<p>Sarah Kane’s first play Blasted (1995) has often been read in a normative and biographical way by critics, authors and previous researchers. This essay makes a supplementary close reading of Blasted from gender and genealogical perspectives and utilizes theoretical works by Judith Butler, Luce Irigaray and Michel Foucault. My study makes clear that the characters different positions in language and talk create and maintain a power imbalance between them. Efforts to change and develop one’s individual position in language and talk are being made throughout the play since it is the only way to bring about a change in the social power structure. A fact that in turn also subsequently punishes those efforts. By analyzing the tools of representation, Kane points out a direct link between a violent power imbalance in a couples relationship and the violence of a war zone. In Blasted, it is revealed how violence in a private situation is mirrored in a situation of public violence and how the public violence, in turn, crawls back to the private zone and there repeats itself. By forcing one of the main characters to regress back to the infancy of language and from there alter the ability to act within the framework of human interrelations, Kane demonstrates how a change in social structures can be made, and as is shown in this essay, this indicates that a knowledge of how the social structures are being maintained and how they in turn can be disarranged, is what is required to create an opportunity for change.</p>

<p>This essay uses the concept of performativity to illustrate how identity change and the possibility to shape one’s identity, agency, are treated in Michael Ondaatje’s The English Patient. Originally a theory introduced by queer theorist Judith Butler, performativity explains how a sense of identity stems not from innate qualities but from behaviour, or stylized acts, that is regulated by the norms of society. These acts are not the effect but the cause of a sense of identity. Butler argues that since identity is shaped through interplay between the individual and society, it can be actively re-shaped, and that there thus is a possibility for the individual to achieve agency. As other theorists have pointed out, there are great difficulties and dangers in trying to subvert one’s identity in undesired directions. Some writers even question the suggestion that active identity change is at all possible. These theoretical ideas are fruitfully illuminating when reading The English Patient, where identities are shaped and re-shaped through performative patterns. By looking at the main characters of the novel, it becomes clear that while identity change is possible, most characters are not in control of these changes. Only characters that try to re-shape uncontroversial aspects of identity manage to achieve agency. This paper shows that not only does the text point to the dangers of trying to subvert controversial aspects of one’s identity. It also points to the difficulties of disentangling oneself from the societal mechanisms that one tries to oppose, and hence to the multilayered difficulties of achieving agency. While identities in The English Patient are not fixed but change, identity change only rarely entails agency.</p>

The aim of this study is to generate new knowledge of the educationalpractice of a pre-school and of how it may contribute to the understandingof doing gender. The ethnographic study examines the place and practiceof a Steiner Waldorf pre-school, and it focuses specifically on materiality,age, spirituality and the intentions of the pre-school teachers. Fieldworkhas been conducted for a period of one and a half years in one pre-school.The methods used are mainly participant observation and interviews withthe pre-school teachers. The results highlight the importance of the materialand spatial dimensions of the pre-school for the constitution of children’sgender. The concepts of performativity and ritualization have beenused as the main analytical tools. The study draws on the scope of theseconcepts as understood by Judith Butler and Catherine Bell. On the basis of the analysis of the empirical material, a theoretical concept,situated decoding of gender, is suggested. It is argued that what atfirst glance can be interpreted as a ‘female universe’, turns out to be a placewhere gender is made non-relevant through an unintentional, yet powerfulongoing process of naturalization. The situated decoding of gender is madepossible because of certain features in this pre-school. Firstly, a repetitivestructure characterizing educational practice has been observed. This isbased on a principle of rhythm reciprocally related to the alternations betweencontinuity and change. Secondly, there is a clear spatial and materialdemarcation that the study argues makes the pre-school an enclosed space,in the sense of being a place of nurturing and protection, where the boundariesbetween home and pre-school are maintained. Thirdly, the performativeforce of the ritualized preschool practices further enhances the decodingof gender. The ritualization highlights and supports the spiritual dimensionin the pedagogy, which sidelines the doing of gender. Fourthly, theteachers contributed to the decoding of gender through the consistency oftheir everyday actions.

