In this essay I employ memory theories to examine Absalom, Absalom! by William Faulkner. How are the memories depicted and how do they function in the novel? What are the characters 'allowed' to remember? Scholars that have written about William Faulkners usage of memories and narrative time in his novels, often claim that they together represent and create a sense of determinism and/or fatalism. Even though I agreed with that opinion, regarding time and memory in a lot of Faulkners novels, I wondered if these features in the text might not represent/mean something more, beyond that. One scholar have expressed the view that William Faulkners characters resemble blind marionettes of Destiny. I instead claim that the characters themselves, via their individual memories and temporal relations, create an internal determinism, connected with cultural memory, norms and traditions. I try to examine both the individual memories, as depicted in the novel, and the novel in its entirety, using different memory theories and narratology.

This thesis aims to shed light on the collection of Oriental manuscripts at the Uppsala University Library Carolina Rediviva and how the collection is a part of the collective memory. The main question which is central for this thesis is: have orientalism and structures of power influenced the acquisition, arrangement and methods of accessability regarding the Oriental manuscripts? If yes, in what way and why? If no, how has this been avoided? The theoretical framework consists of four approaches: phenomenology, sociology of knowledge, orientalism and power which are applied to the archival concept of collective memory. The main source of material consists of three parts: the historical texts which gives an informational framework regarding the time and place in which the manuscripts were collected, the catalogues in which the manuscripts are described and the transcripted interviews alongside correspondence. Methodologically the thesis is based upon a qualitative method which also partly makes up the foundation for the main material. The methods used are interviews and text studies of manuscript catalogues, historical texts and exhibition catalogues. The usage of manuscript catalogues was, due to the limited time, restricted to one which is written in English, as for the informants they are limited to three. The result of this study shows that the historical foundation on which the Oriental manuscript collection came into existance rests on a basis consisting of orientalism and power structures. This foundation is somewhat reproduced in time and in some ways current regarding the arrangement and methods of accessability both in historical and contemporary approaches.

Tunnelbanan knyter ihop stora delar av staden. Det finns människor som gärna vill bo kvar runt den t-banelinje de bor på. I denna uppsats analyseras intervjuer med fem personer som bor i stadsdelar dit den Gröna t-banelinjen går. Det undersöks hur t-banan medverkar till att bygga upp identiteten var och en skapat sig under tiden som boende på platsen. Undersökningen tar reda på hur varje person blivit en del av platsen de bor på, och hur platsen har blivit en del av dem. Med hjälp av intervjuerna tas det också reda på vad tunnelbanan kan ha för betydelse utöver att vara ett transportmedel. Studiens resultat visar att tunnelbanan bidragit till platstillhörighet, trivsel och identitetsbygge, men att platsen kan vara rörlig. Personerna kan känna tillhörighet till flera platser, genom möjlighet till rörlighet som tunnelbanan bidragit med. Resultatet visar också att tunnelbanan kan betyda något mer än att vara ett transportmedel, den är såväl landmärke som markör för urbanitet.

” You don’t talk about politics or football around the dining table” is a Chilean expression that well describes how the dictatorship (1973–1990) is attached to the societal soul, with people’s diversifiedrelationships to its legacy. For the outside world, Chile is a thriving democracy that got out of Pinochet’s iron grip, but for many Chileans, the transition to democracy has excluded demands for justice and a real influence. How is it to be born into democracy and grow up in a society where the struggle for memory is a struggle for the future? Where you did not live the terrible years but live with its consequences? This study is interested in how the younger generation breaks a generational silence and actively participates in politicizing memory. With a political-ethnographic approach and a customized discourse analytical tool, these processes are captured through an extensive case study of the memory site Londres 38, espacio de memorias. In conversations about impunity with the memory site’s young representatives and the school and university class’s diversified reflections on the subject during participating visits, present research shows how the place becomes a democratic deliberative platform, in contrast to prevailing power relations, giving voice and perspective to a new generation.

