Den föreliggande texten är en utifrån ett socialkonstruktionistisk och relativistiskt perspektiv baserad undersökning av relativismens och realismens skilda ontologier. Texten argumenterar för giltigheten i en socialkonstruktionistisk förståelse av det sociala och framvisar ett antal framträdande problem med realismens Weltanschauung. Relaterat till detta behandlas en diskursteoretisk  syn på sociala fenomen tillsammans med etnometodologiskt och foucauteanskt inriktade perspektivs olika uppfattningar om valet av relevant kontext vid samhällsvetenskapliga analyser. Vidare genomförs en diskurspsykologisk läsning av en tidsskriftsartikel, en läsning som framför allt exemplifierar problematiken med realismens konstruktion av verkligheten som objektiv och självframträdande. Slutligen görs i textens avslutande del ett försök att fördjupa den socialkonstruktionistiska kritiken av realismen, framför allt i syfte att antyda en möjlighet att bryta dualismen autonom verklighet–konstruerad verklighet samt utstaka riktningen för en motsättningarnas sociologi.

This study concerns the complete oeuvre by the British author Helen Zahavi: Dirty Weekend (1991), True Romance (1994), and Donna and the Fatman (1998). Her novels are here read as a trilogy dealing with the dialectics of gender and violence in 20th century discourse, drawing on theories of how the construction of subjects is produced by power, of the relation between power and sexuality. The heroines of Zahavi’s novels try their best to move about in a world where their freedom of movement is limited to their female identity. In Dirty Weekend the protagonist tries to shoot her way out, claiming revenge on every man that is forcing himself upon her. She gains some freedom of movement by refusing subordination, but does not really change the order of power. The protagonist in True Romance instead finds salvation in love of the master. She learns to love the man who keeps her as a sex slave in his apartment, and when confronted with the choice between the freedom by violent action and submission by passive acceptance, she chooses the latter. The protagonist in Donna and the Fatman manage to refuse both superiority and submission. She has a debt to settle with the gangster boss Henry, but in the end blows both herself and her opponent to pieces. I argue that by doing this, Donna breaks out of the order of language. The order of power presented in Zahavi’s novels is a tyranneous dichotomy which cathegorize individuals as either victims or perpertrators. This construction is seemingly a natural order which we have to accept, but the actions of Zahavi’s last protagonist eventually proves it to be nothing but a mask, a lie. This lie is, in the words of one of Zahavi’s characters, a tenacious lie, and the only way to break out of the construction of power is to break out of the construction of the order of power. Thus the blowing up of both victim and perpertrator may enable a new world to be born.

This dissertation examines three contemporary German novels and their respective representations of the Red-Green era. It focuses on the discourses to which these novels refer in order to shed light on the consequences and implications of Red-Green politics for the subjectification of individuals during this time. When Gerhard Schröder replaced Helmut Kohl in 1998 as Chancellor of Germany, there was a noticeable shift towards neoliberal policies that has since received much attention in scholarly studies and public-political debates about its impact on Germany’s economy, social security system, political party system, and institutional structure. Taking a new approach to understanding the politics of the Red-Green coalition, I argue that its impact is noticeable not only in the political sphere, but that this impact also permeates all levels of society, in particular concepts of selfhood, and that it has found its way into contemporary literary works. As my particular interest lies in investigating how these literary works process the consequences and implications of Red-Green politics for the subjectification of individuals during this time, the novels I selected situate themselves explicitly within the Red-Green era mostly through references to some of its most well-known labour market measures, namely the Ich-AG, the Mittelstandsoffensive, and employability training programs. Analysing the neoliberal discourses to which these novels refer and (re-) constructing the particular sets of knowledge, truths, and norms that enable neoliberal governing practices allow me to shed light on the mechanisms of individuals’ subjectification through the politics of the Red-Green coalition. Of particular importance during the Red-Green era are the discourses surrounding entrepreneurialism as they construct the market as a structuring principle of society in which all individuals are called upon as entrepreneurs. For the examination of neoliberal governing discourses, I draw both on Michel Foucault’s theory of neoliberal governmentality and Ulrich Bröckling’s conceptualization of the entrepreneurial self, an idealized and hence unachievable self-image that addresses individuals as entrepreneurs of their own lives. Foucault’s theory allows going beyond an understanding of neoliberalism as a political theory of free market policies but views it as an act of governing that expands the notion of the government of others to include the government of the self according to the principles of entrepreneurialism and the market, hence taking into account the participatory role of the subject. Bröckling’s conceptualization draws on Foucault’s theory to examine the subjectification of individuals as entrepreneurial selves, that is, as individuals who are constantly stimulated to act as enterprising subjects. The literary analysis of the novels – Ralph Hammerthaler’s Alles bestens (2002), Reinhard Liebermann’s Das Ende des Kanzlers. Der finale Rettungsschuss (2004), and Joachim Zelter’s Schule der Arbeitslosen (2006) – shows they cast light on various ways in which specific forms of subjectivity are promoted and enabled through neoliberal governing practices. More specifically, I illustrate that the protagonists in each novel represent three different facets of the entrepreneurial self, namely the enthusiast, the melancholic, and the social lemming that Ulrich Bröckling identifies in his typology of the entrepreneurial self (2008). While the nameless protagonist in Alles bestens embraces the market as a universal structuring principle and a metaphor for his own life, the protagonist Hans Hansmann in Das Ende des Kanzlers embraces free market principles, yet fails to fully understand the demands of the market and his own position within it. By contrast, Karla Meier in Schule der Arbeitslosen refuses to accept yet nevertheless follows the demands implicit in the image of the entrepreneurial self.

