This thesis shows how democratic politics requires a commitment to pluralism as engagement and encounter of the other in their otherness. I contend that it is necessary to commit to such an idea of pluralism because of the problem of incomplete understanding. I establish this premise by drawing on Hans-Georg Gadamer’s account of human finitude. Based on this premise, I argue that the instantiation of Gadamer’s principle of openness leads democratic politics to pluralism as engagement and encounter of the other. Further, I develop accounts of asymmetric reciprocity, reflexivity, and agonism as modes of democratic politics that instantiate the principle of openness. In chapter 1, I establish discourse as a necessary element for democratic politics by drawing from the way Jurgen Habermas uses ‘discourse ethics’ to address the problems of understanding in plural societies. In chapter 2, I demonstrate how incomplete understanding poses a problem for discourse and gives rise to interpretive conflicts by drawing from Gadamer’s account of human finitude. Here I also develop an account of openness as a suitable principle for beings with incomplete understanding based on Gadamer’s idea of hermeneutical experience. In chapters 3-5, I develop accounts of asymmetric reciprocity, reflexivity, and agonism as modes of democratic politics that instantiate the principle of openness. I do so by drawing from Iris Young’s, John Dryzek’s, and Chantal Mouffe’s approaches to the problems that plurality poses to discourse ethics and democratic politics.

Syftet med föreliggande studie har varit att kartlägga och söka kunskap om vilka föreställningar om lärare som finns representerade inom intresse- och arbetsgivarorganisationen SKL så som de kommer till uttryck i deras utgivna texter, samt att försöka förstå dessa ur ett diskursanalytiskt maktperspektiv. Genom att genomföra en diskursanalys utifrån såväl Faircloughs som Laclau och Mouffes teorier kunde nodalpunkten utveckling identifieras, vilken sedan studerades utifrån vilken innebörd den gavs i förhållande till ett antal olika aktörskategorier kopplat till skolan. Diskursanalysen av det empiriska materialet visade ett bristperspektiv i förhållande till lärarna, framförallt kopplat till deras kompetens och att detta i sin tur leder till att lärarna fungerar som hinder för övriga skolaktörers utveckling i en positiv riktning. I förhållande till kommunerna identifierades snarare en position som möjliggörare. Genom att använda diskursiva genrer, representationer och stilar på olika sätt framstår SKL själva som en myndighet, med legitimitet och mandat att uttala sig om lärare och deras yrkesutövande. Studien avslutas med en diskussion rörande vad SKL och kommunerna kan ha att vinna på en diskurs som innebär att lärare är en hindrande kraft i behov av kompetensutveckling, medan kommunerna framstår som kompetenta möjliggörare och SKL som en myndighet med mandat att styra lärarna i en särskild riktning.

Departing from the increasing threat that organized hate groups and their manipulative practices pose to contemporary society, this thesis seeks to unravel the workings of digital hate culture and to highlight the potential of civil society-led counter initiatives to combat the spread of hatred online. The research is based on a twofold qualitative content analysis. In a first step, the intended practices of two opposing groups – an organized hate group (Reconquista Germanica) and an organized counter speech group (Reconquista Internet) – are analyzed based on a set of internal strategic communication documents. In a second step, three comment threads on Facebook are examined to illustrate the actualized practices of users spreading hate and users who counter-speak. By drawing on a four-dimensional framework, the analysis thereby considers how practices, discourses, power relations, and the technological affordances of Facebook shape this interplay. With theoretical reference to Mouffe’s (2005) work on the antagonistic nature of the political and today’s post-political Zeitgeist, this thesis ultimately comes to discuss whether such confrontations between exponents of digital hate culture and counter speakers must be understood as irrefutable antagonisms or if productive agonism can be fostered through a mutual understanding of one another as legitimate adversaries.What the analysis evinces is that the discussions carried out between the two opposing camps are highly moralized, resulting in an antagonistic battle between ‘good’ and ‘evil’ that interferes with the possibility for productive agonism. It is further shown that, in this post-political discussion climate, counter speech carries a crucial responsibility to conform to moral values and maintain professional and ethical standards to set itself apart from the harmful practices of digital hate culture. Otherwise, as the analysis indicates, counter efforts are likely to spur on destructive dynamics, further hardening the fronts between opposing positions that characterize today’s increasingly polarized societies.