Studien undersöker den fysiska platsen Gamla Linköping där staden Linköping rekonstruerar och bevarar sin kollektiva historia genom de byggnader och de personliga minnen och berättelser som idag tillsammans utgör ett levande museum. Hus och byggnader har flyttats från sina ursprungliga platser runt om i staden och vissa har fått en helt ny funktion i Gamla Linköping. Studien undersöker även personliga minnen och kollektiva berättelser från informanter i Linköping för att besvara de frågeställningar rörande Gamla Linköpings betydelse för staden, varför behovet av rekonstruktion finns och vilken betydelse personliga minnen har för studiens informanter. Slutsatser som dras i studien är att Gamla Linköping berättar om de enskilda människornas vardag och miljö i dennes tid och rum och att rekonstruktion i full skala är ett ypperligt tillfälle att återuppleva och tolka en dåtid. Studien visar även att känslor som glädje, lycka och nostalgi är det som framträder mest när informanter berättar om personliga minnen som aktiveras genom både platser och föremål. / The study examines the physical location of Gamla Linköping where the city of Linköping reconstructs and preserves its collective history through the buildings and the personal memories and stories that today together constitute a living museum. Houses and buildings have been moved from their original locations around the city and some have been given a completely new function in Gamla Linköping. The study also examines personal memories and collective stories from informants in Linköping to answer the questions concerning Gamla Linköping's importance to the city, why the need for reconstruction exists and what importance personal memories have for the study's informants. Conclusions drawn in the study are that Gamla Linköping talks about the everyday life and environment of the individual people in their time and space and that reconstruction on a full scale is an excellent opportunity to relive and interpret a past. The study also shows that emotions such as happiness, joy and nostalgia are what emerges most when informants talks about personal memories that are triggered by both places and objects.

Many refugees and asylum-seekers have been exposed to traumatic events prior to resettlement. This study examines Swedish language teachers’ understandings of post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) among adult refugee students who need to learn the societal language to restart their lives. Using focus groups, teachers discussed their understandings of PTSD, how it manifests itself in the classroom, and how they have changed their teaching to accommodate refugee students with PTSD. The focus group discussions revealed that many teachers were unsure how PTSD manifests, and that they felt insecure in their teaching approaches. Nevertheless, the teachers worked hard to provide a safe place for all students to learn and applied teaching and learning approaches they felt were appropriate for adult learners. These results suggest that teachers’ self-confidence in their abilities to support adult refugee students could be increased through formal training on PTSD.

<p>Dag Wellander: Meaning – memory: oblivion. A reading of Birgitta Trotzig’s The mud kings daughter. Master of Arts paper. Written in Swedish. 115 pp. Department of Literature and History of Ideas, Stockholm University, SE – 106 91 Stockholm</p><p>The purpose of the paper is to treat one question, including the consequences of it’s answer, the question if The mud kings daughter is a text that has meaning. The question is in a first series of steps being approached by the way of scrutinizing the meaning found in the text in accordance with the methodology applied by those four dissertations that are available on the subject, i.e. on The mud kings daughter. These examinations do not find that the alleged forms of meaning stated by the dissertations is being produced by the text. On the contrary striking similarities is being found between these alleged forms of meaning on the one hand, and on the other the unfounded, disambiguated meaning that, according to Shoshana Felman, Freudian and anti-Freudian critics alike, have said is to be found in Henry James’ short novel The Turn of the Screw. In a following series of steps – some of which are being taken on Jacques Derrida’s advice – the rhetorical functioning of the textual ambiguity is observed and often found to be enchanting, whereupon the rhetorical necessity of the textual ambiguity is found to be affliction.</p><p>This split between the rhetorical functioning of the textual ambiguity as rather enchanting, and the rhetorical necessity of the textual ambiguity being affliction, is then treated as something that hardly could be understood, and, accordingly, as something that might be understood as something that could not be understood. The idea is being put in that this split could be thought of as an inversion of oblivion into a living memory of a forgotten reading impression, an idea that is being inspired by the inversion of oblivion into a living memory in Marcel Proust’s In Search of Lost Time.</p><p>Keywords: Birgitta Trotzig, Shoshana Felman, Jacques Derrida, Marcel Proust, meaning, ambiguity, memory, oblivion.</p>