This essay uses the concept of performativity to illustrate how identity change and the possibility to shape one’s identity, agency, are treated in Michael Ondaatje’s The English Patient. Originally a theory introduced by queer theorist Judith Butler, performativity explains how a sense of identity stems not from innate qualities but from behaviour, or stylized acts, that is regulated by the norms of society. These acts are not the effect but the cause of a sense of identity. Butler argues that since identity is shaped through interplay between the individual and society, it can be actively re-shaped, and that there thus is a possibility for the individual to achieve agency. As other theorists have pointed out, there are great difficulties and dangers in trying to subvert one’s identity in undesired directions. Some writers even question the suggestion that active identity change is at all possible. These theoretical ideas are fruitfully illuminating when reading The English Patient, where identities are shaped and re-shaped through performative patterns. By looking at the main characters of the novel, it becomes clear that while identity change is possible, most characters are not in control of these changes. Only characters that try to re-shape uncontroversial aspects of identity manage to achieve agency. This paper shows that not only does the text point to the dangers of trying to subvert controversial aspects of one’s identity. It also points to the difficulties of disentangling oneself from the societal mechanisms that one tries to oppose, and hence to the multilayered difficulties of achieving agency. While identities in The English Patient are not fixed but change, identity change only rarely entails agency.

Sarah Kane’s first play Blasted (1995) has often been read in a normative and biographical way by critics, authors and previous researchers. This essay makes a supplementary close reading of Blasted from gender and genealogical perspectives and utilizes theoretical works by Judith Butler, Luce Irigaray and Michel Foucault. My study makes clear that the characters different positions in language and talk create and maintain a power imbalance between them. Efforts to change and develop one’s individual position in language and talk are being made throughout the play since it is the only way to bring about a change in the social power structure. A fact that in turn also subsequently punishes those efforts. By analyzing the tools of representation, Kane points out a direct link between a violent power imbalance in a couples relationship and the violence of a war zone. In Blasted, it is revealed how violence in a private situation is mirrored in a situation of public violence and how the public violence, in turn, crawls back to the private zone and there repeats itself. By forcing one of the main characters to regress back to the infancy of language and from there alter the ability to act within the framework of human interrelations, Kane demonstrates how a change in social structures can be made, and as is shown in this essay, this indicates that a knowledge of how the social structures are being maintained and how they in turn can be disarranged, is what is required to create an opportunity for change.

Applying a human rights perspective on plurilingualism as a national as well as a transnational concern, with a focus on the interaction taking place in foreign language teaching and learning practices at a Swedish Special Needs School for pupils with deafness or impaired hearing, the overall aim of this study is to describe and discuss this interaction in performative terms, i.e. in terms of what is said by whom, to whom, why, and with what consequences. Although extensive research has already been carried out within the field of plurilingualism, for example from linguistic, sociological and political points of departure, research on plurilingualism with regard to foreign language teaching and learning interaction in Swedish sign language contexts has been largely missing. The ambition of this work, therefore, is to add to the diversity of research on plurilingualism. It is also hoped that this work will contribute to the debate in educational politics concerning a human rights perspective on plurilingualism, especially with regard to modern European languages as a transnational issue. Methodologically, an ethnographic approach has been employed to document, by means of two video cameras in combination with field notes, the practices of communication emerging from teacherstudent interaction. Using notions from Conversational Analysis and alongside established conventions of sign language transcription, a model of transcription was designed for the specific purpose of describing, in detail, the plurilingual interaction where Swedish sign language is used as a mediating tool. Three lessons in English and four lessons – or lesson extracts – in Spanish, at secondary level in a Special Needs School for pupils with deafness or impaired hearing, have been documented and analysed. The analyses were carried out in two different steps, one describing and one discussing the results of the empirical investigation. The institutionally formalised interaction observed appears to have contributed to the heavy dominance of the teacher, and of the IRE sequence used during the lessons, to a much greater extent than students’ deafness or impaired hearing. Although the aims and objectives of the curricular texts intended for these students, as well as for hearing ones, are expressed in communicative terms – for example, learning to read texts of relatively high complexity, or developing writing skills for communication across linguistic boundaries – almost all the lessons that were investigated concerned the translation of isolated words into sign language, often taken out of their English or Spanish context. Nonetheless, the students took part in the classroom interaction when protesting, joking, asking questions and helping each other. Thus, the teacher dominance noted does not imply suppression, but rather a tendency on the part of the teacher to underestimate the students, as well as reflecting a selective tradition within foreign language teaching and learning practices in a general Swedish school context. However, when viewed from a human rights perspective on future plurilingual European citizens, using their language skills to reach out into the world for mutual understanding, the students involved in the language teaching and learning interaction observed in this study may hardly be expected to reach out across linguistic boundaries, at least not as a result of the language education they have experienced.

