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I denna studie undersöker jag Carina Rydbergs skildring av "dålig" sexualitet. Jag gör en närläsning av Rydbergs roman Månaderna utan R. Läsningen utgår från Michel Foucaults och Jacques Derridas dekonstruktionsteorier samt från Judith Butlers genusteorier. Jag undersöker huruvida romanen kan läsas som gotisk, huruvida Rydberg kan sägas luckra upp gränsen mellan "god" och "dålig" sexualitet, samt huruvida hon skildrar sadomasochistiska kvinnor som subjekt. Jag kommer fram till att Rydberg kan sägas luckra upp gränsen mellan "god" och "dålig" sexualitet och att hon, genom att skildra sadomasochistiska kvinnor som subjekt, stör könade sexualitetsnormer. Häri ligger Rydbergs subversiva potential. Detta betraktar jag som en aspekt av den gotiska tradition som Månaderna utan R kan sägas tillhöra.

Uppsatsen undersöker skildringen av den kvinnliga samkönade sexualiteten i Agnes von Krusenstjernas romanserie Fröknarna von Pahlen. Den utgår från den queerteoretiska tanken att identiteter är uppbyggda på motsatser och att heterosexualitet behöver homosexualitet för att definiera sig själv. Således är homosexualitetens funktion att vara allt det som heterosexualiteten inte är. Det finns en diskrepans mellan samkönat begär och den homosexuella identiteten, och den homosexuella identitetens uppgift är att hålla den heterosexuella identiteten ren. Jag fokuserar den gräns som Krusenstjerna drar mellan lärarinnan Bell von Wendens homosexuella identitet och hennes elev Angela von Pahlens samkönade begär, samt hur Angelas sexuella identitet, trots hennes samkönade begär, hålls ren genom skildringen av Bells homosexuella identitet. Den gräns som dras mellan Bells homosexuella identitet och Angelas samkönade begär är emellertid inte rigid. Därför är det inte alltid tydligt när Angelas samkönade relationer till Bell, Stanny Landborg och Agda af Sauss går från att vara vänskapsrelationer till att bli kärleksrelationer. Jag anser att det är häri Krusenstjernas subversiva potential ligger.

This essay deals with non-normative gender expressions during childhood. I’m using narrative theory and methods to analyze autobiographical narratives. My questions are: What strategies does the non-normative person use to deal with his otherness? Using the methodological analysis tool ”turning point”, where are the turning points in the narratives? Are their any common turning points in the various narratives? Where is the responsibility placed in the narratives for that someone does not fit in by the adults/ staff at the school/kindergarten- on the non-normative person or at the surroundings? The experiences are interpreted through theories and concepts from queer theory and gender theory. The study reflects the importance of an anti-oppressive pedagogy in school.

This essay discusses the students’ thoughts about the teacher's response to their gender identity. The students discuss their right to have an intergender identity which means that they don’t identify themselves in the traditional sexes, man and woman, and the gender role each category has. They want to be called with a neutral pronoun and not be seen like boys or girls. To understand these students’ point of view I used queer theory and discourse analysis to see the differences between sex and gender. Judith Butler the most famous philosopher in the field of queer theory emphasizes that there is no differences between sex and gender roles and explains that sex and gender roles are neither made by nature nor have mystery sources. Instead they are created by historical, social and cultural processes. She declares that language and the names we give each other affect what identities the society think are normal or not. There are many different identities that can’t be identified or categorized in the traditional gender roles. We have to think beyond these categories and not see people in only two sexes/genders, woman and man. The Swedish schools have many values to work with and in these values it’s written that the teachers have to treat every student with respect and encourage them to grow and evolve. I investigate how the teachers react to the students’ transgender identities. The investigation is made with four different students who identify themselves as intergender. The study is based on interviews that took between forty and sixty minutes. The interviews were transcribed and written with spoken language. The main purpose of this essay is to investigate what the students thought about their teachers’ reaction. The conclusion of this essay is that the students think that the teachers have insufficient knowledge about the transgender identities. The students want the teachers to have more knowledge about transgender identities. That will make the teachers more comfortable in their behavior against students who identify themselves between the traditional sexes.

The purpose of this study is to explore how different discourses about risk linked to HIV prevention is likely to affect the decisions on the distribution of state funding for preventive activities aimed at 'men who have sex with men' (MSM). This by making qualitative interviews with principals that have an impact on this decision. Using a discourse analytic approach, based on both theoretical and methodological foundations, I investigate the discursive constructions of risk of HIV linked to certain groups and behaviors. MSM is found in the material placed into two different formations of groups, on one hand by the behavior on the other hand on the basis of identity. The identity position is organized discursively from a “victim” position while MSM provides an "operator" position. MSM is thus incompatible with the victim's position needed to be taken into account in the allocation of HIV prevention funds. On this basis I argue that the impact of heteronormativity, combined with an unwillingness to stigmatize, threatens to make HIV prevention ineffective when it is distributed on a different premise than epidemiological trends.

