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.

Denna studie är en undersökning av språket kring kön, kropp och kvinnlighet inom samtida svensk gudinnereligiositet, samt en diskussion av förhållandet mellan detta språk och feministiska respektive patriarkala föreställningar och värderingar. Undersökningen bygger på samtal kring symbolen ”Gudinnan” med utövare av gudinnereligiositet. I min studie sätter jag in de analyser som växer fram i samtalen i en större gudinnereligiös och feministisk kontext, samt ställer dem i relation till en nyare, för ämnet relativt oprövad feministisk teori: Donna Haraways poststrukturalistiska, kroppsmaterialistiska feminism.       I studien framkommer det att det gudinnereligiösa språket i hög utsträckning handlar om att benämna sina egna upplevelser, snarare än att uttala sig generellt och objektivt, vilket leder till att en mångfald av perspektiv på Gudinnan, kön, kropp och kvinnlighet framträder parallellt. Samtidigt framkommer dock ett antal perspektiv på Gudinnan, kön, kropp och kvinnlighet som tenderar att bli normativa inom gudinnereligiositeten, vilket till stor del tycks bero på den normativa effekt som skrivet material från traditioner som wicca, new age, jungiansk teori, samt amerikansk feministisk wicca har. Dessa normativa perspektiv tycks innefatta både berättelser som kan betraktas som problematiska, och berättelser som kan betraktas som feministiskt kraftfulla, men utifrån Haraways teorier är det alltid att betrakta som problematiskt när vissa berättelser etablerar sig som normativa och entydiga. Sammantaget framstår det därför i denna studie som att gudinnereligiositetens kanske allra främsta feministiska utmaning är att producera en mångfald berättelser, bilder och förklaringsmodeller om gudinnor, kön, kropp och kvinnlighet, och att ge utrymme för motsägelser, motsättningar och dissensus. Snarare än att betrakta den feministiska religiositeten som ett religiöst alternativ med alternativa svar och lösningar, skulle man kunna se den som ett kritiskt perspektiv, vars uppgift är att ständigt problematisera de försök till svar och lösningar som presenteras, och göra uppror mot alla tendenser till normer och entydighet – vare sig de kommer utifrån från patriarkala idétraditioner, eller inifrån rörelsen själv.

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 thesis investigates the figure of the cyborg as conceptualised by Donna Haraway in The Cyborg Manifesto (1991). The figure of the cyborg, as a transgressive figure in the late twentieth century within socialist feminist discourse, is problematized with regard to its efficacy as a creature that challenges the constructed nature of gender and contests the boundary between human and machine through its ambiguous nature. Haraway’s notions of the cyborg, which she bases partly on cyborg characters from Science Fiction literature, deny the ocularcentric traditions that have structured gender and the body. Similarly, Haraway does not engage adequately with the figure of the cyborg with regard to situating it historically. This thesis unpacks both the visual and the historical aspects that have structured the cyborg body. By engaging with these concepts, the cyborg emerges as a figure that is identified through visual signifiers of female deviance and pathology. By reading female deviance and pathology on the body of the nineteenth-century hysteric, similarities can be drawn between the hysteric and the cyborg. Through a reading of Alien (1979); Blade Runner (1982); and Star Trek: First Contact (1996) key cyborg texts of the late twentieth century, the figure of the cyborg, and its relation to the deviant pathologised female can be understood when read against the body of the hysteric and how it was visually coded and communicated

This essay is about the photographer Lotten von Düben and her photographing of the Samí people in a research expedition to Lapland in 1868 in which she took part as the expedition photographer. This expedition is taking place in the mountainous area of Kvikkjokk [Huhttán in Lule-samí]. Lotten von Düben´s husband Gustaf von Düben is a Medical doctor, Anthropologist and Professor at the Karolinska Institutet and is the head of the research expedition. Lottens´s role in the expedition is to document for her husband who has taken on his ageing colleague Anders Retzius work of cataloguing his well-recognized collection of Lapp-skulls, and in addition conducts his own research of what he refers to as “the people as such”.  The essay is also about my own personal heritage as a Samí descendent where I in particular analyze Lotten von Düben´s photographs taken of my far distant relatives, representatives of the family Granström. The aim of my research is to explore the expedition and the scenery of Lotten von Düben´s photographing, which I refer to as “Photographing in the Safari of Lapland”. Through picture analysis and based on a post-human, new materialist feminist approach, I deconstruct the very moment of photographing and image development with the aim to develop new narratives, stories which are previously not told. The picture analysis includes also photographs relating to Lotten and her photographs in the  post-safari phase, emphasizing the photography´s and the public. With an intersectional approach I also deconstruct Lotten von Düben as female photographer and the context relating to this. The essay is about imagining the activity of thinking differently and wandering and get off the beaten track. It is about skilled hands and esthetics, technical innovations, modern science and social political movements; a melting pot of phenomena’s which cannot be taken apart, but binds each other sequence through sequence. The essay is about a camera and sensitive meetings, about binary social relations, power structures and unquestioned science, about otherness and self and moving in between. / <p>It is very interesting and appealing that the focus is put on the female photographer Lotten von Duben and the role of the camera in the knowledge production. Furthermore, the student’s urge to go beyond the known narratives and to try to think and write differently is highly appreciated and relevant. Interesting, appealing and important thesis that contributes to the field of knowledge of Gender Studies. It is also a creative thesis in terms of the chosen methods that promote different narratives that may add to new ways of thinking.</p>

