Uppsatsen utgår ifrån Sara Ahmeds bok “Queer Phenomenology – Orientations, Objects, Others”. I uppsatsen diskuteras  hur vi människor upplever världen genom föremålen som omger oss och hur detta orienterar oss på olika sätt. På samma sätt som vissa förmål orienterar oss och gör att vi följer normativa linjer så kan andra föremål, eller föremål i andra situationer bryta dessa linjer och desorintera oss. Konst skulle kunna ses som sådana desorienteringsföremål som låter oss se världen på nya sätt. Uppsatsen innehåller också en diskusion kring induktiva resonemang i realtion till att förstå och navigera sig i välden och hur dessa år både nödvändiga och otillräckliga.

This thesis represents an investigation into the strategies used by postsocialist Chinese male subjects to articulate their subjecthood and desires. The introduction explains the choice for using a phenomenological methodological approach in addressing the issue and also lays out the simultaneous goal of this thesis to inaugurate a move away from political allegorical interpretations as the standard for reading contemporary Chinese literature. The body chapters look at two different contemporary Chinese works to help illuminate the arrival of the Chinese subject. Using Wang Xiaobo's novella "Sentiments Like Water" and the anonymously penned online novel Beijing Story as case studies, this thesis investigates the ways alternative epistemologies and uses of history can undo pathological understandings of queerness and create new identities for Chinese subjects. The thesis concludes with thinking about the direction of the queer and Chinese studies fields and offers future points of investigation.

This essay shows how six adults in the age between 26 and 71 relate to alcohol and talk about the importance of alcohol in their early lives, when they grew up and now in their everyday life. Three men and three women participates in this study. I used the snowball method and Facebook to get in touch with people to interview. A short summary and presentation was sent out through e-mail to a total amount of ten persons. There are six persons participating in this study, four through physically recorded interviews and two answered the interview questions through e-mail. Theoretical perspectives in this essay is Peter L. Berger and Thomas Luckmanns phenomenology and Sara Ahmeds queer phenomenology. The aim for this study was partly to show how these persons, as individual subjects, relate to alcohol but also how they look at the body’s orientation in spaces where alcohol is present such as the pub. Both the women and the men in this study talked about the pub as a place where it’s expensive and that the supply is limited. The pub was not described as a particularly nice place. The women in this study talked about that they don’t feel a need to drink alcohol or to become drunk. The men in this study primarily see alcohol as a type of meal drink. When it comes to differences between masculinity and femininity associated with alcohol this essay shows that the women in this study often think about the risks of drinking too much or they look down on others drinking too much. The men in this study showed awareness of the fact that women are more likely to be corrected if they drink too much and that it’s easier for men to become drunk without anyone correcting them.

This thesis investigates women's feelings on being subjected to piropos (catcalling) in their everyday lives. Through interviews with four Cuban women living in Havana, I analyse women's experiences of piropos through a phenomenological lens and through speech theory, investigating how norms surrounding sexualities and gender are materialised in and between language, bodies and spaces. I also investigate which acts of resistance and defence mechanisms my interviewees employ in order to cope with piropos. The first part of the analysis investigates the gendered dimensions of piropos, discussing how it constitutes gendered subject positions while enforcing gender inequality. My interviewees describe how being subjected to piropos makes them feel more feminine and links the occurrence of piropos directly to their self-esteem. They also describe how the occurrence of piropos conditions their possibility to move freely around the city. In the second part of the analysis I look at piropos as a heterosexual game in which different rules apply depending on gender. Lastly, this thesis focuses on my interviewees' accounts of resistance by analysing silence as well as verbal responses to piropos as a way of breaking the rules of the heterosexual game.