This thesis analyzes the coming out action of individuals through perception of political identity. Instead of considering coming out as an individual experience, it is discussed as a political action that effects the others around the individual. This political action is examined from the Queer Theory&rsquo / s perspective of subverting the gender norms. The coming out experience of lesbians, gays and bisexuals not only has an impact of their personal environment, but also effects their relation to the LGBT movement. The importance of coming out in LGBT movement is explained through the interviews with lesbians, gays and bisexuals. Where they place themselves politically in their socialization process is analyzed. LGBT movement&rsquo / s historical background is introduced and compared with the movement in Turkey. The issues originate from Turkish society&rsquo / s social structure is indicated through interviews.

In the last forty years, significant developments in neuroscience, psychology, and robotic technology have been cause for major trend changes in the philosophy of mind. One such shift has been the reallocation of focus from entirely brain-centered theories of mind to more embodied, embedded, and even extended answers to the questions, what are cognitive processes and where do we find such phenomena? Given that hypotheses such as Clark and Chalmers‘ (1998) Extended Mind or Hutto‘s (2006) Radical Enactivism, systematically undermine the organism-bound, internal, and static pictures of minds and allow instead for the distribution of cognitive processes among brains, bodies, and worlds, a worry that arises is that the very subject of cognitive science, the ‗cognizer‘ will be hopelessly opaque, its mind leaking out into the world all over the place, thereby making it impossible to rein in and properly study. A seemingly unrelated and yet parallel trend has also taken place in feminist theorizing about the body over the last forty years. Whereas feminism of the 1970s and early 1980s tended to view ‗the body‘ as the site and matter of biological sex, while gender was a more fluid and socially constituted mode of existence, more recent feminist theory has questioned the givenness of bodies themselves. In other words, rather than seeing gender categories as manifestations of the already given sexed body, thinkers such as Butler (2000) and Lorber (1992) argue that the very notion of a body is often a product of scientific inquiry, which is itself a product of the power structures aiming to maintain a rigid binary between feminine and masculine gender roles. If the world at large plays such a constitutive role in determining who we are, then this implies that the tools we use, the language we speak, and the power relationships in which we are enmeshed are components of what it means to be embodied in any genuine sense. For thinkers like Haraway (1988) the image of the cyborg is most fitting for this new understanding of embodied subjects, as the cyborg is a coupling of machine and human. Gender and even biological sex will always be a technologically hybridized ‗monster‘ consisting of matter, machine, and mind. The overall aim of my project is thus to bring the two concurrent developments in theorizing about embodied subjects into discourse. As the cyborg features largely in recent feminist thought about embodiment, so too has it been a prominent metaphor in philosophy of mind, ever since Clark (2003) claimed that we ought to think of our ‗selves‘ more appropriately as Natural-Born Cyborgs. I therefore focus on this imagery as I go on to make the argument that this distributed account of cognition as well as of sexual identity is more fruitful for making progress in understanding ‗the human‘ more generally. Likewise, I argue that bringing the discussion of sex and gender into the arena of an otherwise asexual philosophy of mind, will shed light on some important facets of embodiment that have been overlooked but that ought to be addressed if we are to have an adequate account of ‗the proper subject of cognitive science.‘ My chapters include 1) a survey of the discourse between science and philosophy of mind leading to these embodied and extended approaches, 2) a first attempt at defending the extended mind thesis, 3) a discussion of how even the supposed resolution to the objections raised against extended cognition fails to properly take into account just how problematic subjectivity is, regardless of its being defined entirely organismic or not, as organisms themselves are highly malleable and socially constituted, 4) an explanation concerning how the same problematization of embodied subjectivity is ongoing in feminist theory, especially considering the phenomenology of transgendered embodiment, intersex, and technologically mediated bodies, 5) further elaboration on technologically enhanced bodies, exposing what I see as a continuum between bodies modified by ‗hard‘ technologies, such as implants, prostheses or surgeries, and those modified by ‗soft‘ technologies, such as gender norms, the social gaze, and technologically mediated metacognition, and last, 6) an argument for the image of the cyborg to replace ‗organism‘ in cognitive science, along with the corollary argument that cyborgs ought to represent not just embodied minds, but should also be the metaphor in attempting to understand ‗embodiment‘ more generally, which must, at its roots, be underpinned by gender and sexual identity. I argue that the imagery is fitting for the proper study of cognitive subjects as well as sexed and gendered bodies, but moreover, that just as the cyborg suggests a blending and hybridizing of seemingly unrelated elements, so too should the two areas of inquiry, philosophy of mind and feminist theory, pay heed to one another‘s use of this imagery and themselves begin to be more integrative in their approaches.