This study explores how presidential candidates during the 2020 American election were tied to external others, taking the shape of China and Russia. The study argues that an identity perspective becomes fruitful for addressing the research problem, as it becomes a matter of who "we" as a nation are. In general, identity studies tend to focus on the external other, while this study aims to contribute with an understanding of how the internal and external other can be interconnected.  American exceptionalism - the notion that the US has a unique role to play on the world stage - is a prominent part of American political identity. Nonetheless, the concept of exceptionalism also implies that being an American is an act of choice and not exclusively a birthright, thus individuals and values can be labeled as "un-American". Drawing on and combining the theoretical insights from Michel Foucault, Ernesto Laclau, Chantal Mouffe, and Ty Solomon, politics in itself becomes a narrative war to fill nodal points with a hegemonic substance based on a wish for identity-fulfillment. The study finds that the other candidate is separated from the idea of what constitutes the US by reference to foreign and threatening powers. The other candidate is framed as unfit to be president, and since he does not correspond with the identity of the nation itself, he can not lead and personify the US. Thus, the other candidate is narratively constructed as unable to grant the wish for national identity fulfillment. The substance of the nodal points also does not exhibit a value in themselves but has to be contrasted against something or someone - in this case, an Other.

This thesis project explores the question of the death of architecture; the declaration of the lost abilities of architecture to achieve political influence and the architect as a social actor. As I have found myself in agreement with this Tafurian perspective on the subject, I wanted to use this thesis project to explore the question of architecture and its political potential, as well as breaking from the paralyzing condition of the incentives of architecture's incapabilities. This, in suggesting that architecture can act as a catalyst for doing things differently. The project investigates, on the one hand,  how a building can encourage political action and engagement, and, on the other, how ideological ideas and intentions can concretize spatially, materially and aesthetically, The project is an design exploration concretized in a specific architectural proposal – a building for a political organization operating in the city of Stockholm.