How do the media react in the face of a violent phenomenon involving actors both embraced and marginalized by society? One such phenomena – the McArthur murders – encapsulates this dynamic considering how the media explained the murders to their audiences. McArthur, a white LGBTQ+ man, murdered over a seven-year period specifically targeting male victims of South Asian or Middle Eastern descent associated with the LGBTQ+ community and geographic area in Toronto, Canada. The victims embodied a variety of marginalized identities including race, ethnicity, sexual orientation, immigration status and houselessness. It is in this context that this qualitative study finds itself, investigating media coverage of the McArthur murders in two mediums/Canadian outlets. The Toronto Star, Canada’s largest daily newspaper representing newspaper coverage, and a podcast produced by the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation (CBC), Uncover: The Village representing podcast (or audio) media. Considering the context of the McArthur murders and the identities of the actors involved, the study is focused on how normativity and deviancy are constructed through mediatized eyes (or frames). Through a blend of deductive and inductive framing analysis relying on a queer phenomenologically-inspired theoretical framework, the study’s aim is threefold: (1) to uncover what frames are most prevalent across both outlets, (2) to understand, using deductively applied frames, how both outlets construct the events of the McArthur murders and, (3) to understand the interplay between mediatized reification or mitigation of normativity. The analysis found that both newspaper and podcast were most concerned with attributing responsibility in their coverage, which introduced the queer phenomenological understanding of institutions into the analysis, a pattern which continued throughout each deductively applied frame. Moreover, connections to analogous sets of murders in 1970s Toronto broadened the implications of the study across time. Finally, the analysis showed that rather than solely reifying or mitigating normativity, both outlets’ coverage despite similarities and differences, are illustrative of normativity and deviancy’s ongoing orientation towards one another. The conflict between societally standard and aberrant is shown to be a constant over time, after death, and across contexts – a dynamic relationship which has significance for how media scholars might approach cross-medium analyses of complex phenomena in further research.

The aim of this paper is to understand how trans people who write and read fanfiction about gender euphoria create meaningful writing processes, contextualize community, and orientate themselves in the world by telling stories about gender euphoria and related emotional experiences. I have conducted interactive chat interviews with four study participants and have, as a way of using an autoethnographic research method, included my own narratives as part of the material. Thus, the material used in this study consists of transcripts of collective sensemaking and discussions about differences and similarities in the experiences that the study participants and I tell each other about. I have analyzed the material using queer phenomenology and affect theory. I have found that the study participants have both varied and similar experiences of finding representation, of translating their emotions into actions, and of (re)shaping what it is that they, as trans people, can do and what narratives they can tell and experience.

Denna studie undersöker relationen mellan hår, kön, kropp och rum. Specifikt undersöks hur relationen mellan maskulinitet och hår i form av skägg framträder på tre raksalonger i Stockholm våren 2019. Detta analyseras främst med Sara Ahmeds (2006) begrepp orienteringar och linjer, som beskriver hur vi kroppsligt erfar omvärlden. Judith Butlers (2007) performativa genus är också tolkningsgrundande. Intervjuer med en barberare och kund från var observerad raksalong, har synliggjort informanters strävan efter svåruppnåeliga maskulina ideal, som ett fylligt skägg. Studien berör även nutida historiebruk. Två av tre raksalongers miljö har bidragit till maskulina gestaltningar, orienterade mot nostalgisk känsla av brittisk herrklubb från förra sekelskiftet. Raksalongernas genuina kvalitetsupplevelse, har kontrasterats mot damsalongers sämre service och expertis. Två barberare och kunder eftersträvar dock känslomässig öppenhet, vilket kan sägas ta spjärn från stereotypa maskuliniteter. Detta har möjliggjort omorienteringar mot maskuliniteter med traditionellt sett mer mjuka, feminina värden. / This research examines the relation between hair, body and place. Specifically, it investigates how the relation between masculinity and hair such as beard takes shape in three different barbershops in Stockholm spring 2019. This is foremost being analysed with Sara Ahmed's (2006) use of orientations and lines, which describe how we bodily experience our surroundings. Judith Butler's (2007) gender performativity is also at the foundation of the analysis. Interviews with one barber and customer from each observed barbershop, has shed light on informants' strivings to reach elusive masculine ideals, such as a full beard. Two of the three barbershop milieus have contributed to masculine formations, orientated towards nostalgic sense of brittish men's club from the turn of last century. The barbershops' genuine luxury treatments have by some informants been contrastated against lady hair salons' poorer service and expertise. However, two barbers and customers seek emotional openness, which can be said to deviate from stereotypical masculinities. This has enabled reorientations towards masculinities with traditionally more soft, feminine values.