Violence is put in a specific context when the police are the perpetrator of violence rendering violence possibly legitimate through sovereignty. The possibility of legitimization of police violence raises important questions of how such violence is legitimized and how resistance is conceived of and defined. I have interviewed seven people in Sweden from different backgrounds, all of whom share the experience of having been subjugated to police violence, including threats, harassments and physical violence.This paper analyzes the performativity of police violence through the relations between police violence, power, sovereignty, subjectstatus and resistance, in order to understand how police violence is being legitimized and to understand its consequenses with respect to those subjugated to it. I’ve also analyzed if this violence is being politicized and, in that case, how politicization is made possible. Performativity implies an understanding where those relations aswell as understandings of it are framing which actions are made possible and rendered real while those very actions themselves also animates those understandings. Those framings are to be understood as neither unambiguous nor ever-lasting.In order to analyze power relations considerate of different backgrounds and experiences where the relationship between the police and those who are subjected to police violence aren’t formulated in political terms I’ve chosen to analyze power relations through subjectstatus and sovereignty. Subjectstatus signifies to which extent we are acknowledged as subjects and thus granted raison d’être through such status. Sovereignty is understood as the power structure giving meaning to the police actions of violence. Thus, I am not analyzing structures of power or identity such as class and gender. Instead I analyze to what extent we are acknowledged as subjects through the concept of subjectstatus where for instance gender and class may be included.The perception of yourself through others is of significance for the risk of being subjected to police violence where the very experience of being violated carry consequences for how we are perceived. Legitimized police violence in itself denies victimstatus to those being violated, thus explaining why the victims of police violence are seldom seen as subjugated to violence. The possibility of police violence being rendered legitimate are materialized through sovereignty where police violence can be understood as a way of outlining the boundaries through which sovereignty acknowledges some subjects the freedom from violence in ambiguous ways.A subject wielding resistance can be conceived of as being in a subject-position, rendering police violence legitimate. The very acts of police violence carry the power to define what is to be understood as resistance. Such subject-positions are advantageous to the police since they entail the possibility of rendering police violence legitimate when someone who is violated by the police can be construed as wielding resistance after the violations. Thus police violence and sovereignty entail their own prerequisites for being rendered real. When the framings of police violence are being materialized through that very violence they can be understood as hegemonic, making police violence hard to politicize. / <p>Masteruppsats i genusvetenskap</p>

Once known only as Bodybuilding and Women’s Bodybuilding, the sport has grown to include multiple competition categories that both limit and expand opportunities for female bodybuilders. While the creation of additional categories, such as Fitness, Figure, Bikini, and Physique, appears to make the sport more inclusive to more variations and interpretation of the feminine, muscular physique, it also creates more in-between spaces. This auto ethnographic research explores the ways that multiple female competition categories within the sport of Bodybuilding define, reinforce, and complicate the gendered experiences of female physique athletes, by bringing freak theory into conversation with body categories.

Abstract: This ethnographic study compares and contrasts performative masculinities of the overwhelmingly male heavy metal (HM) and hardcore (HC) subcultures. Conclusions derived from this research indicate the following: identities associated with HM and HC conflate masculinity with working-classness, HM and HC identities (and thus masculinities) are merging at present; participation in HM and HC enclaves can serve to symbolically marginalize constituents, and this symbolic marginalization can result in repercussions in the lived world outside of subculture; the hegemonic masculinity of HM and HC subcultures is subsidiary hegemonic masculinity, meaning that it supports the male-dominated structure of mainstream culture without empowering HM and HC males in an extra-subcultural sense; and that despite these negative ramifications, HM and HC participants still find the shared identities and community interaction of these enclaves to be empowering. Keywords: heavy metal, hardcore, subculture, masculinity, performativity, gender, class, ideology, rock music, identity

After recognizing a lack of children’s voices in the debate about the children’s book Kivi och monsterhund and the gender-neutral pronoun hen that occurred in the beginning of the year of 2012, I decided to interview pre-school children about the same book. My purpose with the study was, using semi-structured group interviews, to examine how 6-year olds talked about the main character Kivi. With the help of Judith Butler’s theory of performativity, I have studied how the children constructed Kivi’s gender in their speech. I have looked at how they recall the appearance of Kivi to establish their gender, and detected insecurity when the normative gender attribute was questioned. I have also studied which pronouns the children used, and in which contexts they used them. I found that they mixed pronouns during the interviews, which I noted as a possible sign of gender insecurity or a consequence of grammatical immaturity. Lastly I looked at how the children spoke about Kivi in relation to activity and characteristics. My conclusion is that Swedish language as it is now makes it hard to speak about more than two genders, and therefore the word hen could be useful. The incapacity to speak about Kivi as neither a boy nor a girl, or maybe both, generates a need among the children to “decide” their “proper” gender. With hen comes the opportunity to speak beyond these language barriers, and therefore also make it a possible existence.