med hjälp av innehållsanalysen framkom det att begreppet elev används i både individ- och grupperspektiv samt att användandet av vilka ord som används förändrades genom styrdokumenten. I diskursanalysen ändrar elev betydelsen från SOU 1992:94 till skolplanen. I SOU 1992:94 är elev del av en grupp och i den kommunala skolplanen är eleven enskild. De slutsatser som framkommer ur studien ligger i linje med Foucaults syn på diskursen. Begreppet elev används för att reglera och normalisera både undervisning och skolsituationen. En mer betonad mening av begreppet elev hittades i den kommunala skolplanen än i de andra två styrdokumenten. / Schools are controlled by several policy documents; these exist at national- local authorityand school level. It is up to each local government to hold responsibility and maintain the goals specified in the policy documents. The purpose of this essay is to study the texts that control schools and specific changes in the use of the term pupil throughout the policy documents. The study focuses on the term pupil in the governing documents: SOU 1992:94, Lpf 94 and one sample school curriculum. The research method used is text analysis comprising two specific branches: content analysis and discourse analysis. Using content analysis the term pupil can be seen in an individual and group perspective where the usage of the word shifts throughout the policy documents. In discourse analysis the term pupil changed meaning from the top document SOU 1992:94 to the bottom document, school level. In SOU 1992:94 the pupil is part of a group whereas in the school curriculum document the pupil is viewed as an individual. The conclusions that can be made from this study are in agreement with Foucault’s view. The term pupil is used to regulate and standardise in both education and school situations, and a more specific meaning of the word pupil can be seen in the school curriculum than in the other two documents.

Lustfyllt lärande och lust att lära är två av många begrepp vi kommit i kontakt med under utbildningstiden på lärarprogrammet. I såväl kurslitteratur som läroplaner används begreppen återkommande. Detta gjorde oss nyfikna på att studera begreppen i kurslitteraturen närmare för att utveckla en djupare kunskap om dem. Studien syftar till att utifrån ett Foucaultdianskt diskursanalytiskt makt- och styrningsperspektiv studera begrepp, i detta fall lustfyllt lärande och lust att lära, som kan ses som för givet tagna i lärarprogrammets kurslitteratur och i hela den pedagogiska kontexten. Vi vill även se i vilka olika typer av sammanhang och hur ofta de förekommer i litteraturen, samt se hur författarna talar om begreppen. Dessutom vill vi undersöka om begreppen har olika betydelser. Vi har valt att fokusera på kurslitteratur och styrdokument kopplad till inriktning mot förskola, förskoleklass och grundskolans tidigare år. Vi har medvetet valt bort litteratur som riktar sig mot de senare skolåren eftersom de inte tillhör våra inriktningar på lärarprogrammet. För att uppnå syftet med studien har vi använt oss av en Foucaultdiansk diskursanalys. Vi har i denna diskursanalys valt att lägga fokus på text eftersom vi studerat begreppen lustfyllt lärande och lust att lära i lärarprogrammets kurslitteratur. Diskursanalys är att betrakta som en kvalitativ metod. Vi kom i vår studie fram till att begreppen lustfyllt lärande och lust att lära har olika betydelser. Vi fann även att förekomsten av lustfyllt lärande och lust att lära i kurslitteraturen skiljer sig markant beroende på ämnesområde. Inom ämnena svenska och matematik var begreppen mest representerade, men även inom det mer övergripande området som handlar om hur pedagogen bör förhålla sig till barnen. Vi kom också fram till att begreppen ofta kopplas samman med andra pedagogiska begrepp i litteraturen, som det nya lärandet och det kompetenta barnet.

As a social practice, being part of the school band stylizes our lives—individually and collectively. The pedagogical band world, a world made up primarily of school and university wind bands, is in many ways similar to the world of community/civic bands of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Based on an examination of professional discourses, however, I argue that processes of institutionalization have altered the nature of music making via band participation. The pedagogical band world, like other bounded worlds, operates according to what Michel Foucault calls “regimes of truth”—the regulative norms that delimit what can be said and done. The specific ways in which the subject is fashioned, in other words, are a function of the truths we endorse about ourselves and, in the present case, about music making. Studying the discourses in the disciplinary practice of large ensemble (band) music making is of paramount importance for music educators to better understand the effects of disciplinary practices. Employing a conceptual framework based on the work of Michel Foucault, the following question guided this inquiry: “What ‘regimes of truth’ are fashioned in school music (bands) discourse, how did they come to be, and what are their potential effects on the subject?” Methods from the field of corpus linguistics were used to concordance the journal of the Canadian Band Association, 1978-2008. Concordance lists were used to introspectively examine each occurrence (approximately 25,000 in total) of a downsampled set of words related to subject formation in order to generate statements making truth claims. While there is no mistaking that a primary goal in music education discourse is to foster a “love of music,” this investigation suggests the kind of musicality fashioned in today’s pedagogical discourse has become a relationship to music (based on the study of music; music as something to know) rather than the kind of relationship fashioned in band participation in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, which I describe as a relationship with music (music as something to do).