<p>Syftet med uppsatsen är att undersöka vilken betydelse upplevelsen har för minnet. Studien behandlar tre problemformuleringar: (1) Vad minns eleverna några månader efter sitt besök på Sörmlands museum? (2) Varför minns eleverna just de sakerna? Här studeras de två aspekterna: Av vilka anledningar anser eleverna själva att de har dessa minnen? Vad säger utomhuspedagogisk forskning om upplevelsernas betydelse för lärandet? (3) Hur väl stämmer elevernas minnen överens med de syften som Sörmlands museums har med sin verksamhet?</p><p>Studien baseras på en enkätundersökning där sammanlagt 205 elever i årskurs 4 och 5 har deltagit i ett studiebesök på Sörmlands museum under våren 2004. Efter fyra till åtta månader ombeds eleverna utveckla två frågeställningar / påståenden: (1) Detta minns jag… (2) Jag minns det för att…</p><p>Resultatet visar att eleverna har rika minnen från besöket samt att de allra flesta eleverna upplevde besöket som positivt. Studien av elevernas minnen efter deltagande i programmen på Sörmlands museum visade att 70 procent av eleverna mindes aktiviteter de fått göra själva. 51 procent hade auditiva minnen och 40 procent hade visuella minnen. 37 procent av eleverna hade minnen som var kopplade till en specifik plats på Nyköpingshus.</p><p>Den orsak de flesta eleverna själva angav till att de kom ihåg dagen var att de hade positiva minnen, 75 % skrev att det var roligt. Många elever upplevde även programmen som spännande, intressanta och unika. Karaktären hos deltagarnas minnen liksom deras egna teorier om varför de minns det de minns stärker den utomhuspedagogiska forskningens syn på inlärning. Egna upplevelser, i synnerhet sådana som involverar många sinnen, rörelse och en plats som förstärker lärandet, ger eleverna något att associera faktakunskaper till. Studien har visat att de studerade programmen utgör en arena för spännande möten mellan samtid och dåtid. Elevernas omfattande och positiva minnen visar att Sörmlands museum lyckas väl med sin föresats att fungera som ett komplement till skolan.</p>

<p>I vårt samhälle har bilden fått en allt större betydelse för att förse oss med information om vår omvärld och det förflutna. I ett modernt samhälle utgör bilder från kameror vår huvudsakliga källa till verkligheten som vi inte har direkt erfarenhet av. Genom de bilder som finns samlade runtom på våra museer skapar vi en föreställning om hur världen såg ut förr. Hur dessa bilder används styr hur vi ser på det förflutna, vilket i sin tur bidrar till samhällets kollektiva minne. Syftet med studien har varit att problematisera fotografiet som kulturarv och visa på dess komplexitet. Genom intervjuer med fem kulturinstitutioner Östergötlands länsmuseum, Bild Linköping, Norrköpings stadsmuseum, Norrköpings stadsbibliotek och Arbetets museum har jag undersökt synen på fotografiet som kulturarv. Bilden som framträder i studien är av ett medium som både attraherar och förför oss. Samtidigt som dess förmåga att passa in i olika kontexter bidrar till en tvetydighet som möjliggör ett ifrågasättande av sanningshalten i fotografier.</p> / <p>In our society photographic images have assumed an ever greater role in providing us with information about the world around us and about our past. In modern society pictures taken by cameras are the main source of real life information distant from personal experience. Through pictures stored in museums we can create an image of the world as it appeared in past times. The way these pictures are used can influence our perception of the past and they affect society’s collective memory. The purpose of this study is to question the use of photography in cultural heritage work and show the complexity of the situation arising from their use. Through interviews with 5 different institutions – Östergötlands länsmuseum, Bild Linköping, Norrköpings stadsmuseum, Norrköpings stadsbibliotek and Arbetets museum – I have examined how the use of photographs is perceived when working with cultural heritage. The results of the study throw light on a medium which both attracts and seduces us. At the same time it also reveals that the capacity of photographs to be used in so many diverse contexts leads to an ambiguity which allows their truth content to be questioned.</p>

<p>All my short stories have been written in an intuitive way according to which no outline of characters, intrigue or plot was made in advance. A consequence of this process is that not even myself as the author is aware of the meaning of the texts and therefore I too have to interpret the stories. Because of the character of the text, I use an analysis of archetypes according to C. G. Jung’s analytic psychology. In addition to this I also use concepts from hermeneutical and existential phenomenology, represented here by Viktor Frankl, Emmanuel Lévinas, Martin Heidegger and Paul Ricoeur. The Jungian analysis shows that the content in the short story <em>Sjön</em> (The lake) in a high degree is structured in a way that correlates very well with this method. When it comes to the phenomenological thinkers, several of their concepts are applicable in my short story. In the philosophy of Frankl and Heidegger, the concept of <em>conscience</em> is a warning to the individual to take care of his life, which is a possible interpretation of the anxiety of my main character.  When it comes to his seeking for the significance of an important earlier event in his life the concept of <em>memory</em> in the discourse of Ricoeur also bring some light to the understanding. Finally, the concept of <em>the Other</em> in Lévinas´ philosophy can explain his longing for a reestablishing of a meaning in his life.</p><p> </p>