The main objective of this thesis is to examine conscientious objection to military service as a case of resistance to modern power in relation with the possibilities of &ldquo / self&rdquo / . In this context, Max Stirner&rsquo / s theory of &ldquo / ego&rdquo / and Michel Foucault&rsquo / s conceptualisations of modern power and modern subject are critically analyzed. In accordance with the relation between conscientious objection and the possibilities of self, Foucault&rsquo / s theories of &ldquo / power over life&rdquo / and &ldquo / ethics of care of self&rdquo / are discussed by examining disciplinary power and bio-power in relation with militarized society characterized by universal male conscription. On the other hand, Stirner&rsquo / s theory of &ldquo / the union of egoists&rdquo / and his conceptualization of &ldquo / Ownness&rdquo / is employed in order to investigate the possibilities of constituting an autonomous self. This study reveals that the act of conscientious objection overlaps objector&rsquo / s endeavour of creating an autonomous self. It is argued that following Stirnerian and Foucauldian conceptualisations of &ldquo / self&rdquo / , the objector, by refusing external power over his/her will in militarized society, indeed, engages in a struggle to constitute his/her own definition of self and his/her way of life.

This thesis examines the way that subversivity is produced in relation to the name of the author, as understood by Foucault, and what potential for ressistance that can be glimpsed there. This from the reading of three text that in different ways relate to that theme. Firstly, throught the reading of "Isis mamma är genusvetare, skribent och konstnär, min mamma är f.d. städerska, kokerska och dagisfröken, numera förtidspensionär med diagnosen fibromyalgi" by Lidija Praizović, a text that actively work with the internal production of different exteriorities. The text uses these exteriorities, both to commit the violation needed in order to establish it's perspective toward a capitalist publicity, and to anticipate the response and argument towards the text in the same publicity. The becoming of the proletarian class awereness is in the text partly formed in terms of origin and political ressentiment. But when used in litterature the analysis show that they produce subversive collective assemblies and question the border of political discourse. The way we become subjects in submission in terms of being bodies, irrational, specific in relation to a liberal sphere that produces the superior as invisible and bodyless, can establish it's pespective as human and universal when turned into literature. Throughout this processes the proletarian position is produced as an instance of power both internal to the text and pointing outwards, from the text. The analysis futher shows how conventions that regulate the spreading of discourse through the name of the author in capitalism, can be used to circulate experiences of submission that has the formation of collective assemblies as their potential. A process that is directly related to the post-­‐fordist capitalisms needs for new forms of life in order to reproduce. The two other texts, "Nej, man har inte rätt att skriva vad man vill" by Lyra Ekström Lindbäck, and "I huvudet på Lidija Praizović" by Tove Folkesson, was produceed as a reaction to the first texts apperance in the public sphere. The first one is critical to the text and the name, but is still making claims on a subversive position. The reading of it shows that the making of that claim, in relation to the need to produce ones own name as an author name in community with the liberal public sphere, results in a blocking of the subversive potential and a reduction of the subversive to only a marker on the name. A reaction that is in turn foreseen by the first text in it's working with the anticipation of readers responce. The reading of the second text shows how, throught the production of a complete affinity with the exteriority that is the athor name of Lidija Praizović, the potentially dangerous class position is reduced and disarmed. That occurs partly throught a reduction of the class position to aspects that only allows political ressentiment and loneliness. This turns the subversivity and the violation associated with the name of Lidija Praizović to functions for the name of Tove Folkesson. Something that in turn shows not only the potential of using these aspects of political becomings as grounds for building something that goes beyond them, but also the dangers of it. Both texts can therefore be seen as two different attempts to block the spreading of the subversive by using it solely to produce the name of the author.

