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Le poète, essayiste et prosateur franco-écossais Kenneth White élabore depuis le début des années 1960 une œuvre singulière qui est aujourd'hui reconnue comme l'une des plus cohérentes de la post-modernité. Parce qu'il considère que la culture occidentale est prise dans une impasse, il cherche dans un contact rapproché avec la terre l'issue au malaise dans la civilisation. Selon une approche résolument nietzschéenne, il congédie toute forme d'arrière-monde pour embrasser l'ici-bas, s'attache à démanteler l'axe vertical sur lequel l'Occident s'est construit et tente de redynamiser le séjour de l'homme sur terre. Conjointement à ce travail d'épure l'auteur mène une réflexion sur le verbe et s'efforce de « trouver le langage inconnu auquel l'esprit aspire ». En marge de tout lettrisme, en rupture avec une littérature purement littéraire, l'écriture whitienne se veut à la fois simple et souple, puissante et vivifiante. Pour ce faire l'auteur ne puise pas son inspiration dans la mythologie mais il se met à l'écoute de la terre, de ses « pulsions telluriques », de ses « enveloppes thermodynamiques » et autres « vibrations » et « longueurs d'onde », en somme avec ce que Caillois, avant lui, avait nommé « l'écriture permanente du monde ». Bien qu'il mène un travail de sape, White ne fait pas table rase et salue sur son chemin un grand nombre de compagnons. Il pousse d'ailleurs cette logique jusqu'à son comble et insiste sur le fait que l'œuvre personnelle a fait son temps et qu'elle se doit d'ouvrir sur une œuvre collective. En fondant l'Institut international de géopoétique en 1989 puis en l'archipélisant en 1994, il a mis l'accent sur la vocation sociale de la littérature, sur le rôle qu'elle peut et doit jouer au sein de nos sociétés. Entre avant-garde et arrière-garde, politique et esthétique, la géopoétique emprunte la voie du milieu et ouvre de nouvelles perspectives, elle trace les lignes d'un monde en émergence que son fondateur a résolument placé sous le signe de l'énergie. / Since the 1960's Scotto-French poet, essayist and prose-writer Kenneth White has been elaborating an idiosyncratic work which is today recognised as one of the most coherent of post-modernity. Because he believes that western culture has reached a point of no return, he sees the earth as the only solution to our civilization's discontents. Resolutely nietzschean in his approach, he dismisses transcendence to embrace immanence, deconstructs the vertical axis on which the western world had built itself and endeavours to revitalize the journey of man on earth. Together with this process of purge he reflects on the Word and tries to find the unknown language our mind longs to master. Against literature that is too literary, White's writing is simple and supple, powerful and vivifying. The author does not draw his inspiration from mythology but gets in tune with the earth, with its telluric forces, its thermodynamic envelopes, its vibrations and wavelengths, with what Caillois, before him, called the “permanent writing of the world”. Despite this undermining White does not wipe the slate clean and meets a large number of fellow writers and thinkers on his way. As a matter of fact he pushes this logic to its end and insists on the fact that one should no longer think in terms of personal work and should strive to create a collective one. By founding the International Institute for Geopoetics in 1989 and by “archipelising” it in 1994, he clearly stressed the social vocation of literature. Between avant-garde and rearguard, politics and aesthetics, geopoetics opens new perspectives and traces the outline of a highly energetic world.

