Pleasure experienced in an unpleasant film genre, like horror, has prompted numerous discussions in film studies. Noted scholars like Carol J. Clover and Noël Carroll have rationalized spectatorial enjoyment of a genre that capitalizes on human anxieties and complicates cultural categories. Clover admits that horror initially satisfies sadistic tendencies in young male viewers but then pushes them to cross gender lines and identify with the strong female heroine who defeats the film's threat. Carroll provides a basic explanation, citing spectators' cognitive curiosity as the source of pleasure. Both scholars are right to consider emotional, psychological, and cognitive experiences felt by viewers, but the main objective of this thesis moves beyond one particular demographic and considers how spectatorial experiences can differ radically but still offer pleasure. This work involves a methodology, Theory of Mind (ToM), that addresses the basic yet complex issues that inform spectatorial interactions with the horror film. Clover, Carroll, and others agree that viewers realize violations to cultural conventions occur in horror. Therefore, these anticipations, anxieties, curiosities, and tendencies of the spectator exist before and after a film rather than taking place within the two hours of watching its narrative. ToM is a cognitive ability that allows individuals to predict and make sense of others' behavior and underlying mental states and is a hardwired faculty that undergoes constant conditioning to ensure individuals can better interact with their environments, whether real or fictional. With horror, expectations are challenged, since spectators are forced to renegotiate cultural knowledge, as horror does not adhere to convention. Horror exercises ToM intensely, but as this project proves, it is a pleasurable workout. Ridley Scott's 1979 sci-fi horror film, Alien, is this work's case study, because it falls into the horror genre and challenges a few culturally-imposed binaries that are entangled in the film, including human/android and masculine/feminine. As this thesis shows, these entanglements demonstrate how ToM is both biological/cultural and is not categorized as a programmed mechanism in humans. With these enmeshed binaries, this study argues that Alien involves posthumanism, because it rejects traditional categories of identification and information and embodies fluidity. This works for ToM, since it is an ever-developing and conditioned process of observing and anticipating behavior. ToM is also posthuman, because information does not remain stagnant but is challenged or modified constantly in pleasurable ways. By witnessing the contradictions and complications of cultural categories through Alien's characters, spectators can learn to observe the flux of identity outside the film's narrative, too. Because this learning process is in constant motion, this thesis points out how horror's stimulation and development of it are enjoyable.

When a disaster the magnitude of the Deepwater Horizon blowout and oil spill takes place, is it natural for the news media stories, investigative reports, and public deliberation to focus almost exclusively on finding the person or group responsible for such a horrendous scene. Rhetorically speaking, the discourse surrounding the event can be characterized as a reductive form of praise and blame rhetoric (epideixis). However, these efforts, while well-intentioned, are troublesome because searches for the one technical cause and the sole personal culpability are thwarted by the sheer complexity of the ecological, technological, scientific, institutional, and communicative network required for such a disaster to take place. Thus, to demonstrate the insufficiency of extant models of disaster in a variety of fields, which tend to privilege human-centered approaches, Dead Man's Switch: Disaster Rhetorics in a Posthuman Age explores the ontology, technical documentation, and rhetorical theory of disasters through a posthuman lens. To find a more critical approach to understanding the nature of disasters in the twenty-first century, I ask the following questions: How do rhetoricians and technical communicators account more fully for the human and nonhuman forces at work in the precipitation of disaster? How do rhetoricians and technical communicators find an approach to ecological catastrophe that goes beyond the mere "environmentalist rhetoric" characterizing the public response? Through the application of several posthumanist theories, my project develops an approach to disaster that complicates traditional ways of approaching causality and blame. I use accident reports, news media stories, and popular literature as data for this project. By examining these texts, my project has broad implications for technical communication, rhetorical theory, and philosophy of rhetoric.

Genom denna studie ville jag utforska den agens som uppstår i mötet mellan barnen och den pedagogiska dokumentationen samt hur posthumanistiskt inspirerade analyser av re-visittillfällen kan bidra med förståelse för de yngsta barnens möjlighet till kommunikation och meningsskapande genom den pedagogiska dokumentationen. Jag observerade och filmade re-visittillfällen där en grupp yngre barn möter dokumentation för att få syn på vad som sätts igång i detta möte. Genom att använda en posthumanistisk ansats betraktas inte bara människor, utan också ickemänniskor som agentiska, de gör och genererar förändring (Lenz Taguchi, 2012:12). Tänkande, intention och kommunikation brukar betraktas som mänskliga förehavanden men i ett posthumanistiskt perspektiv betraktas det som fenomen som uppstår i intra-agerande mellan olika agenter. Analyser av filmsekvenserna gjordes utifrån Barads (2007) diffraktionsbegrepp och Lenz Taguchis (2012) begrepp om cirkulära och horisontella rörelser vilka beskriver processerna i användandet av pedagogisk dokumentation. Uppsatsen belyser några av de möjligheter och tillblivelser som perspektivet bidrog med och att den pedagogiska dokumentationens agens kan ses som något som uppstår i agenternas möten. De mänskliga och ickemänskliga agenterna samhandlade och kommunicerade, en kommunikation som kan ses som samtidig, överlappande och utvidgande. Den pedagogiska dokumentationen och de övriga agenterna gör något, de aktiverade agerande och artikulerade förslag. Ur det uppstod nytt agerande, ny kommunikation och nytt meningsskapande