Before the regulation of opium as a “narcotic” in Sweden in 1923, opium was not regulated for its intoxicating properties and was freely available. But not in any kind of shop. Opium was legally available only through the pharmacies. This thesis explores how this free availability of a narcotic was understood by its traders, the pharmacists. The title of this thesis – The Value of Poison – indicates how opium could be conceptualized both as a safe, everyday remedy essential to keep freely available and as a drug of intoxication. As a poison it could be articulated as a matter of primarily pharmacological, not moral or medical, concern. This also gave the pharmacists, with their special knowledge of pharmaka (drugs, poisons), an autonomous space of knowledge free from the ever more intruding “medical gaze”. But, in order to articulate this kind of understanding of opium, another kind of knowledge was needed to be acknowledged: that of the user. In this articulation a “sensus communis” was tied in with a broader cultural knowledge of drugs. Problems with opium were focused on the danger of acute poisoning, not recreational intoxication. Concepts that could have problematized this kind of use were rearticulated as problems either of illegitimate trade, unregulated markets and advertising or of draconian regulation by greedy or sloppy doctors. These rather opposite elements were made equivalent through the articulation of ignorance in both cases, thus further emphasizing the special knowledge of the pharmacist. The thesis locates a process of contradiction that contributes to the eventual diminishing of the discourse of poison towards the end of the period. The pharmaceutical knowledge that guaranteed the discourse was based on a “pharmaceutical gaze” on pharmaka. It pierced through the drug to identify its constituent parts. In this process it was promised that the different effects of opium would be separated. “Narcotic” could be a by-product, to be discarded or controlled, without dispensing of other therapeutic effects. With this ever deeper knowledge of opium, knowledge in the pharmacies was made insufficient for the full understanding or opium, and so too was that of the traditional user. The era of opium as a poison was over. / Före den första särlagstiftningen om narkotika i Sverige 1923 reglerades inte opiumets rusgivande egenskaper. Drogen var fritt tillgänglig i handeln. Men inte i vilken butik som helst. Opium kunde bara köpas lagligt på landets apotek. Den här avhandlingen undersöker hur denna fria tillgänglighet av narkotika förstods av droghandlarna själva, apotekarna. Titeln pekar på hur opium på en och samma gång kunde tänkas som en säker husmedicin vars tillgänglighet var avgörande för folkhälsan och som en rusgivande drog. Som ”gift” artikulerades det som en i första hand farmakologisk angelägenhet, inte en moralisk eller medicinsk. När de talade på detta sätt upprättade apotekarna, genom sin särskilda kunskap om farmaka, ett eget rum för sitt vetande, fritt från läkarnas allt mer genomträngande ”kliniska blick”. Men för att kunna artikulera denna förståelse av opium krävdes också att en annan typ av kunskap vidkändes: brukarens. Genom denna artikulation knöts brukarnas ”sensus communis” samman med en bredare kulturell kunskap om droger. De av opiumets problem som lyftes fram handlade om akut förgiftning, inte rekreationellt rusbruk. De begrepp som hade varit möjliga att användas för att problematisera denna senare form av bruk reartikulerades: antingen förpassades de till den olagliga handeln, de oreglerade marknaderna och reklamen, eller också till de drakoniska regleringarna som giriga och slarviga läkare stod bakom. Apotekarna artikulerade dessa båda helt motstående element som ekvivalenta genom en brist på kunskap, vilket i sin tur ytterligare stärkte deras egen kunskapsmakt. Avhandlingen lokaliserar även en processande motsägelse som sker när giftets diskurs tynar bort vid slutet av den undersökta perioden. Den farmaceutiska kunskap som underbyggde diskursen vilade på en ”farmaceutisk blick” på farmaka. Denna genomborrade drogämnet för att avslöja dess beståndsdelar. Genom denna process utlovades att opiumets olika effekter skulle kunna skiljas från varandra. ”Narkotikan” kunde ses som en bieffekt, som kunde kastas åt sidan eller kontrolleras separat, utan att opiumets kvarvarande terapeutiska effekter minskade. Denna allt djupare kunskap medförde att de enskilda apotekarnas eget vetande på apoteken inte räckte till för att fullt ut förstå opium, och därmed bröts även samartikulationen med brukarnas kunskap. Tidseran när opium var ett gift tog därmed slut under mellankrigsperioden.

This research examines how the practice of curating has been used to further counter-hegemonic agendas in public art institutions since 1989. The central aim is to provide a fuller, contextualised, and medium specific understanding of the how the institutional exhibition might be used to challenge the hegemony of neoliberalism and the post-political consensus politics that sustains its dominance. It provides insights, through both historic case studies and reflective practice, that problematise the idea that the institutional art exhibition is a viable medium for counter-hegemonic critique, or represents the ideal space for the development of an agonistic public discourse. This thesis presents collaborative research undertaken with Tate Liverpool and Liverpool John Moores University. The research presented both extrapolated from, and contributed to, the development of an exhibition, co-curated with Tate Liverpool, entitled Art Turning Left (8 November 2013 – 2 February 2014) and a supplementary publication of the same name. The first section investigates how the idea that curators can counter neoliberal dominance, through institutional exhibition-making, developed. It draws from analyses of previous exhibitions, and the theory of Chantal Mouffe, in order to critically evaluate the curatorial application of counter-hegemonic critique and agonistic practice. It also provides a review of how exhibitions (held in major art institutions since 1989) have articulated politics, in order to determine their relationship to neoliberal dominance, and to identify significant gaps in the dialogue facilitated by these institutions. These analyses provides the theoretical and contextual grounding for the final two chapters, which provide a rationale and critical evaluation of my own attempt to develop an alternative counter-hegemonic curatorial strategy for the exhibition at Tate Liverpool. They document, and analyse, the areas of dissensus, and the ideological and pragmatic limitations that emerged, in trying to realise these theoretical propositions (in practice) in a public art museum. The thesis therefore provides a critical framework for the development of an alternative practice that positions the exhibition as a form of post-political critique and specifically targets the hegemonic role that institutional exhibitions play in reinforcing class distinctions and devaluing nonprofessional creativity.