Ösamhället Sandhamn ligger på Sandön i Stockholms skärgård och är för de flesta känt som ett besöksmål för turister. Namnet Sandhamn används ofta för både byn och hela ön. Syftet med uppsatsen är att undersöka hur platsen Sandhamn laddas med betydelse genom olika aktörers berättelser. Jag vill undersöka hur de gestaltas, hur de uppfattas och påverkar oss samt samverkar med varandra i ett konstruktivistiskt perspektiv samt hur detta påverkar samhället. Ur de dominerande berättelserna om Sandhamn valdes tre återkommande mindscape: skärgårdsidyll, konsumtion, och historia. Därefter analyserades hur dessa mindscape används, samverkar med varandra och skapar konsekvenser. Resultatet av analyserna gav att mindscapen användes i olika syften och med olika dominans och spridning. De samverkar med varandra vilket ger en förstärkande effekt. Konsekvenserna av de större och dominerande aktörernas berättelser kan bli att samhället anpassas till att möta de besökandes förväntningar i så hög grad att det inte går att leva upp till dem. Eftersom turismen är den största näringsgrenen skulle det i så fall påverka samhället negativt. / The village Sandhamn is located on Sandön in the Stockholm archipelago and is known by most as a tourist destination. The name Sandhamn is often used to refer to both the village Sandhamn and the island on which it is located. The purpose of this essay is to explore how Sandhamn is perceived, this through different agents stories. I've explored how they are formed, perceived, affect us and also relate to each other in a constructivistic perspective and how this affects the community. From the dominating stories about Sandhamn three recurring mindscapes were chosen: archipelago paradise, consumption and history. Later on an analysis was made on how these mindscapes are used, collaborates and which consequences they cause. The results of these analyses showed that the mindscapes were used for different purposes, with different dominance and spread. They collaborate with each other which results in an amplified effect. The consequences of the bigger and dominating stories could be that the community is adapted to meet the expectations of the visitors, to an extent where the expectations can't be met. Since tourism is the major source of income, this would affect the community in a negative way."

In each of my paintings I try to create an individual micro-universe made up of elements that resonate between the familiar and the unknown. I carve up space and hybridize disparate elements, in an effort to excavate objects and spaces from our collective unconscious. By employing different perspectives, I try to encourage an experiential view of the landscape, like the one that exists for the viewer in the physical world, where sightlines are constantly shifting. These landscapes become a rhythmic labyrinth to enter and travel through, wherein the viewer experiences his or her own personal associations. In this thesis, I will explore the painted landscape in Western and Eastern traditions and discuss different types of landscapes as they relate to my paintings and my personal commentary on the landscape. I will also examine my painting process and my personal approach to fundamental elements including perspective, line, and color.

Post-apartheid writing has been characterized by an ardent search for a voice that truly depicts the painful apartheid past. The establishment of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC) promoted a confessional mode of writing as a means to obtaining healing, hence reconstitution. Such a paradigm shift in writing necessitated imagined characters to re-invent and re-align themselves with the new post-apartheid dispensation if they were to remain relevant to South African readership. Reinvention of characters is made possible through several means and various organs of reconstitution such as history, narration, possession of one’s landscape and a disavowal of belonging as depicted in The Native Commissioner. This study seeks to examine the process of self-constitution undergone by the co-protagonist and surrogate narrator, Sam Jameson, following his failure to function as an individual and father in post-apartheid South Africa. To this end, a close reading of the novel is done, to better understand the context of Sam’s trauma. The study traces the self-reconstitutive process of Sam from the moment he decides to re-visit his father’s past, to the moment when he finds release from the trauma. I argue that an investigation of his father’s life, as well as his, ultimately gives him agency over his own. Sam’s identity shifts from his childhood past, in which apartheid exerts primary influence, to that of an adult who lives in the post-apartheid moment, having come to terms with his past. Telling his story, to him becomes an act of re-creation and self-invention and the means by which he formulates his own identity. At the end of the story, it is a totally liberated individual that the reader witnesses. / English Studies / M.A. (English)

ABSTRACT The law regulating what non-industrial private forest owners (NIPF's) can and cannot do within their forest holdings is an outline law. Thus the NIPF's have great opportunity to shape the landscape inside their holdings by their own will. Their perceptions of their holdings can thus be of great interest. This because information about their perceptions can predict change, and also bring about more understanding of the group as a whole. The aim of this essay is therefore to explore the NIPF's relationship to their forest holdings by describing their mindscapes. The data necessary to fulfil the aim was acquired from semi-structured interviews, done with five NIPF's in Västerbotten. The data was then analysed using thematic analysis, with the term mindscape as a frame. All of the NIPF's were living in the same municipality as their forest holdings. Seven themes in the mindscapes of the NIPF's were found: Everyday knowledge, human presence, the balance between human- and natural processes, change, feelings, the forest holding inside the rural landscape and to be more than one. Previous research was used to triangulate, and to better understand the mindscape of the respondents. The respondents could be divided into two of Ingemarsons (2004) typologies; Traditionalists and multiobjective owners. Where the mindscape of the multiobjective owners contained the most change.