Sammanfattning Genom denna studie ville jag utforska den agens som uppstår i mötet mellan barnen och den pedagogiska dokumentationen samt hur posthumanistiskt inspirerade analyser av re-visittillfällen kan bidra med förståelse för de yngsta barnens möjlighet till kommunikation och meningsskapande genom den pedagogiska dokumentationen. Jag observerade och filmade re-visittillfällen där en grupp yngre barn möter dokumentation för att få syn på vad som sätts igång i detta möte. Genom att använda en posthumanistisk ansats betraktas inte bara människor, utan också ickemänniskor som agentiska, de gör och genererar förändring (Lenz Taguchi, 2012:12). Tänkande, intention och kommunikation brukar betraktas som mänskliga förehavanden men i ett posthumanistiskt perspektiv betraktas det som fenomen som uppstår i intra-agerande mellan olika agenter. Analyser av filmsekvenserna gjordes utifrån Barads (2007) diffraktionsbegrepp och Lenz Taguchis (2012) begrepp om cirkulära och horisontella rörelser vilka beskriver processerna i användandet av pedagogisk dokumentation. Uppsatsen belyser några av de möjligheter och tillblivelser som perspektivet bidrog med och att den pedagogiska dokumentationens agens kan ses som något som uppstår i agenternas möten. De mänskliga och ickemänskliga agenterna samhandlade och kommunicerade, en kommunikation som kan ses som samtidig, överlappande och utvidgande. Den pedagogiska dokumentationen och de övriga agenterna gör något, de aktiverade agerande och artikulerade förslag. Ur det uppstod nytt agerande, ny kommunikation och nytt meningsskapande.

My aim with this thesis is to use a combination of posthumanist and feminist materialist perspectives in analysing the anime film Spirited Away (2001). The analysis is organised as follows: the first chapter of the analysis deals with the notions of agency and magic. Magic is an omnipresent force in the bathhouse depicted in the film; a force that creates connections between different bodies and that also bridges the language-matter divide. By making inanimate matter come alive, magic points to a conception of life as relations rather than as possession. However, magic also reveals the hierarchies at work, as not all animate(d) beings have the capacity or the right to use it. The first chapter is followed by three chapters focused on eating, understood as a kind of intra-action between different kinds of matter. Food is, as I will show, important in the negotiations of boundaries and agency. The question of who is eating who also reveals some of the power relationships that govern the posthuman world depicted in the film. In the two last chapters of the analysis I will, so to speak, push the food plate aside in favour of other matters. The fifth chapter will focus on the physical transformations taking place in the film and how these can be interpreted from a posthumanist and materialist perspective. I will look at embodiments, using a narratologically influenced perspective that allows for corporeal ambiguities and shuns notions of bodies as fixed and clearly separate from other bodies. The discussion will continue in the final chapter where I use 'monster theory' to further examine the leakages between categories. The monstrous corresponds not necessarily to widely-spread images of monsters (known from various cultural masterplots) or to bodies that distinctly disobey the norms. The morphological diversity exhibited by the characters in the film reveals the impossibility of clearly demarcating categories and boundaries between Self and Other.

Syftet med studien är att undersöka hur flickor och pojkar framträder i förskolans pedagogiska dokumentation samt hur dessa könspositioner kan framträda på andra sätt när bilderna samläses med posthumanistiska teorier och begrepp. Diskursiva och diffraktiva analyser har genomförts på några förskolors pedagogiska dokumentationer utifrån frågeställningar om vilka diskurser om kön som materialiseras i bildmaterialet samt hur posthumanistiska begrepp kan bidra till en annan förståelse för barnens könspositionering. I linje med tidigare forskning på området visar studien att aktivitet och lärande ges en mer framträdande roll i den pedagogiska dokumentationen än omsorg och lek. Posthumanistiska teoribildningar möjliggör dock läsningar där fokus skiftar från flickors och pojkars olika sätt att positionera sig/positioneras som exempelvis maskulint aktiva eller feminint omsorgsfulla till att handla om de intra-aktioner som uppstår mellan barn, material och diskurser. Sådana läsningar öppnar för tillblivelser där individer omfattar både manliga och kvinnliga positioner, där kön följaktligen blir ointressant som kategoriseringsprincip.