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.

Ce mémoire se veut une présentation et une interprétation de l’épistémologie de la philosophe féministe Donna Haraway, ainsi qu’une contribution à son rayonnement. Dans un premier temps, nous abordons le dilemme qui oppose deux grands types de réactions critiques face à la notion d’objectivité telle qu’elle est traditionnellement conçue : les réappropriations féministes de l’objectivité d’une part, et une forme de constructivisme radical « postmoderne » qui nie la possibilité d’accéder au monde réel et à un positionnement objectif d’autre part. Nous utilisons cette tension afin de mettre en évidence la manière originale dont Haraway la surmonte et afin d’éclaircir la notion d’objectivité encorporée qui se trouve au cœur de son approche théorique. Pour ce faire, nous la mettons en dialogue avec deux de ses interlocuteur.ices privilégié.es, Nancy Hartsock et Bruno Latour. Dans un deuxième temps, nous adoptons une posture d’interprétation internaliste et tentons d’établir la matrice conceptuelle dans laquelle la notion d’objectivité encorporée telle que la promeut Haraway prend sens. Nous nous attellerons alors à isoler et définir les concepts les plus importants que son approche met en jeu, sans pour autant remettre en question son caractère résolument non systématique. Le dernier temps de notre analyse consiste en une mise à l’épreuve de l’appareillage conceptuel que nous avons développé par l’application du dispositif épistémologique de Haraway à un objet de connaissance précis (le fœtus) afin de montrer concrètement le type de gains, en termes de savoirs et de compréhension, auquel donne accès l’épistémologie de l’autrice. / This master’s thesis is a presentation and interpretation of the epistemology of the feminist philosopher Donna Haraway, as well as a contribution to her influence. First, we address the dilemma that opposes two major types of critical reactions to the notion of objectivity as it is traditionally conceived: feminist reappropriations of objectivity on the one hand, and a form of radical "postmodern" constructivism that denies the possibility of access to the real world and to an objective positioning on the other hand. We use this tension to highlight the original way in which Haraway overcomes it, and to clarify the notion of embodied objectivity that lies at the heart of her theoretical approach. To do so, we put her in dialogue with two of her privileged interlocutors, Nancy Hartsock and Bruno Latour. Secondly, we adopt a posture of internalist interpretation and attempt to establish the conceptual matrix in which the notion of embodied objectivity as promoted by Haraway takes on meaning. We will then attempt to isolate and define the most important concepts involved in her approach, without questioning its resolutely non-systematic character. The last stage of our analysis consists in testing the conceptual apparatus that we have developed by applying Haraway's epistemological device to a precise object of knowledge (the fetus) in order to show concretely the type of gains, in terms of knowledge and understanding, to which her epistemology gives access.

This thesis explores the metaphoric cyborg concept, based on the classic essay "A Cyborg Manifesto" by Donna J. Haraway, through Claudia Springer and her analysis of cyborgs in popular culture, and in relation to Judith Butler and queer theory. By extending the cyborg term to include contemporary forms of cyborgship such as our internet lives and personas, I advocate discussion of philosophical matters concering man/machine-compounds today rather than tomorrow. The main purpose is to restore the cyborg concept as a meaningful analytic and philosophic tool for studying man/machine-relations, in a world where other theories concerning nature/culture, man/machine/animal, subject/object, and similar dichotomies, partly lack a technological perspective. Hopefully, this thesis manages to connect three decades of cyborg reflections from several points of view, posing interesting questions about our dealings and feelings towards our dear friends – the machines.

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