Sociological explanations for human conduct usually place major ontological and epistemological emphasis upon either discursive or material relations without ever establishing or adequately specifying the validity of this dichotomy. Early texts by the Critical Realist philosopher Roy Bhaskar address this forced separation by creating an integrated ontological and epistemological field that provides a more detailed and precise theoretical ordering to agents, objects, and entities. Undertaking a developmental critique of Bhaskar’s arguments, this thesis extends Critical Realism’s role as theoretical ‘underlabourer’ and creates an expanded theoretical framework that balances discursive and material accounts. Utilising the sophisticated analyses of the structure and operation of discourses found in the work of Michel Foucault alongside the innovative arguments for aleatory materialism developed by Louis Althusser, a critique is established that shows discursive, material, and social relations to be complex, immanent, and, importantly, mutually constitutive. In each theory three core concepts of events, emergence, and the extra-discursive are shown to not only be present but also to operate as the main means of explaining social change. The result of integrating Critical Realism, Foucault, and Althusser in this sympathetic but non-syncretic form is the generation of a non-reductionist materialism combined with discursive relations. On this basis, social change is shown to be the result of restructured discursive and material relations of which human agents are only one part. The thesis provides an illustration of the theoretical argument with an empirical component which examines the formation and decline of the British nuclear industry between its inception in the early 1950s to the year 2000. The conclusion is that the form taken by nuclear energy is not entirely determined by any single one of political, economic, or scientific forces but is, instead, the product of multiple and complex interactions of immanent discursive and material relations that are, importantly, mutually reinforcing. / Thesis (Ph.D, Sociology) -- Queen's University, 2012-09-27 12:38:25.909

