Den här uppsatsen undersöker hur identitet uttrycks i tre musikvideos som tillhör genren ”queer rap” (Mykki Blanco, Le1f och Zebra Katz) där jag ställer frågan om den identitet som uttrycks hos dem är subversiva. För att ta reda på detta användes representations-begreppet tillsammans med Richard Dyers definition av stereotyper och José Esteban Muñoz avidentifikations-begrepp. Dessa tre artisters identiteter går att tolkas som subversiva då de använder normer och redan befintliga identiteter för att skapa nya uttryck, både från det heteronormativa och andra subversiva subkulturer. De skapar nya identiteter och uttryck med de normer som finns.

This essay, through Julia Kristeva’s theory of abjection, seeks to shift the focus from the society that abjects towards the abjected through a generous reading of two contemporary Swedish queer novels, Du är rötterna som sover vid mina fötter och håller jorden på plats by Eli Levén and Ett så starkt ljus by Lyra Ekström Lindbäck. I discuss how the queer subject relates to different types of borders that Kristeva posits, such as the bodily border, the border of the I, and a moral or societal border. I find that the queer subject has a different relationship to these borders, and view and experience them in ways different than Kristeva suggests. Furthermore, I analyse how the queer subject experiences being made abject. I find that this experience can both be harmful and be somewhat self-sustaining in maintaining societal norms, but also that it can be a way for the queer subject to further position itself as different from a heteronormative society, a position that is truer to who the queer subject feels they are. Through José Esteban Muñoz’ Cruising Utopia I discuss how there are potentialities with being queer, or queer being, such as an expanded worldview and an outstretched concept of possible ways of being and living. The broader aim of this essay is to test Kristeva’s claim that literature is a place for a person to approach the abject, and to examine if literature also has a possibility of portraying an abject position, being a place where the abject itself can examine abjection and being made abject. My conclusion is that this is the case, and furthermore that literature also is a place for the abject to examine potentialities beyond the heteronormative sphere.

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.