This thesis is a study of social alienation in two novels by Sara Lidman, Regnspiran (1958) and Bära mistel (1960). Taking the Swedish ”people’s home” and the normative view of people that it entailed as its point of departure, it examines the different kinds of alienation present in Lidman’s work. The analysis consists of three main parts. Part one examines geographical alienation in the novels, as well as the process of racialization of bodies that are considered out of place. Part two considers how different types of masculinity is represented in the novels, as they intersect structures of religion, class and sexuality. The third and last part is concentrated on the main character of the novels, Linda Ståhl, and the deviant female artist in general. The conclusion is that the novels lends a voice to people in many different kinds of alienation. It also poses questions about identity that run even deeper. Through imitation and stage art, the main characters build layers of identity that questions the idea of an essential, ”real” identity. Processes that genders and racializes people become visible, and the performative acts that create identity are heightened and put in focus.

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With this essay I aim to illustrate the simultaneous tension between and entanglement of narratives of mire and modernity in Sara Lidman’s novel Hjortronlandet. Both mire and modernity are understood wide concepts; as temporal as well as spatial markers relating to nature. Through the theoretical frame of Kate Soper’s What is Nature?, Yi-Fu Tuan’s Space and Place and Doreen Massey’s Space, Place and Gender I explore how concepts of nature, time and place are conceptualized, discussed and rewritten in the novel. The analysis shows that nature, time and place are simultaneously understood through narratives and through the intimate experience of material surroundings. Narratives are thus discussed and rewritten when applied to new material surroundings, and the natural surroundings are experienced through already established narratives. Hjortronlandet explores the lives of poor settlers in northern Sweden during the first half of the 20th century in their attempt to convert their allotted wetland to farmland. Throughout the novel the propaganda narratives of the Swedish state clash with the settlers’ intimate experience of place and natural surroundings. All the while, the settler project is undertaken on behalf of the state and plays a part in the creation of a unified modern state. I argue that though an exploration of the perceived dichotomy of mire and modernity presented by the state the entanglement of the two concepts is made visible in the novel. By examining ostensibly contrasting positions I conclude that the novel exposes the untenable approach of the modern state to material surroundings.

There is great interest in testimonies, both in society at large and as a theoretical concept. Within educational research testimony is used to understand and develop epistemological, political or ethical thinking. In this thesis I investigate what testimonies and the act of witnessing can do in relation to education. More specifically, I investigate what kind of pedagogical possibilities there are in witnessing and testimony, in relation to teaching as well as outside schools. Focusing on three different aspects (of these phenomena), namely representation, subjectivity and emotion I discuss different examples of testimonies. These are Collateral Murder, The Living History Forum’s book Tell Ye Your Children…, Gruva by Sara Lidman and Odd Uhrbom, and pictures with Alan Kurdi from 2015 taken by Nilüfer Demir. I examine the pedagogical possibilities of testimony and witnessing based on the idea that such possibilities are situated in human imperfection and lack of ability, where the knowledge is placed in the impossibility, in our not-knowing. This dialectical understanding, drawing on Giorgio Agamben, implies a different formulation than previous research, by highlighting the impossibility of witnessing and of testimony, for example by how the testimony does not stand outside the political, and in Western society more specifically, the capitalist system. Through the analyses of the different aspects (representation, subjectivity, emotions) I show how testimonies can serve as a way to control the students' emotions and perceptions (drawing on Sara Ahmed), and influence the perception of the society in which the students live. I have also shown how the act of witnessing can be done at the witness’ own expense (by drawing on The Latina Feminist Group). It can mean that testimonies work as a way to reproduce various stereotypes of different people's suffering and thus consolidate existing power structures and identities. The conditions surrounding witnessing and testimonies make witnessing an act that can be perceived as a poetic testimony, as well as an exploitation or expropriation of already vulnerable people. With this said, I also argue for the value of bringing into teaching testimonies that testify of suffering. Testimonies stand between the past and the future and have important things to speak of. If testimonies are not heard in teaching, there is a possibility of silencing and forgetting the wounds in history. It is in teaching where the repetitive work of a literary reading (Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak) can take place. A literary reading that emphasizes the difficulties in testimonies and one’s own part of and relation to it. It is the effort of the repetitive work in teaching that can lead to pedagogical possibility, and through that, enter the future.

The object of investigation in this essay is the epic novel sequence Jernbanan written by Sara Lidman. More specifically the investigation takes on the idea of a “sam-vett” as it is formulated in Jernbanan. The “sam-vett” is an idea about the undivided unity of man, nature and animal, and with a kind of primitive trait. By asking the question what traces the history of ideas are to be found in the “sam-vett”, the hope is that it will bring some clarity to the notion and what its message might be. In addition to that a thesis is formulated, that the “sam-vett” can be read as a form of deep ecology. Deep ecology takes on the first rule of ecology, that everything is closely bound together, and extends it to a philosophy. By discussing the notion of the “sam-vett” in the light of two figures in the history of ideas, Jean-Jacques Rousseau and Martin Heidegger, the hope is to unravel its learning. In the end the “sam-vett” can be described as knowledge of nature that is based on a feeling more than the intellect – that begins where the language ends.

This essay examines the nature of Sara Lidmans novel Bära mistel by drawing on theories of Kate Soper and Greg Garrard. The analysis examines the culture surrounding the characters Linda Ståhl and Björn Ceder in relation to the nature of the north. It considers concepts such as the imminent presence of nature versus a distance to it, the idealization of nature, the connection between nature and God, and the problems that follow society’s way of looking at Norrland as wilderness. Simultaneously I analyze how nature and culture tend to overlap and thus one often becomes a product of the other.