This dissertation examines three contemporary German novels and their respective representations of the Red-Green era. It focuses on the discourses to which these novels refer in order to shed light on the consequences and implications of Red-Green politics for the subjectification of individuals during this time. When Gerhard Schröder replaced Helmut Kohl in 1998 as Chancellor of Germany, there was a noticeable shift towards neoliberal policies that has since received much attention in scholarly studies and public-political debates about its impact on Germany’s economy, social security system, political party system, and institutional structure. Taking a new approach to understanding the politics of the Red-Green coalition, I argue that its impact is noticeable not only in the political sphere, but that this impact also permeates all levels of society, in particular concepts of selfhood, and that it has found its way into contemporary literary works. As my particular interest lies in investigating how these literary works process the consequences and implications of Red-Green politics for the subjectification of individuals during this time, the novels I selected situate themselves explicitly within the Red-Green era mostly through references to some of its most well-known labour market measures, namely the Ich-AG, the Mittelstandsoffensive, and employability training programs. Analysing the neoliberal discourses to which these novels refer and (re-) constructing the particular sets of knowledge, truths, and norms that enable neoliberal governing practices allow me to shed light on the mechanisms of individuals’ subjectification through the politics of the Red-Green coalition. Of particular importance during the Red-Green era are the discourses surrounding entrepreneurialism as they construct the market as a structuring principle of society in which all individuals are called upon as entrepreneurs. For the examination of neoliberal governing discourses, I draw both on Michel Foucault’s theory of neoliberal governmentality and Ulrich Bröckling’s conceptualization of the entrepreneurial self, an idealized and hence unachievable self-image that addresses individuals as entrepreneurs of their own lives. Foucault’s theory allows going beyond an understanding of neoliberalism as a political theory of free market policies but views it as an act of governing that expands the notion of the government of others to include the government of the self according to the principles of entrepreneurialism and the market, hence taking into account the participatory role of the subject. Bröckling’s conceptualization draws on Foucault’s theory to examine the subjectification of individuals as entrepreneurial selves, that is, as individuals who are constantly stimulated to act as enterprising subjects. The literary analysis of the novels – Ralph Hammerthaler’s Alles bestens (2002), Reinhard Liebermann’s Das Ende des Kanzlers. Der finale Rettungsschuss (2004), and Joachim Zelter’s Schule der Arbeitslosen (2006) – shows they cast light on various ways in which specific forms of subjectivity are promoted and enabled through neoliberal governing practices. More specifically, I illustrate that the protagonists in each novel represent three different facets of the entrepreneurial self, namely the enthusiast, the melancholic, and the social lemming that Ulrich Bröckling identifies in his typology of the entrepreneurial self (2008). While the nameless protagonist in Alles bestens embraces the market as a universal structuring principle and a metaphor for his own life, the protagonist Hans Hansmann in Das Ende des Kanzlers embraces free market principles, yet fails to fully understand the demands of the market and his own position within it. By contrast, Karla Meier in Schule der Arbeitslosen refuses to accept yet nevertheless follows the demands implicit in the image of the entrepreneurial self.

This research investigates the formation of visual as discursive practice. Discourses that celebrate, denigrate and omit visual are examined with a particular focus on discourses of the child and technology in art education. This thesis applies poststructural methodologies of discourse analysis to disrupt traditional accounts of discipline configurations determined in histories of art education. With a particular focus on Michel Foucault???s methods of history, archaeology and genealogy, art education as discipline is mapped through an investigation of visual as concept and practice. This research contends that the emergence of current practices in visual culture, as configured within the constraints of art education amplifies the conditions of visual to define art education as a field. It examines the mobilisation of discourse, verified by discipline formations in art education, and the way in which such formations distribute and categorise knowledge that is sequenced within power structures. Therefore, visual, as a discursive practice is one way through which to trace the conditions of the field, including the structure of discipline as knowledge and subject in art education.

This thesis is about border politics, in more than one sense. It looks at the recent period of anxiety about the control of Australian national borders (approximately, from the late 1990s until the 2007 Federal election), and attempts to understand how certain assumptions about women as potential reproductive bodies permeated biopolitical discourses in Australian national culture during this period. I employ the term ‘containment’ in order to make sense of this cultural moment. With reference to the work of theorists of modernity such as Michel Foucault and Zygmunt Bauman, I argue that containment is a key discourse in modern cultures—a way of thinking and speaking about confinement, control, management and order. It structures how we think about the management of populations and is a central part of the justification for the confinement of problem populations by modern political authorities. As such, then, it describes the ways in which the use of immigration detention for unlawful non-citizen asylum seekers has been thought about and accepted as reasonable in Australian national culture. / However, a discourse of containment has also been central to the thinking about gendered bodies in modernity, in particular to assumptions about the control of women’s bodies. The assumptions about the containment of women in the modern gender order are directly linked to ideas about political status, citizenship and sovereignty in modern nation-states. Drawing on Giorgio Agamben’s notion of ‘bare life’—the life that is excluded from the protections of citizenship and thus left unprotected from violence—I attempt to make sense of the connections between the immigration detention camp as a site where the modern state exerts control over the life of the nation, and that modern state’s attempts to control reproductive and reproducing bodies. The reducing of certain people to the status of bare life is, then, a gendered process. Women and men are stripped of political status in different ways because they are assumed to have, or potentially have, different kinds of political status. / I therefore consider how ideas about women as reproductive bodies were integral to the discourse and practices of containment which underpinned the use of immigration detention in Australia. These ideas were important at a number of levels. Firstly, ideas about women as reproductive bodies infused the thinking about national borders, border control and the management of national reproduction. Secondly, a racially inflected discourse about ‘women and children’ was of central importance in shaping the ways in which male and female asylum seekers in immigration detention were treated. In the techniques used to control and manage gendered asylum-seeking bodies, key modern assumptions about women as reproductive bodies, the family, sovereignty and violence are revealed. Furthermore, I argue that many popular culture texts which attempt to make sense of, or critique, Australian national border politics have reinforced the same gendered ideas about containment, the same naturalised assumptions about the reproduction of the nation, which underpinned exclusionist border politics and the use of immigration detention. Examining the intersection of gendered and national discourses of containment in national border politics reveals the gendered violence which infuses the modern social order.

