This thesis broaches an understanding of the perplexing concept of violence in the philosophy of Gillian Rose (1947-1995) by examining her sporadic appeal to the dramatic category of the Trauerspiel (mourning-play) and its opposite, comedy. Understood in their context as contrasting images of philosophy’s project in the aftermath of 20th century catastrophe, the dramatic categories of the Trauerspiel and comedy are shown to be critical conceptual resources for making sense of the function of violence in Rose’s late work. I begin by contextualizing Rose’s invocation of the Trauerspiel through an exploration of Rose’s engagement with Walter Benjamin’s study of 17th century German mourning-plays. In this 17th century context, the Trauerspiel dramatizes the melancholic aftermath of the Lutheran repudiation of “good works” and its implication in violence and political intrigue. Building on Benjamin’s intimation of the enduring significance of this link between melancholy and violence, I show how Rose uses the dramatic image of the Trauerspiel to characterize the predicament of postmodern philosophy. Philosophy, conceived as a Trauerspiel, interminably mourns the losses produced by the diremptions of modernity. By refusing to complete this work of mourning, however, the dirempted conditions of violence are left intact, thereby re-enforcing and reifying what is abhorred. Against this melancholic conception of philosophy as a Trauerspiel, Rose gives an account of philosophy as a comedy that figures violence, when reckoned with, as a precondition of education in the law. Through a comedic double movement, violence is understood retrospectively as a representable aspect of modernity’s dirempted history and prospectively as a necessary risk of thinking and acting in a dirempted world. By attending to this comedic aspect of Rose’s conception of violence I am afforded an interpretive position from which to criticize two prominent interpretations of Rose that over- and underemphasize the stakes of her investment in the question of violence. / Thesis / Master of Arts (MA) / This thesis analyzes the concept of violence in the late work of the philosopher Gillian Rose (1947-1995) by examining her use of two dramatic categories: the Trauerspiel (or mourning-play) and comedy. Understood as contrasting accounts of the predicament of contemporary philosophy, the Trauerspiel and its opposite, comedy, function as a window into Rose’s understanding of the relation between philosophy and violence. I show how Rose appeals to the Trauerspiel to illustrate a problematic link between modern melancholy and violence, which is then used to demonstrate the implication of contemporary philosophy’s obsession with loss in violence. Rose’s account of philosophy as a comedy, by contrast, avoids the mournful reproduction of violence by figuring violence as a necessary part of acting in, and thinking about, the modern world. This emphasis on the “comedic” aspect of Rose’s conception of violence constitutes an original reading of Rose that challenges existing scholarly interpretations.

2015 och 2016 publicerades Systembolagets två filmer ”Systrar” och ”Bröder” som antilangningsfilmerriktade mot äldre syskon. Denna studie undersöker vilka utvecklingsmöjligheterdet finns för dessa filmer att utveckla sina spridningsmöjligheter. Syftet är att undersöka hur ettarbetsätt som är baserat i användarens upplevelse, mer specifikt User Eperience, kan spridabudskapet kring att inte köpa alkohol till yngre syskon ytterligare. Den teoretiska ansatsen baserasi Roses (2016) modell ”Four Cites of a critical visual methodology” samt teorier kringinteraktivitet och UX. För att besvara studiens syfte har det utförts en kompositionell tolkning, envisuell analys samt tre fokusgruppsintervjuer.Studiens resultat från fokusgruppsintervjuerna identifierar tre olika teman kringalkoholanvändnings och langning; Det finns en större hotbild för yngre tjejer och de är oftast desom blir för fulla, Den alkoholen som köps ut från Systembolaget blir ofta ett komplement snarareän att mängden blir kontrollerad, och det är vanligare och känns lättare att köpa ut till ett syskonju närmare man är i ålder. Tillsammans med resultatet från innehållsanalysen har de visuellaelementen som identifierats till exempel mörkret/ljuset i filmen ”Systrar” och slutsekvensen ifilmen ”Bröder” använts för att skapa tre prototyper som visualiserar utvecklingsmöjligheterna.Studiens slutsats är att det finns utvecklingsmöjligheter hos filmerna ”Systrar” och ”Bröder”, bådenär det kommer till användning av olika plattformar och platser där man kan nå mottagaren samtatt det skulle gynna Systembolaget att producera en tredje film där ett syskonpar med olikakönstillhörighet och närmare i ålder representeras. / In 2015 and 2016 the Swedish Systembolaget published the two films “Sisters” and “Brothers”as a campaign towards discouraging older siblings purchasing alcohol to underaged siblings. Thisstudy investigates the development the possibilities for these two movies to further reach theirtargeted audience. The purpose is to investigate how working from an User Experience (UX)perspective could effect and further increase the circulation of the message about not buyingalcohol to a minor. The theoretical approach in this study is based on Gillian Roses (2016) model“Four Cites of a critical visual methodology” and accounts for tools and theories about interactiveattributes and UX. The analysis consists of a compositional interpretation of the two movies andof material collected from three separate focus group discussions that has been conducted.The study highlights three percieved themes that has been discovered about alcohol usage; thereis a larger threat for young girls and it is often young girls who get too drunk, alcohol that hasbeen bought by an older sibling usually acts more as a complement to the bootleg alcohol ratherthan limiting and controlling the amount, and that it is more common and easier to buy alcoholfor a minor sibling if you are closer in age. The result from the visual analysis have beencombined with these three themes to create three visualisations and prototypes. The studyconcludes that there are development possibilities in the two movies ”Sisters” and ”Brothers”especially in their use of platforms, and the study proposes a production of a third movie with twodifferent genders and a smaller age gap, which could increase the proliferation potentials.