The context of this thesis is a four-year sports initiative called the Handshake which was launched and funded by the Swedish government and specifically targets girls. The Special Sports Federations were assigned the task of distributing the money to the local sports clubs. The clubs could apply for funding in order to carry out local projects. In the study, project applications from eight different sports were collected; both female- and male-dominated, and gender equal sports. This thesis focuses on the dominant ways of talking about girls and girls’ sport as well as the processes that shape them. Inspired by feminist post-structural theory and Foucault, the aim of this study is to examine how a special initiative for girls’ sport frames girls and their sport. The aim is also to analyze possible conditions of discourse for constructions of gender in texts specifically focusing on girls’ sports participation. The central questions are: How are girls and girls’ sport represented? In what ways and with which form of power, technologies, and techniques are girls constructed and positioned? The analysis shows how the regulatory and disciplinary processes operate in the government initiative. The identification of a specific group of girls in the Handshake initiative is an important component in the exercise of power, not least because it will inevitably convey and produce “truths” about the girls’ group. The initiative produces a number of ideas about girls and their sport, which girls are in need of special projects (and which are not) and in what way. The constructions of girls are not neutral, but normative. The position the sports movement gives itself, namely, a good and significant social force, implies that the problem lies elsewhere. Girls, and not the sport, become bearers of problem characteristics, they are obliged to change and improve. The norms, structures, and processes that cause normalization remain unchanged.

This thesis investigates the New Partnership for Africa’s Development (Nepad) in order to engage debates about neoliberalism in African development policy. In identifying limitations with commentaries of Nepad and pervasive narratives of neoliberalisation, I employ an analytic of governmentality to reinterpret neoliberalisation as the governmental re-management of populations into societies of free, entrepreneurial, self-regulating subjects. Firstly, I investigate how Nepad makes Africa knowable and amenable to technical intervention in the form of “development”, particularly drawing attention to how the African subject is understood and the intimacy between technical solutions and expert diagnosis. Secondly, I explore four initiatives and techniques that attempt to render these rationalities reality. The conclusions elucidate how neoliberalism ought not to be understood as a monolithic, unrolling totality that simply implants itself through coercive power relations, but rather is comprised of a patchwork of rationalities, knowledges and discourses and given effect through prosaic governing practices.

The purpose of this thesis is to destabilize notions that representations of ‘Indians’ as they appear in contemporary Switzerland, Germany, and France are benign. Rather, Europeans in this region rely on ‘playing Indian’ and consuming Indianness to understand themselves as white modern subjects. I demonstrate how this operates through two case studies and argue that colonialism persists through symbolic dialectical processes between North America and Western Europe. Colonial discourse, and regimes of representation, concerning Indianness circulate across geographical locations. I link these symbolic representations to ongoing material struggles of Indigenous peoples for self-determination and land rights. Switzerland’s foreign investments and free trade with Canada for natural resources on unceded Indigenous territories implicates them in a neoliberal colonial paradigm that continues to dispossess peoples of their land. I turn to Indigenous artists and international solidarity networking as potential strategies that address both symbolic and material processes of colonization.

The purpose of this thesis is to destabilize notions that representations of ‘Indians’ as they appear in contemporary Switzerland, Germany, and France are benign. Rather, Europeans in this region rely on ‘playing Indian’ and consuming Indianness to understand themselves as white modern subjects. I demonstrate how this operates through two case studies and argue that colonialism persists through symbolic dialectical processes between North America and Western Europe. Colonial discourse, and regimes of representation, concerning Indianness circulate across geographical locations. I link these symbolic representations to ongoing material struggles of Indigenous peoples for self-determination and land rights. Switzerland’s foreign investments and free trade with Canada for natural resources on unceded Indigenous territories implicates them in a neoliberal colonial paradigm that continues to dispossess peoples of their land. I turn to Indigenous artists and international solidarity networking as potential strategies that address both symbolic and material processes of colonization.

This dissertation is an exploration of the role of Euro-North American Philosophy of Education discourse in the genealogy of race struggle. I examine how the reliable narration of Philosophy of Education functions as a project of racial rule premised on moral/temporal/spatial notions of (White) civility and respectability. Tracing the history of race war from the 17th century to present day, I look at how racism has shifted from sovereign power to disciplinary power to biopower as a mode of population management, operating not only through race but through gender and class distinctions as well. I analyze the racialized narrative conventions of liberal modern Enlightenment philosophy and the role these conventions continue to play in the creation and maintenance of a violent racial state. Drawing upon Critical Race Theory, feminist epistemologies, narrative theory, and the work of Michel Foucault, I look at what reliable narration does for philosophers, educators, and students, examining what we/they might have invested in maintaining a distinction between ‘reliability’ and ‘unreliability.’ I ask: How is reliable narration used as a tool by philosophers, educators, and ultimately, the state to distinguish between the civil and uncivil, between those worthy and unworthy of moral consideration, political engagement, and basic human rights? How do the impartiality, univocality, universality, and dispassion of reliable narratives become tied to race and the management of racialized bodies? My aim is to examine the ways in which race as a method of governance acts on a text, its author(s), and its audience. “How are racialized subjectivities constituted through and constitutive of language and knowledge,” I ask, “and to what effect?” I want to trace the social and civil relations mapped out by particular narrative conventions and examine the consequences of failing to adhere to such conventions. I suggest that by questioning the function of reliable narration in philosophical and pedagogical practice, educators, scholars, and students can intervene in the operation of race as a mode of discipline, creating the possibility of a more equitable society in which all have the opportunity to flourish.