Thesis (M.A.)--Carleton University, 2001. / Includes bibliographical references (p. 266-270). Also available in electronic format on the Internet.

"Habilitationsschrift--Hamburg."

Litterär och historisk studie av Apostlagärningarna 10:1-48 som försöker svara på frågeställningarna: Hur presenterar Apg 10:1–48 inkluderingen av hedningar i den tidiga judiska Jesusrörelsen? Vilka problem övervinns och vilka aktörer driver igenom förändringen? Uppstatsen studerar både perikopen i sitt historiska sammanhang och genom att studera narrativet. För att närma sig texten och se vilka bibliska motiv det finns för att möjliggöra den etiskt pluralistiska religion kristendomen är idag. Uppsatsen studerar litteratur historiska länkar, judiska renhetsföreskrifter, geografiska platser för perikopen, de olika karaktärerna och narrativets struktur.

At the start of his premiership UK Prime Minister, Tony Blair, spoke of ensuring that Britain continues with its proud history of multiculturalism by developing programmes to further integrate communities and reduce tensions resulting from immigration. Initially this programme was successful and many hailed the drive of New Labour in its desire to ensure that Britain sold itself as a welcoming place to call home. However, this celebration of success has been called into question over the first two decades of the new millennium following the seemingly steady increase in terrorist attacks and foiled attacks – many of which have been linked to British-born actors or immigrants to Britain. Thus, this study will call into question the extent to which the UKs multiculturalist approach has hit a stumbling block, positing that it is the change in approach to counter-terrorism through its Prevent programme that has led it to unlearn’ lessons from Northern Ireland and actively ensured a backward step through alienating the very communities it is trying to engage. It will examine the extent to which this seemingly more suspicious and divisive government-led approach alienates rather than celebrates cultural diversity, creating an environment ripe for radicalisation, in direct contrast to its aim, using Critical Discourse Analysis to show that the government’s approach from 2005 to the present day become entrenched as a result of the ‘new narrative’ of the ‘new age of terrorism’ and that this has led to a development of an ‘us’ versus ‘them’ approach which is not taking into account the necessary holistic approach to counter-terrorism, instead alienating Muslim communities and creating a hostile environment made worse by the permeation of suspicion from the general public who have bought into the narrative following more than a decade of its telling.

Att komma som invandrare till Sverige kan säkert vara omvälvande på många olika sätt. De som kommer hit är alla egna individer och bär på sina alldeles egna historier. Integrationsprocessen i ett samhälle kan ske på många olika vis. I Karlskoga finns en egen modell som utgår enbart från kvinnor. Tanken är att på ett unikt sätt hjälpa dessa in i det nya samhället. Modellen består i ett så kallat Tehus som fungerar likt en mötesplats enbart för kvinnor. På Tehuset ges möjlighet till studier i det svenska språket och samhällsinformation. Platsen är även öppen för umgänge och andra aktiviteter. Planen med modellen är således att denna del av integration ska ske i en, för kvinnorna, trygg miljö. Vi har valt att undersöka just denna miljö.Med tanke på att Sverige är ett av världens mest jämställda länder, var vår tanke att ta reda på om Tehusets form av integration är korrekt eller möjligen exkluderande. Vi har undersökt om det finns ett behov av en mötesplats enbart för invandrarkvinnor, och om de besökande kvinnorna upplever det positivt att det inte finns män på mötesplatsen. Samt i fall de skulle besöka Tehuset även om mötesplatsen var öppen för båda könen.