This thesis presents a conceptual examination of the modernist director read through Gillian Rose's speculative lenses of the 'broken middle'. Highlighting the significance of speculative philosophy, I explore the meaning of the director as a mediating subjectivity. I demonstrate how a speculative reading of the director can act as a corrective to the received totalitarian, despotic image of the director. I urge for the rehabilitation of the director as a history and as a practice and I propose the emergence of this figure as being the outcome of a complex theatrical articulation entangled with the discipline of philosophy. Combining close readings of philosophical texts by Rose, Plato, Castoriadis, Badiou, Rancière, Laclau and Mouffe, among several other intellectual references in this study, I explore the director as a mode or trope of embodied philosophy. My argument also proposes the director as an Event, in Badiou's definition, and I trace this configuration as already taking place with the 'tragic' paradigm of the Athenian theatre. This Event of the director, I then argue, gets fully inaugurated in modernism as the Event of thought in theatre. I explore how the director acting as a mediator transforms theatre to what Puchner calls 'a theatre of ideas' while simultaneously philosophy becomes itself transformed to a theatre of thought. Chapter 1 outlines the key strands of Rose's thought and sets out the theoretical parameters of my examination. The chapter argues for a speculative reading of the director cross-examined with current positions within theatre historiography. The chapter paves a new understanding of the director, not historically, but conceptually, as a mode of embodied thought. Chapter 2 explores the relationship between the primacy and centrality of the aesthetic paradigm of theatre in philosophy and the role and practice of the poet - or 'chorodidaskalos' - who I consider as an early philosophical figuration of the modern director. I highlight speculative 'aporia' which in Rose indicates a path 'without a path' as the primary modality of thinking philosophically, already at work in tragedy, that renders the modernist director as a theatrical thinker. Chapter 3 puts forward the case of the director's mediating subjectivity by arguing for the Event of the director. I analyse Badiou's philosophy of the Event, making connections to speculative philosophy and illuminating the Evental dimension of this figure. Chapter 4 moves the examination to the Event of the director that I locate in Richard Wagner. My reading explores the philosophical dimension of Wagner as an artist and a thinker by which I rehabilitate his overtly negative image. I do this by reading Left Hegelianism, and anarchist philosophy more broadly, in Wagner's operatic works, writings, and political activism. Chapter 5 examines the 'speculative director' in the aesthetic project of Naturalism and Realism. The chapter includes a published section by which I explore the political mode of the director indirectly, by examining the articulatory discourse in Laclau and Mouffe's definition and the practice of affirmation. Chapter 6 looks at the avant-garde manifesto as a form of meta-language that seeks to actively re-shape theatre and the world as embodied, declaimed philosophy. The chapter repositions the avant-garde's aesthetic preoccupation with failure as a profoundly transformative project rather than as being incomplete. The included published article examines more closely the affinity between the Spartacus Manifesto by Rose Luxemburg (philosophy) and the more politicized forms of the Dada Berlin manifesto art (theatre). Chapter 7 is the concluding chapter by which I argue the case of the director finally having entered the theatre as a philosopher; that is, through Bertolt Brecht.