In this essay I try to find out how the local political climate in the Swedish Municipal Örebro looks like through the eyes of Michel Foucault. I’ve been focusing on the concept power, knowledge and politic. I’ve been applying the discourse theory on the study and the founder of that theory is Chantal Mouffe and Ernesto Laclau, the discoursetheory is a refinement of Foucaults thoughts about discourse. The object of study is the Mayor of Örebro, Staffan Werme and the position connected to that post. I’ve used the method “shadowing”, and I’ve been following the Mayor in every physical room that he appears in for nearly two weeks. The aim is too see which subject-position that the Mayor ascribes to in those different rooms, and also how the concept of power is used.

I denna uppsats genomförs en diskursanalys av materialet Orten bortom våldet med hjälp av Ernesto Laclau och Chantal Mouffes hegemonikritiska diskursteori. Materialet Orten bortom våldet är centralt för Eskilstuna kommuns sociala förebyggande arbete mot våld och kriminalitet. Med hjälp av Laclau och Mouffes diskursanalys dekonstrueras i denna studie resonemangen bakom Orten bortom våldet. Syftet är att synliggöra dess hegemoniska och ideologiska antaganden rörande individ, samhälle och sociala fenomen. Analysen använder centrala begrepp utifrån Laclau och Mouffes diskursteori för att synliggöra och identifiera hegemoniska och dominanta diskursiva ställningstaganden. Studien visar hur analysmaterialet vilar på en dikotomisk och dogmatisk social differentieringsdiskurs och en individcentrerad liberalistisk determinism rörande det förebyggande sociala arbetet och dess interventioner och problematiserar dessa aspekter utifrån ett vi och de-kritiskt perspektiv samt ett ideologikritiskt perspektiv. / In this essay, a discourse analysis of the material Orten bortom våldet is carried out with the help of Ernesto Laclau and Chantal Mouffe's hegemonic-critical discourse theory. The material Orten bortom våldet is central to Eskilstuna municipality's social prevention work against violence and crime. With the help of Laclau and Mouffe's discourse analysis, this study deconstructs the reasoning behind Orten bortom våldet. The aim is to make visible its hegemonic and ideological assumptions concerning the individual, society and social phenomena. The analysis uses central concepts based on Laclau and Mouffe's discourse theory to make visible and identify hegemonic and dominant discursive positions. The study shows that the analysis material rests on a dichotomous and dogmatic social differentiation discourse and an individual-centered liberal determinism regarding preventive social work and its interventions and problematizes these aspects from a we and them-critical perspective as well as an ideology-critical perspective.

The Bachelor dissertation What do you mean national self-image? is a discourse analysis of the relationship between Swedish news providers. The study aims to investigate how Swedish-language print media interact with the main provider of Swedish news in English, The Local Sweden, and what it reports as the “essence” of the nation and its people.   The investigation has been conducted through the implementation of Ernesto Laclau’s and Chantal Mouffe’s discourse analysis and uses intertextuality, stereotypes, social representation, as well as nationalism and the imagined communities as its theoretical framework. The material selected for the analysis comprises publications by Swedish-language print media from the year of 2014, which engage in a dialogue with The Local Sweden beyond the generic interaction of news. The dissertation concludes that Swedish-language print media approach The Local Sweden’s news coverage in two ways: in agreement or in opposition of what has been reported. When The Local Sweden has published something with the intention of capturing the “essence” of Sweden and its people, they bring attention to the Swede’s hugging culture, their food and souvenirs, as well as their knowledge of language. The results of the study suggest that The Local Sweden manages to provide new information on the subjects, which then leads to Swedish-language print media responding with entire articles dedicated to these topics. The articles convey a sense of fascination and curiosity toward the findings and confirm that The Local Sweden has been correct in their observations. However, when The Local Sweden publishes something with the intention of presenting Swedish news rather than the specific “essence” of it, they find different angles in news stories than what has been covered by Swedish-language print media. The results of the study suggest that by doing so they set themselves apart and provoke Swedish-language print media into responding by incorporating a comment for and/or relating to them as a news provider. The comments convey that Swedish-language print media question The Local Sweden’s validity as a valuable member in covering Swedish news.