In this essay I point out that the presence of  ”Otherness” plays a key role in the novel The Beach by Alex Garland, and that the text relates to a colonial literary tradition. I’ve mainly used the distinction of Otherness and cultural representation presented by the postcolonial theorist Edward W. Said to guide me. In my examination of the text the presence of Otherness, how it is described and the effects that it has on the story’s central group of characters, has been my focus point. I’ve investigated the occurrence of different elements in the text which creates the sense of Otherness and identified the two most prominent opposition groups in relation to the protagonist of the story. On the story’s setting level aside, a colonial and imperialist theme can also be found on an intertextual level by made references to American war movies like Apocalypse Now, a specifically good example as the script of that movie is based upon the colonial themed novel Heart of Darkness by Joseph Conrad. I will summarize how the opposition between the Self and the Other throughout The Beach effects the plot’s outcome, and present my conclusion: that the author Alex Garland intentionally places his novel in a tradition of colonial storytelling to give a critical comment on the modern world’s similarities with its colonial past, especially when it comes to contemporary tourism. In my opinion the novel is also questioning the human’s civilized state and social evolvement.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--Utrecht University, 2007. / Afterword and vita in both English and Dutch. Includes bibliographical references (p. 115-120).

This essay examines whether the beach house, with the Hunt House, 1955–1957, in Malibu, California, use as a material object, various everyday exercises of power unconsciously or consciously produced can create a territory on the adjacent public beach. This is partly done through a literature study, photographs and information about the Hunt House building and the beach as a phenomenon. Two different types of analysis are performed; a psychoanalytic method; Sigmund Freud and the concept of "the unconscious", as well as a concept guided by starting points in literature that touches on the subject of power and territory. Have used Mattias Kärrholm's four territorial forms of production to see the beach and Hunt house from several complex angles. The theory tool Actor Network Theory (ant) is connected to the study. The thesis shows different forms of hidden and clear territorializations and their role in different action patterns of Hunt house actors. This study does not try to find strong evidence that the material has territorial effects, but to reason/reflect on the way the material and its actors can have territorial effects.

Det här arbetet diskuterar ett utforskande musikaliskt gestaltningsprojekt, Från botten av en brunn, som utgörs av fyra satser för klarinett, cello och modulärt synthesizersystem baserat på var sin person ur den japanska författaren Haruki Murakamis roman Kafka på stranden (Umibe no Kafuka, 海辺のカフカ) från 2002. Arbetet har utgått ifrån en metodisk bearbetning av romantexten med hjälp av grundad teori för att skapa både syntetiska och samplade klanger och komposition ur texten. Grundad teori togs ursprungligen fram inom sociologi för att forma ny kunskap ur kvalitativ data med hjälp av en rigorös process, där teoretisk känslighet stödjer och vägleder tolkningar. I mitt arbete har det här snarare handlat om estetisk sensibilitet som väglett mina tolkningar av texten, hjälpt mig att göra urval och omforma romanen till musik och framförande. / This work discusses an exploratory musical composition project, From the bottom of a Well, which consists of four movements for clarinet, cello, and modular synthesizer system, where each movement is based on each person from the Japanese author Haruki Murakami's novel Kafka on the beach (Umibe no Kafuka, 海辺のカフカ) from 2002. The work has been based on a methodical processing of the novel text with the help of grounded theory to create both synthetic and sampled sounds and composition from the text. Grounded theory was originally developed in sociology to shape new knowledge from qualitative data using a rigorous process, where theoretical sensitivity supports and guides interpretations. In my work, this has rather been about aesthetic sensibility that has guided my interpretations of the text, helped me to make selections, and to transform the novel into a music composition and a performance.