<p>This dissertation develops a "politics of ambiguity" through case studies of affect in contemporary works by European, American and Singaporean composers. While studies of intercultural music have focused on narratives of power relations (e.g. orientalism, postcolonial ambivalence), a new method of interpretation can be based on the affective ambiguity that arises from intercultural encounters, indicating a less than totalitarian power and thus forming a basis for political struggle. The focus is on three pieces of music by American-born John Sharpley, Belgium-born Robert Casteels, and Singaporean Joyce Koh, who hail from across the globe and incorporate Asian musics, arts, and philosophies into a variety of modernist, neo-romantic, and postmodern musical idioms. Modalities of ambiguity include: perceptual focus on musicalized Chinese calligraphy strokes, versus perceptual liminality arising from modernist technique; the musical embodiment of Buddhist disembodiment; and, ambiguous relationality of intercultural sounds. Liminality, disembodiment, and relationality mark the cessation of identity politics in favor of a form of cultural hermeneutics that pays heed to the complex interaction between society, sonic media and the neurophysiology of listening.</p> / Dissertation

I denna uppsats jämförs i ett posthumanistiskt perspektiv två svenska romaner som diskuterar medvetandets natur och gränserna för det mänskliga. I En levande själ från 1980 av Per Christian (PC) Jersild (f. 1935) konfronteras vi med djur som utsätts för plågsamma djurförsök och med uppfödandet och programmerandet av aborterade mänskliga fosterhjärnor som skall utnyttjas som biodatorer i intelligenta maskiner. I Sången ur det kinesiska rummet från 2014 av Sam Ghazi (f. 1967) står i stället möjligheten till en rent artificiell intelligens i fokus. De två böckernas frågeställningar kring vad som händer i en framtid när robotar blir alltmer människolika och människor alltmer robotlika är idag högaktuella. Inte minst gäller det frågan om gränserna för det mänskliga och behovet av en etik som inkluderar andra väsen med ett medvetande. Sammanfattningsvis visar analysen i uppsatsen att en posthumanistisk läsning möjliggör nya och givande tolkningsmöjligheter av bägge verken trots att endast Sången ur det kinesiska rummet beskriver sin posthumana verklighet i ett posthumanistiskt perspektiv medan En levande själ i huvudsak har en mänsklig utgångspunkt för sin gestaltning av Ypsilon. I ett posthumanistiskt perspektiv framträder också romanernas karaktär av moraliska tankeexperiment tydligt.

Yoga has been an organizing feature of community for thousands of years, shaping and being shaped by the bodies, minds, spiritual worlds and social relationships of its practitioners. Over the course of the last century, it has become a global celebrity-endorsed exemplification of how to live a “good” life and been transformed from the “exotic,” grotesque menageries of ascetic “sinister yogis” and itinerant sages, to define the fit, graceful, radiant, blissful personages of American supermodels and pop-stars. Yoga has moved from the ashrams of India to gyms, church basements and specialized studios of Europe, North America and Australia, and from these centers of economic and political power, to “exotic” peripheries through the global and bodily movements of world-travelers seeking self-discovery, health, spiritual transformation, and connection with the natural world in “less developed” locales. This dissertation explores and documents the movement of yoga-motivated travelers to tourism locales with no historical connection to yoga, asking questions about 1) how yoga travelers’ activities fit in larger contexts of ethical tourism and cross-cultural consumption as yoga travels across borders, 2) the role yoga plays in practitioners’ lives, shaping health, gender, sexuality, and lifestyle, 3) outcomes of sustained contemporary yoga practice on the bodies of practitioners, including affective transformation through bodily manipulation, the expansion of sensual awareness through breath, auditory techniques, meditation and mind-body synthesis, 4) how these bodily transformations are interpreted and applied to contemporary life through syncretic adaptations of yoga ethics from classical yoga texts with contemporary ethical discourses of environmentalism and consumer choice, and 5) how yoga tourists and the owners of yoga tourism locales view, interact with, and mobilize “foreign” locals and locales through sustainable development narratives and ideas of global community and universal spirituality. I apply contemporary anthropological agendas to yoga as a means to explore different ways of being alive, paying particular attention to how sensual potentials are brought to conscious experience by relational engagement with nature and culture, thus shaping our affective worlds. This dissertation charts intimate bodily and cross-cultural human relationships played out through yoga. It considers the spiritual, economic, political and cultural impacts of globalized yoga and yoga tourism. Close attention is paid to the experiential aspects of yoga and how yoga enlivens and relates to larger social narratives of nature sanctity under contemporary stresses of neoliberalism, including how yoga practitioners engage with the ethics of yoga and consumption to make lifestyle choices that align with political and economic concerns for viable ecological, social and cultural futures. / Graduate

Riverine avulsion is a radical divergence of a riverbed. In this dissertation, I take this movement as a paradigm for understanding the features of radical change. I develop a model for understanding the essential features of radical change. I argue that the main features involved in avulsion are tension, abandonment, and material freedom. In my analysis, tension provides the catalyst for change, such that it pressurizes complex systems of organization to the point of collapse. I use Catherine Malabou's work on denegation to understand the collapse of a system as an accident; the rupture of a system entails that it is no longer affirmed nor negated, it is abandoned by the process of becoming. Utilizing the work of Deleuze, I present the moment of rupture itself as the moment where materiality breaks free from the restrictions of an organizing system to becoming consolidated into countless new forms of organization. In my analysis of the ontology of avulsion, I employ a new materialist process of becoming to capture the complex networks of relations involved in the moment of creation. I challenge these Deleuzean and new materialist fields of philosophy over their affinity for affirmation by integrating accidental abandonment. Finally, I propose a potentiality for the freedom of materiality as a transcendental property of all systems of organization, thereby revealing their precarious continuity and inevitable abandonment.