Esta dissertação é fruto de uma pesquisa realizada com o objetivo de examinar enunciados produzidos por professoras dos Anos Iniciais do Ensino Fundamental sobre uma escola bilíngue para alunos surdos e o ensino de matemática. Os aportes teóricos que sustentam a investigação são as teorizações de Michel Foucault e Ludwig Wittgenstein, principalmente aqueles presentes em na obra Investigações Filosóficas. Além disso, foram utilizados conceitos do campo dos Estudos Surdos, conforme descrito por Carlos Skliar, Maura Corcini Lopes e Adriana Thoma. O material de pesquisa examinado consiste em: narrativas de quatro professoras dos Anos Iniciais do Ensino Fundamental da escola investigada, geradas em entrevistas, documentos oficiais e Registros de Chamada da instituição. A estratégia analítica utilizada para examinar esse material orientou-se pela análise do discurso, na perspectiva de Michel Foucault. O exercício analítico realizado a partir do uso das ferramentas teóricas selecionadas mostrou que a escola de ouvintes e a escola de surdos têm fortes semelhanças de família, responsáveis pela disciplinarização dos corpos e dos saberes e condução das condutas dos alunos. Também foi possível identificar que tanto a escola de surdos como a de ouvintes se ocupam da produção de sujeitos disciplinados, normalizados a partir de um modelo a ser seguido, contudo, no caso dessa primeira, com um referencial de normalidade pautado em saberes provenientes da comunidade surda. Na disciplina de Matemática, especificamente, foi identificado que as semelhanças de família entre o ensino de surdos e ouvintes é ainda mais forte, visto que este campo de conhecimento, segundo os dados empíricos, pode ser trabalhado visualmente. Percebeu-se que a imperatividade do uso dos materiais concretos nas aulas de Matemática também está presente, porém com uma outra justificativa: a de que o aluno surdo é um sujeito visual. Assim, pode-se pensar que os jogos de linguagem que constituem a Matemática Escolar seguem predominantes, mesmo nas escolas de surdos, com sua gramática pautada por formalismo, ordem e assepsia. / This dissertation is the result of a research carried out with the objective of examining statements made by elementary school teachers about a bilingual school for deaf students and the teaching of mathematics. The theoretical contributions that support the investigation are the theories of Michel Foucault and Ludwig Wittgenstein, mainly those present in the work Philosophical Investigations. In addition, concepts from the field of Deaf Studies were used, as described by Carlos Skliar, Maura Corcini Lopes and Adriana Thoma. The research material examined consists of: narratives of four Elementary School teachers of the school investigated, generated in interviews, official documents and some observation records from the institution. The analytical strategy used to examine this material was guided by discourse analysis, from Michel Foucault's perspective. The analytical exercise based on the use of the selected theoretical tools showed that the school of hearers and the school of the deaf have strong family resemblances, responsible for disciplining the bodies and the knowledge and conducting the students' behaviors. It was also possible to identify that both the school of deaf and the hearers are concerned with the production of disciplined subjects, normalized from a model to be followed, however, in the case of this first, with a referential of normality based on knowledge from the deaf community. In the discipline of Mathematics, specifically, it was identified that the family similarities between the teaching of deaf and hearers are even stronger, since this field of knowledge, according to the empirical data, can be worked visually. It was noticed that the imperative use of concrete materials in Mathematics classes is also present, but with another justification: that the deaf student is a visual subject. Thus, one may think that the language games that make up School Mathematics remain predominant, even in schools of the deaf, with its grammar marked by formalism, order and asepsis.