This dissertation concerns live action role-playing (larp). Larp may be described as improvised theater without an audience, as participants simultaneously embody both audience and actor in their constant interaction with one another.  Hence, larp can be seen as a participatory culture.  The study is based on participant observation, interviews and online ethnography in Denmark, Latvia, Sweden and Norway. The aim of the thesis is to analyze how bodies materialize, take and are given space in larps. At the heart of the study lie questions on how processes of embodiment are enacted before, during and after the game. Two central concepts - larp chronotope and matrix of interpretation – shape the analysis. The first denotes the specific timespace in which a larp takes place, e.g a Soviet military camp or a fantasy world. The second concept stands for a general matrix of norms that informs participants on how to enact their characters in the larp chronotope. The thesis shows that participants strive to act in ways that are intelligible according to the matrix of interpretation that reigns during the game days. In addition, although game and everyday matrixes of interpretations are always inseparable, while attending a larp the participant’s ordinary lives are temporarily allowed to fade into the background. Thus, larps are complex combinations of objects, spaces and bodies that are given new relations and new meanings. Furthermore, the thesis shows that larp embodiment is conditioned by normative ideas of what it means to be an intelligible live action role player. White male bodies are more likely to access the sphere of larp intelligibility than others, which is evident in many of the stories and made up worlds portrayed in the study. Yet, the collaborative narration of game worlds that take place before larps can include all sorts of bodies. Consequently, larps provide an opportunity for alternative forms of embodiment and experiences.

This thesis investigates representations of masculinities and the father figure in the Swedish painter Carl Larsson’s (1864-1919) self-portraits from 1895. The paintings are analysed through the concepts authority, a term closely connected to the father figure, and idyll, a term often used to describe Larsson’s art. Sara Ahmed’s theory to see beyond what is taken for granted, in Queer Phenomenology, is theoretical starting point for the thesis. The analytical method is adopted from Tamar Garb’s Bodies of Modernity. Figures and Flesh in Fin-de-Siécle France. The conclusion is that the masculinities in Larssons’s father figure are coherent with the paterfamilias in the late 1900s, consisting of the provider, the authority figure, and the husband/lover. Furthermore, that the idyll is constructed by those with the authority to construct it, and that the authority thereby is defined by the idyll it constructs. / Uppsatsen undersöker maskuliniteter genom bildanalyser av två självporträtt av Carl Larsson där han framställer sig som både far och konstnär. Bilderna har analyserats med hjälp av begreppen auktoritet, som traditionellt har varit sammankopplat med fadern, och idyll, som har blivit i det närmaste synonymt med Larssons konst. Sara Ahmeds queera fenomenologi har använts som teoretisk utgångspunkt för att undersöka det som kan ses som det förgivettaga, här formulerat som idyllen. Bildanalyserna har gjorts med utgångspunkt i Tamar Garbs metod för bildanalys i Bodies of Modernity. Figures and Flesh in Fin-de-Siécle France. Undersökningen visar att det i Larssons fadersgestalt går att utläsa samtliga aspekter av 1800-talets paterfamiliaskonstruktion, såsom den formuleras av Joseph A Kestner; familjeförsörjaren, auktoritetsfiguren och maken/älskaren. Undersökningen visar också att den idyllen konstrueras av den som har auktoritet att göra det och att auktoriteten därmed definieras av den idyll den konstruerar. Carl Larssons idyllkonstruktion är därigenom resultatet av ett utövande av den auktoritet han har i egenskap av man, make, far och konstnär.

The aim of following thesis is to demonstrate the potentials of reassessing camp into a question of method. While others have argued for the definition of camp to lie in: an aesthetic; a question of taste; the extravagant theatrical; the male gay sensibility; or as an expression of parody, this thesis suggests that camp is to be found in the performative act of readings. With emphasis on ‘decoding language’, ‘the signifier/signified’ and ‘the camp eye’ I will argue for the relevance of ‘camp as method’ and situate former stated in relation to Bhabha’s concept of ‘conversational art’; a deconstructional examination of values of aesthetic experiences set into dialogue. Demonstrating for such conceptualization three theoretical approaches and themes will be outlined. First, a historical overview of camp followed by a reassessment of camp into a method. Second, an examination of possible extensions to the concept of rereading strategies within camp, including theories on queer phenomenology; queer space and time; topias and non-places; theories of curatorial methods and its agencies. And last, I will do an analysis of Moyra Davey’s video Hemlock Forest and show how Davey’s use and reference towards Chantal Akerman can be read as camp and constitutes ‘camp as method’ according to suggested reassessment.