What is queer? What is queer? What is queer theory? Where can it go from here? This thesis sets out to explore the origins and influences of queer theory before investigating the present and the future spaces (ie, bodies and settlements) it can potentially move into. Three distinct experiments of fieldwork and ethnographic filmmaking test the truths and potentialities of queer theory when relating to queer bodies and settlements. That is to say that each chapter balances a film and its supporting text by embracing the value and urgency of practice led research. The first chapter questions queer history and details the importance of emerging trans politics in the post-gender, leftist, avant-garde, queer activist and militant space of Bologna. Queer bodies, case one: transgender and transsexual perspectives. Settlements, case one: Bologna and Lido di Classe (Italy). The second chapter considers the interface between disability theory and queer theory with particular attention paid to the practical theory of ‘curative education’. Defined by Rudolf Steiner in 1922 and further developed by Karl König with the foundation of the Camphill movement in 1944, curative education privileges the social model over the medical model in the field of disability so that disability is in fact ability. Queer bodies, case two: learning differences and disabilities perspectives. Settlements, case two: Berlin (Germany), Chatou and La Rochelle (France), Barry and Glasallt Fawr (Wales, United Kingdom). The third chapter uses queer perspectives to promote the relevance of quantum physics to the human body, thus involving contemporary dance, physical theatre and the arts more generally to address and redress the chiasm between science and technology on the one hand, and arts, humanities and socio-cultural sciences on the other. Queer bodies, case three: the inescapably queer reality of the physical world. Settlements, case three: multiple locations in Tuscany (Italy), and Thamesmead, London (England, United Kingdom). This thesis brings notions of queer and otherness deceptively close to notions of the self. Otherness and queerness become mirrors in which our own queerness comes into view.

This project uses the body as a framework to understand and re-imagine the archives (here referring to the professionally managed repository). It argues that the archives as a body of knowledge, like the human body, does not and cannot fit into normative stable categories. Tracing the shift in archival paradigms from modern to postmodern, I employ the posthuman to argue for a concomitant shift in understanding of the archival body, which I conceive of as comprising both human and non-human corpora of knowledge and knowledge-making practices. These corpora are simultaneously becoming and unbecoming as multiply-situated identities, technologies, representations, and timescapes. Using temporality as a key element in analyzing archival productions, I consider how this body might sediment. This research, written from my insider perspective as an archivist, implements a transdisciplinary approach that draws from the disciplines of archival and queer studies as well as from somatechnics, embodiment and affect studies, and decolonizing methodologies to advocate for a proposed Queer/ed Archival Methodology, Q/M, that is designed to trouble the concepts of archival theory and production. It also employed on-site observation and interviews at the Transgender Archives in Victoria, British Columbia, Canada, observation and narrative analysis of recordings held by the Arizona Queer Archives and the Arizona LGBTQ Storytelling Project, and online interviews with the developer of the Skeivt Arkiv, Norway's first state-sanctioned queer archives. Three overarching questions guided the research: 1) How can archives simultaneously hold normative and non-normative stories, materials and practices together as both complementary and also contradictory without subordinating or otherwise invalidating either and so that each can still be considered worthy of archival attention? 2) How might a Q/M be a radical intervention into normative archival practices and structures and to what ends? 3) What might it mean and look like for a queer/ed archives to be a radically open space? For whom? As we encounter multiply-situated subjects in the postmodern approach and follow traces in order to interrogate the force and function of respectability politics within the archival body, the modern and anthropocentric Cartesian statement 'Je pense, donc je suis' (I think, therefore I am) can no longer support the human and records as the central theme of archival endeavors. The posthuman approach offers many possibilities. Through the understanding that human bodies are relational and contingent in complex ways to non-human bodies and each to bodies of knowledges, human and non-human bodies come together in complex relations and assemblages within the archives. Archival productions can thus represent new and emerging thoughts on lived experiences as these are situated in various structures and systems. The Q/M offers a way of thinking and acting with, about, through, among, and at times in spite of traditional as well as emerging archival practices and processes in order to facilitate new, imaginative, irrational, and unpredictable re-configurations of bodies and archives and the many histories and records therein. Its flexible foundation in the theories employed in the research support Q/M's seven key approaches: 1) Participatory Ethos, 2) Connectivity, 3) Storytelling, 4) Intervention, 5) Re-framing, 6) Re-imagining, and 7) Flexibility & Dynamism.