This thesis engages with the biblical archive and its animals, asking what it means to read the Bible after Jacques Derrida’s “question of the animal”, that is, critical questions directed at the characterisations, representations and utilisations of animals past and present which deem animals distinctly different to humans in order to demarcate their inferiority. At the same time, it is a critical response to Derrida’s Bible. Derrida – arguably one of the most important and influential thinkers of the twentieth century – provides a significant philosophical contribution to the question of the animal. In animal studies, the Bible is treated as a foundational legacy for concepts of the “human” and is frequently held up to blame for a misplaced human hubris. Derrida too draws on the Bible in implicit and explicit ways to underpin his critique of human/animal distinctions. Building on Derrida’s work on animality, I provide close and critical interpretations of four crucial texts of the biblical archive. I argue that these biblical texts are caught up in irreducible tensions: on the one hand, these texts depict and describe how humans and animals alike abide as finite, fellow creatures under God as a justice to come which calls for a radical similitude and solidarity; on the other hand, animals are portrayed as objects that are mastered by humans to demonstrate God’s power over the living. God’s power thus resides in a double bind – it both displaces power from humans to show them as animals, and it simultaneously provides a model for human power over animal others. In the first chapter I explore the significance of Derrida’s motifs of nakedness and shame over nakedness for his critique of human/animal distinctions, arising from his reading of Genesis. Critically continuing Derrida’s play on myths of origin, I tackle the question of the first carnivorous man, Noah, in Genesis 9 in order to show how this text can both be read as a license to enact the sovereignty of man over animals, and, how this text radically resists such a reading in God’s covenant with all life, human and non-human. Following my exploration of myths of origin, the second chapter grapples with Derrida’s notion of a deconstructed subject through his emphasis on response and responsibility. Derrida puts forward the biblical response “here I am”, as the mark of vulnerability in every relation with the other. I explore what this responsible response might mean in the context of the Book of Daniel that portrays encounters between human, nonhuman animals and God. Developing Derrida’s injunction to follow the nonhuman other, I argue that the double context of Daniel conveys two distinct visions of the concept of the political as animal: one, in which a fantasy for a harmonious domestication and cohabitation amongst rulers and their human and animal subjects is fostered under the only true ruler, a benign God; and, a collapse of such a fantasy, where rulers – human and divine – are portrayed as carnivorous, ferocious creatures who turn their subjects from pets to prey. The third chapter follows this collapse to Derrida’s critique of the commandment “Thou shalt not kill” as a commandment relating only to humans and thus a detrimental Judeo-Christian legacy. Derrida draws on the story of Cain and Abel to discuss the way the killing of an animal leads to the killing of a brother. To explore questions of killability I, however, turn to the negotiations of such issues in Acts 10. In the animal vision of Acts 10, questions of clean/unclean animals are suspended and hospitality is apparently opened up between Jewish and non-Jewish Christians. I demonstrate that the universalism associated with this text refers to an exclusive human fellowship which evades the actual implications of the animal vision. Yet, I posit that there are again two ways of reading the animal vision. In the first reading the analogical resemblance set up between animals and Gentiles implies that Gentiles too become killable as “clean” and thus the animal vision allows for indiscriminate killability amongst the living in general. In the second reading the cleanness of all animals is in fact a radical redemption of animal life for fellowship, in the same way that Peter accepts the fellowship and hospitality of Gentiles. Ultimately, the category of the living and the dead draws humans and non-humans together into what I call “mortability”; that is, the capacity for death shared amongst the living in the suspension of judgement until Jesus returns. In the fourth chapter, I follow up on the suspension of judgement by analysing Derrida’s thinking of sovereignty and animality in relation to Revelation 17. Crucially, Derrida’s logic of sovereignty includes Christ as lamb, in his logos or reason of the strongest, despite its ostensible weakness as a diminutive animal. I explore this further by turning to the scene of Revelation 17 in which the Lamb is at war with the Beast and the woman riding it. Developing Derrida’s allusions to sexual difference as it relates to the question of the animal, I explore how Revelation 17 denigrates both animals and women by characterising them as the figure of evil: Rome. The logic of the animal representations sets up the divine as the good on the side of the weak in the figure of the suffering Lamb. But as the Lamb becomes a beast-like indivisible sovereignty that asserts its reason of the strongest, the figures of “evil” become the vulnerable weak victims – the animal others. Another image of Rome emerges, then, as a deconstructed sovereignty in the subjects that stand as powerless figures in the political order, namely the animals of the Roman arenas and the prostitutes of the Roman Empire. The four texts I examine abide in the ambiguous tensions of an archive that can in the end neither be presented as animal-friendly nor as straightforwardly anthropocentric. The biblical archive is a complex compendium fraught with tensions that can, with its animals, only be held in abeyance. There can be no final “ownership” proclaimed of this archive and its animals, nor can any interpretive act dis-suspend them from such an ambivalent state. These very different texts do, however, provide the material and momentum to show central and crucial instances of how the biblical archive characterises its humans, animals and gods. My analysis reveals that the very same spaces in which these characterisations might be fixed as detrimental to animal life, are where the possibilities of seeing animals radically otherwise lie.

In this essay I explore how early African-American gospel music can be interpreted from a theological liberation perspective. To highlight the most important parts of liberation theology, I take help from Gustavo Gutiérrez' A Theology of Liberation: History, Politics and Salvation, and James H. Cone's Speaking the truth: ecumenism, liberation and black theology. Both of these are representative in respective area. Gutiérrez within Latin-American liberation theology, and Cone within African-American liberation theology. To explain the background and theology of gospel I mainly use the works Holiness and Worldliness: Theologies of Black Gospel Music in the Sanctified Church by Awet Andemicael and Black Gospel Music and Black Theology by Louis-Charles Harvey. I then exemplify the theology of gospel by presenting and analyzing a selection of popular gospel lyrics, with a liberation theme. This selection includes "Nobody Knows the Trouble I've Seen", "Oh Mary Don't You Weep", "Take My Hand, Precious Lord" and "Through It All". An expression of a spiritual liberation through Jesus is found in these gospel lyrics, while an expression of political liberation is found only in the shadow of the spiritual. This I problematize, and aim some criticism towards Cone and Harvey. They argue that in African-American and gospel theology, Jesus gives strength for the weak, so that they may be able to fight for their own liberation. I then conclude that gospel cannot be understood as a complete expression of liberation theology, but as a part of it. Even as a part of the liberation process. Meaning that in the process where the African-American Christian seek God, she finds the Holy Spirit who guides her to gospel music. Through gospel the African-American can express her emotions and thereby grow closer to Jesus, who provides her with strength. This leads to the liberation of the African-American Christian.

This paper addresses a design exploration focusing on interactive jewellery and wearable computing that could affect sexual harassment in social contexts in everyday life. Drawing on a design inquiry study that lead to the creation of an interactive and digital necklace named Sunshine, which is a personal alarm connected to an emergency center, this paper focuses on how a piece of digital jewellery can contribute to women’s empowerment in relation to sexual harassment. The functionality of Sunshine is based on a device that will be activated when the user presses a button on the necklace and an alert with the location of the user will be sent to an alarm center. The users press the button when in danger or exposed to violence and/or abuse. This study so forth addresses a design exploration of a piece of jewellery that can be seen as a symbol for women’s safety, unity and equality. The combination of digital technology and fashion design demonstrate that people can be brought together and especially be empowering in social contexts where sexual harassment might be a part of women’s everyday life. / <p>Självständigt Examensarbete (Forskningsartikel)</p>

Taking as motivation Chantal Mouffe’s critique of Habermasian deliberative democracy, this thesis sets out to evaluate her conception of democracy — agonistic pluralism — in relation the deliberative approach of Rainer Forst. The evaluation was performed with the aid of a specific conceptualization of legitimacy as to its function, source, and connection to democracy. The evaluation found that the Forstian model of democracy was more aligned to the thesis’ concept of legitimacy. However, the evaluation also found that aspects of Mouffe’s democratic theory was not at such odds with the deliberative approach as it would have you believe.

This essay is an attempt to provide an initial phenomenological reading of Saint Paul's notion of dunamis. Throughout his letters a thematic of dunamis is mentioned over forty times – often in close proximity to other central motifs of the Pauline message and not least to God. Although there has been a resurgence of philosophical interest in reading Paul for the last twenty years, a phenomenological thematic of dunamis hasn't been developed. Giorgio Agamben and Alain Badiou (among others) has both provided an analysis of dunamis: but for both mostly along the key of the messianic and prominently related to the political sphere. Following Martin Heideggers phenomenological reading and re-interpretation of the Aristotelean notion of dunamis in the thematic of a twofold disclosing of being I attempt to show how Paul's dunamis, through a praxis of kenotic self-emptying, manages to transform his weakness into strenght. By providing a space for the Sacred to enter and incarnate – and not least the Other – Paul's oppenes shows an ontological receptivity for change which is at the heart of the Aristotelean metaphysical framework. Thus a first attempt is made.